DR. JAMES EADS HOW, “THE MILLIONAIRE HOBO”
How, a man of wealth and education, renounced all to share the lot of the hobos. He is not an imposing personality, but he is a kindly, ingratiating, almost saintly man. He is a dreamer and a visionary with a program for reforming the world. Every cent that he does not spend for doughnuts and twenty-five-cent flops goes to the “cause.” He hopes that other millionaires will see his good works and imitate him.
How is a bachelor in his late forties. According to rumor, which he neither affirms nor denies, he has two college degrees, one of them in medicine. He plans soon to enter a college for a year to study law, so as to be the better prepared to promote the interests of the International Brotherhood Welfare Association and the “Hobo College.” The I.W.W. believes the world will be reformed by organization and direct action first, and education second. How puts education first. He hopes to establish a central hobo university to which the numerous hobo colleges in the large cities will be feeders.
To How the hobos are a “chosen people” who have been denied their own. They will come into their own in time. All his repeated failures to build up a strong organization of migratory workers have not shaken his faith in his vision. How still believes that hobos and millionaires will sooner or later work together in harmony to construct the House of Happiness for humanity.