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Reviews
Indispensable Outcasts
Hobo Workers and Community in the American Midwest, 1880–1930
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By Frank Tobias Higbie
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(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003. Pp. xi, 255. Illustrations, notes, maps, tables, bibliography, index. Clothbound, $44.95; paperbound, $18.95.)
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The Bonus Army
An American Epic
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By Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen
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(New York: Walker and Company, 2004. Pp. 370. Illustrations, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. $27.00.)
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| There is a growing interest in the homeless as a factor in American history and civilization. Works by Alan Bloom (on the urban homeless before 1880), Elaine Abelson (on homeless women during the Great Depression), and Ella Howard (a history of the Bowery in the twentieth century) are in progress, while an October 2005 conference at Princeton University compared social and political responses to homelessness in the U.S. to that of other countries. Indispensable Outcasts and The Bonus Army reflect this ongoing broadening of approaches to a previously neglected subject. |
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In contrast to works by myself (Down and Out, On the Road: The Homeless in American History [2002]) and Todd DePastino (Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America [2003]), Frank T. Higbie's study of hobo workers focuses on a specific locale and time frame. His concern is to understand the nature, causes, and consequences of the migration of seasonal laborers who, prior to 1930, played an important role in harvesting wheat, vegetables, and other crops, and in the mining and timber industries. As the author explains, the increasing mechanization of this type of work led to a steady decline in the need for migratory labor, beginning in the 1920s. The author avoids the romanticization of homeless men on the road that too often diverted the attention of middle-class readers in the early twentieth century. These men, who often traveled illegally on freight trains to get to and from their seasonal jobs, were viewed with suspicion, especially in rural areas. Progressive era social investigators, even when they had some understanding of the economic causes of homelessness, often reinforced traditional stereotypes of hobos as lazy, irresponsible, alcoholic, and potentially dangerous. At the same time, however, this element of the working class was much needed, especially at harvest time in the midwestern wheat belt. "Indispensable outcasts" is indeed a good way to describe them. |
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Higbie's analysis goes beyond that of other historical studies of the homeless in its thoroughly examination of the economic role played by such workers in an industrializing society, as he traces their relationship to the farming and logging communities that needed them and, most importantly, demonstrates their class consciousness as it developed through their work experiences and their relationships with other laborers. Higbie's assessment of hobos' lives "on the road" reinforces to a considerable degree what both I and DePastino have previously discussed, but he gives little attention to the lifestyle and interaction of workers in the skid rows, areas of major cities where hobos, tramps, and the down-and-out in general congregated in the late fall and winter. This omission is unfortunate, because the interaction of hobos in the "main stems" (as they called skid rows) offers much evidence of the temporary communalism that Higbie considers an important part of the hobo life during the warmer months of the year. Nonetheless, Indispensable Outcasts makes an important contribution to social and labor history by identifying and discussing hobos as a legitimate part of the working class. In broadening our understanding of what it meant to be a worker during the high period of industrialization in the United States, this work helps us better to understand the social basis of the appeal of radical groups such as the I.W.W. at that time. |
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