FOOTNOTES:
[41] Alice W. Solenberger, One Thousand Homeless Men, p. 36.
[42] F. C. Laubach, Why There Are Vagrants, p. 21
[43] Report of the Advisory Social Service Committee of the Municipal Lodging House, pp. 9-11. New York City: September, 1915.
[44] This unpublished study of 400 tramps was made while riding freight trains from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Chicago in the summer of 1921. All the cases tabulated were cases in transit. A large part of them were men who regularly beat their way about the country. Document 115.
[45] George S. Sobel, Report to Committee, summer, 1922.
[46] Letter from Chicago Health Department to Committee on Homeless Men.
[47] U.S. Surgeon General’s Office, Defects Found in Drafted Men.
[48] Unpublished Document 87 is a statement from Dr. Ben L. Reitman, based upon cases in his practice of venereal infection caused by homosexual relations.
[49] It is of interest to note the findings of the study of 2,000 men in connection with the Municipal Lodging House of New York City, 1914:
“Of 1,482 men who made statements regarding their habits, 1,292—approximately 9 out of every 10—said they drank alcoholic liquors. Six hundred and fifty-seven or 44 per cent said that they drank excessively; 635, or 43 per cent, said that they drank moderately; and 190, or 13 per cent, claimed to be total abstainers.
“Of the 2,000 who were given a medical examination, 775, or 39 per cent, were diagnosed as suffering from alcoholism. According to Dr. James Alexander Miller, these ‘figures probably do not represent by any means the number of individuals who were alcoholic ... but rather indicate only the number who manifested acute evidence at the time of investigation.’”—From the Report of the Advisory Social Service Committee of the Municipal Lodging House, pp. 9-22. New York: September, 1915.
Here we have in a few words a cross-section of the drinking population among the homeless men in New York where conditions are not materially different and where the population is essentially the same as in Hobohemia.
CHAPTER X
SEX LIFE OF THE HOMELESS MAN
Tramping is a man’s game. Few women are ever found on the road. The inconveniences and hazards of tramping prevent it. Women do wander from city to city but convention forbids them to ride the roads and move about as men do. One tramp who had traveled 8,000 miles in six months said: “I even saw two women on the road, and last summer I saw a woman beating her way in a box car.”
Tramping is a man’s game. Few pre-adolescent boys are tramps. They do not break away permanently until later in their teens. How does the absence of women and children affect the life of the migratory worker? What difference would it make if tramps traveled like gypsies, taking their women and children with them? How does the absence of women and children affect the fantasy and the reveries and eventually the behavior of the homeless man?
The majority of homeless men are unmarried. Those who are married are separated, at least temporarily, from their families.[50] Most homeless men in the city are older than the average man on the road and would be expected, therefore, to have had marital experience. They are content to live in town while the younger men are eager to move in the restless search for adventure and new experience.