The Hobo Life In The 1930's

The Hobo Life in the 1930’s
Imagine a time where there were no jobs, and the ones that were available weren’t paying enough to help anyone survive. Kids roamed the streets and little cardboard shackle houses were where most of the population lived, it was dangerous and unclean. Then there were the people who would jump aboard a train to seek work in other towns, or just go to see the world. There were approximately 2 million men, 8,000 women (Ganzel), and 250,000 teens (“Riding the Rails” Encyclopedia.com). The ones who had become hobos were all different ages and from all different types of areas and families. They had little to no food or shelter when they were on the move from place to place. They would scrap off of whatever they could find
Many adults and parents had lost their jobs due to the stock market crash (Ganzel) about 25% of all Americans were unemployed. Most hobos were men, when women took up the task they had to dress as men to avoid rape and other harmful acts upon them (“Riding the Rails” Encyclopedia.com). Hobos would take up any odd job to get money or at least a scrap of food (Buckholtz). "I stood there and threw down the coal. I worked all day. He gave me two tomatoes." George Rhodes recalled about this life when he was young(“Riding the Rails” pbs.org). It wasn’t only adults that left home, it was teens too; most of them felt like a burden to their family and didn’t want to stay, then the others just wanted an adventure to liven up the Depression (“Riding the Rails” Encyclopedia.com). The movie Wild Boys of The Road was to try to prevent kids from leaving home and ride the trains, but according to most who had seen it, it only put the idea into their heads(“Riding the Rails” pbs.org). About 1 in 20 kids left home (“Riding the Rails” Encyclopedia.com) which resulted in approximately 250,000 teens on the move (“Riding the Rails” pbs.org). The kids who left home to seek adventure usually had a home to come back to when they were done, but those who left in seek of work or had felt unwanted at home usually never returned home(“Riding the Rails” Encyclopedia.com). Many Teens and adults had left their families to explore the
They were all different types of people, some were once rich, some were poor; they could be both men, women, and teens. Hobos were almost always experts at jumping aboard moving trains, they risked their lives to get from place to place. These people sleep on dirt and ate left over scraps or anything that was near available. Hobos had even invented their own way of talking and had created a code specifically for warnings or telling others if this was a good place or not to stop. Now imagine the hobos in another point of view, they risk their lives to jump onto a moving train to find work, they starve and sleep on the dirt and even picked up various unclean and possibly dangerous illnesses along the way. Being a hobo was an extremely dangerous choice, but those willing to take that risk faced a lot of