The hobo has few ideal associations with women. Since most of them are unmarried, or living apart from their wives, their sex relations are naturally illicit. The tramp is not a marrying man, though he does enter into transient free unions with women when the occasion offers. There are many women in the larger cities who have no scruples against living with a man during the winter, or for even a year or two, without insisting upon the marriage rite. They are not prostitutes, not even “kept women.”
52. M. lived with Mrs. S. N. for four or five years, off and on, whenever he was in town. What little money he earned he brought home, though he took money from Mrs. N. more frequently. She worked and usually when she came home very tired he would have the house work done and a meal ready. When she was sick he waited on her. He listened to her troubles and was patient and good natured. In winter he always got up and made the fires. She was always jealous of him and when he would leave town for a month or two she fancied that it was to get away from her and to live with some other woman. Finally they separated, but they are still good friends. He is living with another woman and she with another man. Of late he is only in Chicago in winter.
The tramp who succeeds in living in idleness with a woman in such a companionship considers himself fortunate. The woman who can find a man like M. is often content, provided he is faithful to her, although she prefers a man who can be depended upon to earn a little money. The women who enter these free unions have the least to gain and the most to lose. The general experience of women who keep their “men” is that when they are in the direst need the men will desert them; on the other hand, when the men are in need they will return.
A certain class of detached men makes a practice of getting into the good graces of some prostitute for the winter. The panderer is not a characteristic tramp type, but certain homeless men are not averse to becoming pimps for a season. These attachments between homeless men and prostitutes are often quite real. Some of them even become permanent, others last a year or two, but most of them are only of a few months’ duration. While they do persist they are often more or less sentimental.
THE HOBO AND PROSTITUTION
Most hobos and tramps because of drink, unpresentable appearance, or unattractive personality, do not succeed in establishing permanent, or even quasi-permanent, relationships with women. For them the only accessible women are prostitutes and the prostitutes who solicit the patronage of the homeless man are usually forlorn and bedraggled creatures who have not been able to hold out in the fierce competition in higher circles.
These women, otherwise so isolated and so hard pressed by their exigent wants, do not live on the “main stem,” but adjacent to it. They are conveniently located so that even the “floater,” who comes to town with a few months’ savings, has no trouble in finding them. The upper-class prostitutes keep men on the street getting the business for them. Pandering is an art, and many of these pimps have become adept in catching the men who come to town with “rolls.” Only a small part of the commerce of the homeless man is with the “live ones.” He usually has so little money that he is forced to bargain for the attention of the lowest women that walk the streets.
Men with “rolls” are scarce in Hobohemia. One man met on West Madison Street said: “I came in last night with $380 and now I’m flatter’n a pancake. I didn’t even get a pair of sox. Hallelujah! I’m a bum.” He was still too drunk to realize the situation, but next day he was uncertain whether he had been robbed by a woman or by a “jack roller.” He did not even know whether he had been robbed or had lost his money. He had worked all winter and spring on a ranch near Casper, Wyoming, and had come to town with a trainload of cattle.[51] It is seldom that the second-rate prostitute gets hold of so much money.
From these “second raters” the tramp is doubly liable to infection. Most of them have been diseased at some time while some of them are infected all the time. More than one-third of them, according to Dr. Ben L. Reitman, of the Chicago Health Department, are constantly spreading infection. The homeless man is well aware of the risk he runs when he patronizes the prostitute, but he does not realize the gravity of the danger.