[30] Mother Delcassee of the Hobos, pp. 43-44.
[31] The unemployables are a more or less permanent class and do not come and go with the seasons as do the employables. Able-bodied employables are an effect of economic depression.
[32] Estimates vary; Lescohier (Commons, Trade Unionism and Labor Problems, 133) gives the number as “more than half a million men,” while Speek (Annals of the American Academy, 1917) refers to estimates that go as high as five million.
[33] See p. 14 n.
[34] These numbers indicate the number of visits rather than the number of separate individuals since a certain proportion of men visit Chicago two or more times during the year.
CHAPTER VIII
WORK
The occupations that select out of the foot-loose males in our population the most restless types are:
1. Agriculture or crop moving.—When the crops are ready to be garnered labor must be imported at any cost. The leading crops in these seasonal demands are grain harvesting, corn shucking, fruit picking, potato digging, beet topping, cotton picking, hop picking, etc. If a man follows the wheat harvest, he may be occupied from the middle of June when the crop is ready in Oklahoma until November or December when the season ends with threshing in North Dakota and Canada. Workers who pick fruit may remain in one locality and have some kind of fruit always coming on.
2. Building and construction work.—Next to crop moving the building trades and construction jobs make the heaviest seasonal demands upon the labor market. Railroad construction, ditch digging, and similar occupations are generally discontinued during the winter. Carpentry, masonry, brick and concrete work are only carried on with reduced numbers of men through the cold months.