The Great Depression began with the stock market crash of 1929 and for the
next 10 years America suffered through the worst economic crisis in our history.
Millions of people lost their jobs and rather than starve or sit idle many of
them took to the road. Those who went by rail were called hobos. Hoboing didn't
start in the depression. After the Civil War Confederate soldiers, most of them
farmers, returned home to ruin crops and burned homes. Out of work, these men tied
a few possessions to their hoe and went West, hopping freight trains in search of
farm work. They became known as hoe boys or hobos.
Actually hoboing had declined
shortly before the First World War and the end of the 19th century. It was going
down and when the Great Depression occurred, beginning in the early 30s and
on up until the Second World War, at late twenty's, hoboing actually increased
again. As a matter of fact, I've seen some figures people estimated there were
60,000 hobos roughly at the turn of the century. By the time you get to the 1930s,
in the depression there upwards of they're considered two or three million
who at one time of the other were riding the rails. Of course because of the
economic conditions. They couldn't get jobs.
With a fourth of the population out
of work during the Depression and no welfare system to help people out, thirty
four million men women and children had no income to live on. Slums cropped up
everywhere. The poor moved into cardboard houses and garbage dumps only to be
evicted again. In Georgia, the unemployed were sometimes arrested and forced to
work on chain gangs. Often the only solution was to keep moving and many
southerners joined the wandering population hoping to find work in the
next town. Some became hobos.
*Train Whistle*
Guess how old I'm gonna be on my next birthday?
What? I Don't Know
Horace Hampton, a retired steelworker, married and the father of five, was a
hobo in the 1930s and he remembers how many people were out of work.
I would say
millions and million during the Depression people out of work. You know
and factories closing and other plants closing and businesses going out of
business and it was it was terrible. I mean most people you saw on the road
would be people out looking for work.
This scene from the movie
Sullivan's Travels shows dozens of men scrambling to hop a freight. It may seem
exaggerated but it shows how it really was.
Jump!
*Train Clacking and Whistle*
Help me up!
I've gotcha!
Amateurs.
And most other my guess would qualify for the term that we use today migrant
workers in the sense that they would go from say hoeing potatoes that the potato
harvest in Maine then they'd catch trains and go out to Idaho and harvest
the potatoes at a different time of year and so forth. And so they would follow
the crops and we would really call many of them I guess today migratory farm
workers who used the trains as a mode of transportation.
People sometimes confuse
hobos with bums but those who remember the depression say there was a big difference.
But among themselves they're very adamant about the difference and
someone will tell you one of the old-time hobos from the 30s or the 20s
will say, "now I was a hobo I was not a tramp. I was not a bully." They make a very
big thing about the definition.
Well a hobo more or less a migrant worker and
bum, he won't work.
Life for hobos wasn't easy. They slept outside year-round in camps called jungles.
Often jungles became a refuge not just for hobos but whole
families, which meant even more mouths to feed.
In this scene from the movie "Fried
Green Tomatoes" these two women throw food from a freight car to feed the hungry.
*Children Calling Please and Thank You with Instrumental Music in the Background*
Life in the jungle was hard enough
but riding the rails was lonely, cold, and extremely dangerous.
A gimpy stiff was one who had lost a leg. Very frequent
among the hobos to lose bits and pieces of feet and legs because jumping on and
off the railroad cars was extremely dangerous and if you got your legs
caught under one and you fell obviously the wheel, the flange, riding on the
rail would just simply amputate your leg immediately. So there were lots of gimpy stiffs.
Today the construction of trains and railroad security makes it virtually
impossible to ride the trains. People also have more alternatives in times of
need but in the great depression just about everybody was suffering.
In the old days, partly I suppose the hobos were given a fairly easy reception on a
railroads property simply because maybe some of the Train threw themselves at
hobo some. So they had a certain sympathy for people who were down on
their luck, who were travelling on the trains.
Times were so hard no one knew
when they'd be out of work next so people were usually generous toward
hobos sometimes giving them a little work or food or a free cup of coffee.
No, it's on the house.
Thank you, much obliged to you.
Many times after getting a meal at a home, they would leave and put one of
their signs or marks on a fence or perhaps a postal box on the street and
those often indicated the kind of reception that they had gotten and then
the next hobo who came along could read that.
Hobos used symbols like these to
tell each other where to get medical help, where to find food, or where to find
a safe place to spend. The night hobos also left personalized artwork on the
side of boxcars and they almost always went by nicknames like Bozo Texino,
Baldwin Boot, Buckeye Kid, or the Dog.
They wanted an identity but they
didn't want to give their real identity. I think that was probably part of it,
they didn't want people to think that they were down on their luck or that
they had to search for jobs, so on.
World War II helped to end the depression. It
brought economic stability and jobs back to the nation. Hobos who were healthy and
young enough joined the military, others got jobs and settled down. The depression
hobos have disappeared from the freight cars and with them a tradition unique to
the United States. After all America was settled by people looking for something
better and hoboing reflects the wanderlust in
our national character.
*Train Whistle*
And for anyone who has ever hoboed, sometimes the lone whistle of the iron
road still calls them.
*End Screen Music*
In 1932, the average weekly wages of those who had
jobs was $16.21.
*End Screen Music*
About Georgia's economic history, there are more stories to tell. So we'll be
back this is Georgia Stories two - I'm Colin Sidor. Thanks