Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped AmericaIn the years following the Civil War, a veritable army of homeless men swept across America's "wageworkers' frontier" and forged a beguiling and bedeviling counterculture known as "hobohemia." Celebrating unfettered masculinity and jealously guarding the American road as the preserve of white manhood, hoboes took command of downtown districts and swaggered onto center stage of the new urban culture. Less obviously, perhaps, they also staked their own claims on the American polity, claims that would in fact transform the very entitlements of American citizenship. In this eye-opening work of American history, Todd DePastino tells the epic story of hobohemia's rise and fall, and crafts a stunning new interpretation of the "American century" in the process. Drawing on sources ranging from diaries, letters, and police reports to movies and memoirs, Citizen Hobo breathes life into the largely forgotten world of the road, but it also, crucially, shows how the hobo army so haunted the American body politic that it prompted the creation of an entirely new social order and political economy. DePastino shows how hoboes—with their reputation as dangers to civilization, sexual savages, and professional idlers—became a cultural and political force, influencing the creation of welfare state measures, the promotion of mass consumption, and the suburbanization of America. Citizen Hobo's sweeping retelling of American nationhood in light of enduring struggles over "home" does more than chart the change from "homelessness" to "houselessness." In its breadth and scope, the book offers nothing less than an essential new context for thinking about Americans' struggles against inequality and alienation. |
Contents
THE RISE OF HOBOHEMIA 18701920 | 1 |
The Great Army of Tramps | 3 |
The Making of Americas Tramp Army | 5 |
Origin Myths of Tramping | 17 |
The Other Side of the Road | 30 |
From Patriarch to Pariah | 38 |
Hallelujah Im a Bum | 59 |
The Opening of the Wageworkers Frontier | 62 |
The Hotel Spirit | 140 |
RESETTLING THE HOBO ARMY 19201980 | 169 |
The Decline and Fall of Hobohemia | 171 |
The Closing of the Wageworkers Frontier | 175 |
Contesting Hobohemia | 185 |
Forgotten Men | 195 |
A New Deal for the American Homelessness | 200 |
Coming Home | 221 |
The Main Stem | 71 |
White Mans Country | 81 |
Hobosexuality | 85 |
HOBOHEMIA AND HOMELESSNESS IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY | 93 |
The Politics of Hobohemia | 95 |
Organizing the Main Stem | 97 |
The Song of the Jungles | 111 |
A Civilization without Homes | 127 |
Reforming the Main Stem | 131 |
The Decline and Fall of the Skid Row | 227 |
Dharma Bums and Easy Riders | 235 |
THE ENDURING LEGACY HOMELESSNESS AND AMERICAN CULTURE SINCE 1980 | 245 |
Rediscovering Homelessness | 247 |
The New Homeless | 252 |
Romancing the Road Surviving the Streets | 262 |
Notes | 273 |
Index | 311 |
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Common terms and phrases
activists African Americans army of tramps Aspinwall Aspinwall's Ben Reitman Bill Mauldin Bonus Army Bonus March boxcar breadwinning camps casual labor charity Chicago citizenship City civilization comic tramp counterculture culture Dale Maharidge depression districts domestic economic employment folklore free labor frontier gender Gilded Age History hobo hobo labor hobo's hobohemia homeless Homeless and Old hotel spirit Ibid IBWA idem immigrants Industrial Army Industrial Worker IWW's Jack London Jacob Riis John James McCook Journal jungle Kornbluh living lodging house Maharidge main stem March masculine middle-class migrants migratory workers mobility nation Nels Anderson nuclear family numbers organization Park Passos police political poor popular population postwar poverty problem Quoted racial radical railroad Rebel Voices Reitman Riis road Robert romance shelter skid row social society song tion tramp army tramp crisis unemployed University Press urban vagrants vaudeville veterans wageworkers Wobbly women working-class York
Popular passages
Page xvii - he has come home to die: You needn't be afraid he'll leave you this time." "Home," he mocked gently. "Yes, what else but home? It all depends on what you mean by home. Of course he's nothing to us, any more Than was the hound that came a stranger to us Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.