An estimate has already been made that the number of homeless men in Chicago range from 30,000 in the summer to 60,000 in the winter, reaching 75,000 in periods of unemployment. Any attempt to state the numbers of the different types of homeless men can be little more than a guess. The difficulty is the greater because individuals are continually passing from one group into another group. One man in his lifetime may perchance have been, in turn, seasonal laborer, hobo, tramp, home guard, and bum. The public generally fails to distinguish between these types. The group of bums, beggars, and petty thieves, often mistakenly thought of as representative of the homeless men’s group, probably does not exceed in Chicago a total number of 2,500. The number of the home-guard type, the stationary casual worker, has been placed at 30,000, the summer population of Hobohemia on the basis of the number of permanent guests at lodging-house and hotel, and the number of registered voters among the homeless men.[33] The number of tramps who visit Chicago each year can only be roughly estimated at 150,000,[34] or an average of perhaps 5,000 at any given time. The migratory worker, including both the seasonal laborer and the hobo, number on the average around 10,000 and reach a total of 300,000 or more persons who come to Chicago for the winter or to secure a shipment to work outside the city. In periods of economic depression the numbers of homeless men in Hobohemia are swollen with men out of work, the majority of whom for the first time have been turned adrift on the “main stem.” FOOTNOTES: [29] The term “punk” is an instance; it had a special meaning at one time but is beginning to have a milder and more general use and the term “lamb” is taking its place. [30] _Mother Delcassee of the Hobos_, pp. 43-44. [31] The unemployables are a more or less permanent class and do not come and go with the seasons as do the employables. Able-bodied employables are an effect of economic depression. [32] Estimates vary; Lescohier (Commons, _Trade Unionism and Labor Problems_, 133) gives the number as “more than half a million men,” while Speek (_Annals of the American Academy_, 1917) refers to estimates that go as high as five million. [33] See p. 14 n. [34] These numbers indicate the number of visits rather than the number of separate individuals since a certain proportion of men visit Chicago two or more times during the year. CHAPTER VIII WORK The occupations that select out of the foot-loose males in our population the most restless types are: