CHAPTER XIII
THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF THE HOBO
The homeless man is an extensive reader. This is especially true of the transients, the tramp, and the hobo. The tramp employs his leisure to read everything that comes his way. If he is walking along the railroad track, he picks up the papers that are thrown from the trains; he reads the cast-off magazines. If he is in the city, he hunts out some quiet corner where he may read. The tramp is a man with considerable leisure, but few books.
The libraries are open to them, but comparatively few use them. Public libraries are generally imposing structures and, dressed as he usually is, the tramp hesitates to enter them. Dan Horsley, who is a newsdealer and runs a bookstore on West Madison, in an article in the Hobo News for October, 1922, writes:
Just as a hobo would feel out of place in a Fifth Avenue church, so he would feel in the average library. He does not make general use of the libraries because of the menacing fear of the law. He is always watching lest he be caught as a vagrant, and this prevents him seeking recreative study; so he gets his own literature to read and seeks some quiet place.
There are men in the hobo class who are not deterred by these scruples. Some of the most persistent users of the library have been initiated during the winter time when they were forced inside for shelter. The newspaper reading-room of the Chicago Public Library has become for them a favorite retreat during the cold winter days. It is also a good resting place in the hot summer months.
Lodging-houses sometimes have reading-rooms in which guests may find the local newspapers and current periodicals. Such reading material is usually extensively read and much thumb-marked. Most lodging-houses and rooming-houses do not provide reading matter for their guests. Seldom does a tramp throw away a paper. He passes it on to someone else, and after it has served its usefulness as reading matter, he may use it at night for a bed either in a “flophouse” or a park, along the docks, or in box cars.
The hobo reads the daily papers but does not indorse them. He looks with disapproval upon the so-called “capitalist” press. If he belongs to the radicals he is sure that the press is against him. But in spite of this he reads it. He reads it for the news.
Radical papers, to be sure, are steadfast in their efforts to promote his interests and champion his cause, but it is a cause that is so well known to the homeless man that it has lost its novelty. There are many radical papers. Among them are the Weekly People, the Truth, the Industrial Solidarity, the Worker, the Hobo News, the Liberator, the Voice of Labor. These are not printed primarily for the homeless man, but have a wide circulation among the so-called “slum proletariat.”
The homeless man reads a certain amount of religious literature, but little of it is perused in the spirit hoped for by the mission worker or street evangelist. He reads it because it is handed to him and it kills time.
Short-story magazines are popular. Next to short-story magazines would come railroad or engineering journals and other magazines dealing with popular mechanics.