The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless ManAnderson, Nels
General
The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless Man
Anderson, Nels
Chicago (Ill.) -- Social conditions; Tramps
The mobility of the migratory worker complicates the problem of the
missions, police, and welfare agencies. The mission measures its
success not only in numbers of converts but in the numbers of men
fed and lodged. The police department, on the contrary, alarmed by
the influx of hobos and tramps in response to free meals and free
flops, has adopted a policy of severity and repression for the
protection of the community. Welfare agencies, opposing alike the
demoralizing results of indiscriminate feeding and lodging, and the
negative policy of the police, favor a program of organized effort
based upon an investigation of the needs of each individual case.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Mrs. Solenberger’s figures of more than a decade ago put
the number of the various types of homeless men in this city at
40,000-60,000:
“No exact census of the total number of homeless men of various
types in the lodging-house districts of Chicago has been taken, but
40,000 is considered a conservative estimate by several careful
students of the question who are closely in touch with local
conditions. This number is somewhat increased at election times
and very greatly increased when word goes out, as it did during
the winter of 1907-8, that relief funds were being collected and
free lodgings and food would be furnished to the unemployed. In
December, January, February, and March of that winter all private
lodging-houses were filled to overflowing, and the Municipal
Lodging House, its annex, and two other houses which it operated
gave a total of 79,411 lodgings to homeless men as compared with
6,930 for the same months of the winter before, an increase of
72,481. The Health Department, which took charge of the municipal
lodging-houses and made a careful study of local conditions during
the winter of 1907-8, estimated the number of homeless men then
in Chicago to be probably not less than 60,000.”--_One Thousand
Homeless Men_, p. 9, n.
Nearly if not quite one-fifth of the 700 hotels in Chicago
cater to the migratory and casual worker. The 63 hotels visited
by investigators in this study had a total capacity for the
accommodation of 15,000 men. On the basis of these figures, it
seems safe to put the total capacity of the hotels in Hobohemian
areas at 25,000-30,000. A like number of men are probably provided
for in nearby boarding- and lodging-houses. Thousands of other
men sleep at the docks, in engine rooms, in vacant houses, in
flophouses, or in summer in the parks.
The returns of the 1920 United States census show that in the three
wards of the city in which Hobohemian areas are located there are
28,105 more male than female residents. This figure indicates
that the so-called “home guard” numbers about 30,000, the summer
population of Hobohemia.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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