PART II
TYPES OF HOBOS
CHAPTER V
WHY DO MEN LEAVE HOME?
Why are there tramps and hobos? What are the conditions and motives that make migratory workers, vagrants, homeless men? Attempts to answer these questions have invariably raised other questions even more difficult to answer. Homeless men themselves are not always agreed in regard to the matter. The younger men put the blame upon circumstance and external conditions. The older men, who know life better, are humbler. They are disposed to go to the other extreme and put all the blame on themselves.
10. “My old man tried his d—dest to get me to go to school; but no, I couldn’t learn anything in school. I could make my own way. I could get along without the old man or his advice. Well, when I woke up I was forty years old, of course it was too late. I couldn’t go back. That’s what’s the matter with half of these d—d kids on the road. No one can tell them anything. They’re burning up to learn something on their own hook; and they’ll learn it, too.”
From the records and observations of a great many men the reasons why men leave home seem to fall under several heads: (a) seasonal work and unemployment, (b) industrial inadequacy, (c) defects of personality, (d) crises in the life of the person, (e) racial or national discrimination, and (f) wanderlust.