THE “HOBO NEWS”
The Hobo News, published in St. Louis, contains sixteen pages and carries no advertising. It is published monthly and sells for ten cents. It is distributed, like Solidarity, by bundle orders or subscription.
The July, 1922, issue of the Hobo News has the following contents:
An article by Laura Irwin entitled, “Half Dead (Unnecessary Movement a Crime).” It laments the fact that more care is given to machines and animals than to men by the big interests. Another article is a reprint entitled, “Hobos in Missouri.” It is a description of life on the road. Daniel Horsley, a Chicagoan, has an article on “Hobo Life and Death: Something to Think About.” It is a discussion of the struggle for existence. There is also a short story entitled “Callahans’s Castle” depicting jungle pastimes.
Under the heading “Near Poetry” are several short poems by different hobo contributors. Some of the titles are: “History,” “Adrift,” “To a Hobo,” “Labor’s March,” “Our Boss,” “The Hobo: of Course,” and “The Glory of Toil.” Several letters to the editor deal with subjects of general interest to the hobos. The editor writes on the prospects for work the coming winter. There are two cartoons. One shows the figure of a worker hewn out of stone at the top of a mountain. He is being assailed by politicians and capitalists. Over the cartoon is this legend, “These Shall Not Prevail against Him.” Another cartoon shows a tramp waiting at the water tank. A train is approaching in the distance. It is entitled, “The Regular Stop.”
No class of men are in a better position to know life than the migratory population. These men have a large fund of experience, but they do not seem to have developed any sense of the relative values. With all this experience and with all these contacts with life, they are not able to interpret it. The intellectuals are obsessed by the class struggle, and instead of writing literature, they prefer to repeat the formulas and play with the mental toys which the doctrinaire reformers and revolutionists have fashioned for them.
We cannot say therefore that the radical press in monopolizing the hobo pens has robbed art. Among all these contributors to the radical publications, there are few who might produce literature. Many of them do not have patience to write literature nor the courage to formulate a new idea. They prefer to ride a hobby and repeat familiar formulas.
Writers who do find themselves do not remain in the hobo class. Others have the ability to rise, but because of drink or drugs are unable to do so. These men may find a place on the staff of one of the radical papers. They may even aspire to an editorship. Such a goal is not uncommon among the intellectuals. The Hobo News is one paper that the hobo writer likes to be identified with because it is more than a doctrinaire propagandist sheet. It maintains some literary features, and every issue has one or more articles or poems that portray hobo life.
CHAPTER XIV
HOBO SONGS AND BALLADS
Much so-called hobo verse which has found its way into print was not written by tramps, but by men who knew enough of the life of the road to enable them to interpret its spirit. The best hobo poems have been written behind prison bars. Many of the songs of the I.W.W. have been written in jail.
The poetry most popular among the men on the road are ballads describing some picturesque and tragic incident of the hobo’s adventurous life. The following by an unknown author illustrates the type. Here is an incident told in the language of the road in a manner that every “bo” can understand and appreciate.
The Gila Monster Route
The lingering sunset across the plain
Kissed the rear end of an east-bound train,
And shone on the passing track close by
Where a dingbat sat on a rotten tie.
He was ditched by the “shack,” and cruel fate,
The “con” highballed, and the manifest freight,
Pulled out on the stem behind the mail,
And beat it east on a sanded rail.
As she pulled away in the fading night
He could see the gleam of her red tail lights.
Then the moon arose, and the stars came out;
He was ditched on the Gila Monster Route.
There was nothing in sight but sand and space;
No chance for a bo to feed his face;
Not even a shack to beg for a lump.
Nor a hen house there to frisk for a gump.
As he gazed far out on the solitude
He dropped his head and began to brood.
He thought of the time he lost his pal
In the hostile berg of Stockton, Cal.
They had mooched the stem and threw their feet,
And speared four bits on which to eat;
But deprived themselves of their daily bread,
And sluffed the coin for dago-red.
Then, down by the tracks, in the jungle’s glade,
On the cool, green grass in the tule’s shade,
They shed their coats, and ditched their shoes,
And tanked up full of that colored booze.
Then, they took a flop with their hides plumb full,
And did not hear the harness bull,
Till he shook them out of their boozy nap,
With a husky voice and a loaded sap.
They were charged with vag, for they had no kale,
And the judge said sixty days in jail;
But the john had a bundle, the worker’s plea,
So he gave him a floater and set him free.
They had turned him out, but ditched his mate,
So he grabbed the guts of an east-bound freight;
He had held his form to the rusty rods
Till the brakeman hollered, “Hit the sod.”
So the bo rolled off and in the ditch,
With two switch lights and a rusty switch,
A poor, old, seedy, half-starved bo
On a hostile pike without a show.
Then all at once from out of the dark
Came the short, sharp notes of a coyote’s bark;
The bo looked up and quickly rose,
And shook the dust from his threadbare clothes.
Far off in the west through the moonlight night
He saw the gleam of a big head light;
An east-bound stock run hummed the rail,
It was due at the switch to clear the mail.
As she pulled up close the head-end “shack”
Threw the switch to the passing track,
The stock rolled in and off the main,
The line was clear for the west-bound train.
As she hove in sight far up the track,
She was working steam with the brake shoes slack;
Whistling once at the whistling post,
She flittered by like a frightened ghost.
You could hear the roar of the big six wheel,
As the drivers pounded the polished steel,
And the screech of the flanges on the rail,
As she beat it west o’er the desert trail.
The john got busy and took a risk,
He climbed aboard and began to frisk,
He reached up high and began to feel
For an end-door pin, then he cracked a seal.
’Twas a double-deck stock loaded with sheep;
The john got in and went to sleep;
The “con” highballed, and she whistled out,
They were off—down the Gila Monster Route.
The following ballad by Harry Kemp, the “tramp poet,” describes a situation that is familiar to those who know Hobohemia. Many men in the tramp class, to escape cold and hunger, have yielded to a similar temptation.
The Tramp Confession
We huddled in the mission
Fer it was cold outside
And listened to the preacher
Tell of the Crucified;
Without a sleety drizzle
Cut deep each ragged form,
An’ so we stood the talkin’
Fer shelter from the storm.
They sang of Gods and Angels
An’ Heaven’s eternal joy
An’ things I stopped believin’
When I was still a boy;
They spoke of good an’ evil
An’ offered savin’ grace
An’ some showed love for mankind
Ashinin’ in their face.
An’ some their graft was workin’
The same as me and you;
But some was urgin’ on us
What they believed was true.
We sang an’ dozed an’ listened,
But only feared, us men
The time when, service over,
We’d have to mooch again.
An’ walk the icy pavements,
An’ breast the snow storm gray,
Till the saloons was opened,
An’ there was hints of day.
So, when they called out, “Sinners,
Won’t you come?” I came....
But in my face was pallor
An’ in my heart was shame....
An’ so fergive me, Jesus,
Fer mockin’ of thy name.
Fer I was cold an’ hungry;
They gave me food and bed
After I kneeled there with them,
An’ many prayers was said.
An’ so fergive me, Jesus,
I didn’t mean no harm....
Fer outside it was zero
An’ inside it was warm.
Yes, I was cold an’ hungry
An’ Oh, Thou Crucified,
Thou Friend of all the Lowly,
Fergive the lie I lied.[58]