Then we’ll sing one song of the poor and ragged tramp,
He carries his home on his back;
Too old to work, he’s not wanted ’round the camp,
So he wanders without aim along the track.
-Joe Hill
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Hellraisers Journal, Monday August 10, 1908
Chicago, Illinois – “How Hoboes Ride on Trains Free.”
From The Inter Ocean of August 9, 1908:
CHICAGO being the greatest railroad center of the United States it is naturally the center of population for most of the hobos of the country at one season of the year or another. The train crews of all the great railroads and the guards in the big railroad yards of this city could tell some exciting stories of conflicts with the men who ride for nothing on the railroads, as hundreds are brought in here and go out every day.
Every body knows that there is a class of people called hobos. Everybody has heard of almost unbelievable rips, completed in almost unbelievable time, considering that not a cent of railroad fare is ever paid.
Many have spent time wondering how it is done, but when, upon inquiry, it is learned that it is a simple matter of “riding the bumpers” or “straddling the rods,” the recipient of the information is still in the dark as to the ways and means employed….
The following drawings are included in the article:
Riding the Rods
On the Bumpers
On the Blind Baggage
From the Montana News of February 27, 1908:
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SOURCE & IMAGES
The Inter Ocean
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Aug 9 1908
https://www.newspapers.com/image/32576441/
IMAGE
The Blanket Stiff, Montana News p1, Feb 27, 1908
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024811/1908-02-27/ed-1/seq-1/
See also:
Soapbox Rebellion:
The Hobo Orator Union and the Free Speech Fights of the Industrial Workers of the World, 1909-1916
-by Matthew S. May
University of Alabama Press, Oct 30, 2013
https://books.google.com/books?id=3NJoAwAAQBAJ
Memoirs of a Wobbly
With an Article by the Author from the International Socialist Review, August 1914
by Henry E. McGuckin
C.H. Kerr Publishing Company, 1987
https://books.google.com/books?id=4TB0QgAACAAJ
Break Their Haughty Power
Joe Murphy in the Heyday of the Wobblies, a Biographical Novel
-by Eugene Nelson
Ism Press, 1993
https://books.google.com/books?id=7xl-AAAACAAJ
Tag: Migratory Workers
https://weneverforget.org/tag/migratory-workers/
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