THE BUM
In every city there are ne’er-do-wells—men who are wholly or partially dependent and frequently delinquent as well. The most hopeless and the most helpless of all the homeless men is the bum, including in this type the inveterate drunkard and drug addicts. Old, helpless, and unemployable, these are the most pitiable and the most repulsive types of the down-and-outs. From this class are recruited the so-called “mission stiffs” who are so unpopular among the Hobohemian population.
49. L. D., forty-five years old, is a typical so-called “mission bum.” He has not been known to work for eight months. During winter he is always present in some mission. Once he permitted himself to be led forward and knelt in prayer but was put out of the same mission later for being drunk. He claims that he was a prize fighter in his youth. He has traveled a great deal but he has always been a drinking man. When he is sober he is morose and quiet. As soon as spring permitted him to sleep out he ceased to visit the missions.
He has spent most of the summer on the docks along the river where he sleeps nights and where he has been getting work now and then unloading the fruit boats that ply between Chicago and Michigan. During the eight months he has been observed he has bought no new clothes. Not once during the summer has he left the city. He says that he has been in town for three years. The future seems to mean nothing to him. He does not worry about the coming winter.
50. A. B. is an habitual drunkard. He migrates a great deal but it seems that his migrations are to escape tedium and monotony rather than to work. He is a little, hollow-chested, undersized man and he claims to be thirty-two. He says that his health has not been good. He has a work history, it seems, but it is a record of light jobs. He picked berries, washed dishes, peddled, but he was also a successful beggar. His success in begging seems to lie in the ability to look pitiful. He has been in but four or five states of the Middle West but has been in most of the large cities. He does not patronize the missions because he says he can do better begging.