107.2  
Journals link Search link Partners link Information link
Summer, 2006
Previous
Next
Oregon Historical Quarterly

Table of Contents
List journal issues
Home
Get a printer-friendly version of this page
 
 
 

Charity and the "Tramp"

Itinerancy, Unemployment, and Municipal Government from Coxey to the Unemployed League

DMITRI PALMATEER


What is a tramp? What a world of meaning is conveyed by the word "tramp!" Do you ever stop to think of these outcasts of society? Do you ever consider what is the cause of the existence of these often despised human beings? Doomed to walk from place to place depending upon the charity of their brothers, can you conceive of a more miserable or humiliating existence? Friendless, horseless, forlorn, despised! Ah, that humanity would awaken from its lethargic state, and arouse to a true understanding of the "tramp" question! What a mockery to behold a strong, able-bodied willing individual in a land of abundance seeking in vain for an opportunity to work to sustain life!
—Tacoma Sun, 1894



Up and down our Pacific Coast floats a motley band of vagabonds. The criminal, the tramp, in many cases the wandering, shiftless, working-man, make common protest against any useful labor and boycott it as far as they can. The result is inevitable. The progress of the Coast Communities is retarded, and the men bring sorrow and poverty upon themselves and trouble and damage upon all they come in contact with.
— Thomas Strong, 1910 address to Associated Charities of Portland


THE FORCES THAT ALTERED the late-nineteenth-century Pacific Northwest landscape — the rise of agribusiness, the expansion of the rail network, increased irrigation, technological advances in lumbering — affected more than the region's ecology and economy. An army of itinerant laborers, only nominally tied to a particular place or occupation, was swept up into industrial capitalism's westward expansion, which one historian has described as creating "a world perpetually in the process of becoming, of reforming, and seemingly functioning (at times) on the edge of chaos."1 As the "great natural-resource reservoir" and "investment arena" for American and European capital, the West was intimately connected to fluctuations in international markets, a situation that led to uncontrolled enthusiasm and expansion one moment and empty mining, construction, and logging camps the next. Itinerancy was a laborer's response to an economic system dominated by frequent bouts of unemployment and idleness, harsh working and living conditions, a cut-and-run mentality, and an uneven distribution of power. In other words, itinerancy was a creation as well as an individual response to the introduction of industrial capitalism in the Pacific Northwest.2 1

 
Figure 1
    The economy of the early twentieth-century West relied on a steady pool of migratory workers tied neither to place nor industry. By the 1920s, itinerants increasingly traveled by automobile.

    OHS neg., OrHi 72283
 
 
      Dependent on these distant and frequently unstable markets, the region's dominant industries — mining, lumbering, and agriculture — could one moment draw thousands of job-seekers into a particular region and the next release thousands onto a job market with few alternatives other than continued unemployment or geographic relocation. Most of these western industries were also seasonal in nature, requiring massive amounts of labor in some seasons and needing far less in others. In confronting the region's unusual geography of labor mobility, workers had few options — change their occupation, change their location, or bide their time living in one of the Pacific Northwest's emerging Skid Road districts.3

 2
FACING LIMITED JOB PROSPECTS in hinterland work camps during economic downturns, itinerant laborers — predominantly single men, young, and native-born or from older immigrant families — headed to the region's urban centers to find temporary employment, cheap accommodations, relief from dangerous and monotonous employment, and a wider variety of charity options. In these urban centers, the region's seasonally unemployed rubbed shoulders with the truly itinerant "tramps," the city's underemployed and laboring masses, and other denizens that serviced and preyed on laborers in the region's Skid Roads. Within this largely male world, laborers and reformers were continually negotiating the construction of gender, class, sexual, and racial norms.4 3
      In addition to providing affordable food and housing options, informal charity resources (such as free lunches), employment information, and places to sleep, cities such as Portland possessed an expanding formal charity network. Anxiety surrounding the impact of industrialization and urbanization on the supposedly staid and respectable communities of the region spurred municipalities to reflect on their responsibilities toward their unemployed and impoverished residents. 4
      Rather than viewing unemployment as a result of the region's economic structure, reformers, charity officers, and municipal authorities emphasized itinerants' supposed moral failings — their desire to avoid work and their propensity to waste their limited funds in saloons and brothels. For example, Thomas Strong, the president of the City Board of Charities, placed itinerancy within the "great triumvirate of pauperism ... gambling, drunkenness, and sexual debauchery."5 The lines distinguishing the temporarily unemployed from those laborers who lived a truly transient and marginal existence were fluid, and terms such as "tramp" were wielded by charity administrators, municipal leaders, and occasionally the city's established labor leaders to deny charity to itinerants. Thus, for much of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Portland's reformers spent considerable efforts constructing tests to separate the worthy poor from the unworthy "tramps." 5
      In contrast, itinerants frequently emphasized their economic victimization and called on local governments to provide temporary relief and employment. They drew on their identity as productive laborers — they were the "real builders" of the West, in the words of William Z. Foster — and their familiarity with the region's uneven and erratic economic development to contest widely held perceptions regarding the origins of unemployment and poverty.6 6

 
Figure 2
    A ubiquitous feature of the region's Skid Road districts, labor agencies drew complaints from workers about the high fees they were charged to be placed in jobs. Regulating these agencies was an early goal of Portland's progressive reformers.

    OHS neg., OrHi 5556
 
 
      At the center of this contest over the relationship among unemployment, government, and itinerancy were competing notions of what constituted charity and who was worthy of assistance. Dominating the last question was the image of the "tramp."7 Most discussions concerning government's proper response to unemployment and debates over who was worthy of pity and who should be scorned conjured up that image. As an object of ridicule, distrust, fear, scorn, and anxiety, the tramp cast an ominous shadow over most young, single, unemployed male workers who were seeking relief in Portland. Charity officers and municipal authorities generally viewed only the city's married, permanent residents as worthy applicants for assistance and considered the remainder to be part of the "vagrant horde." Itinerants were blamed for increases in crime rates and frequently were accused of committing violent assaults and sexual attacks. Local police responded to these fears by harassing itinerants on city streets, deporting some on outbound trains, and sentencing others to the city's rock pile. 7
      Still, during particularly dramatic economic slowdowns — in 1893 and 1914, for example — itinerants, capitalizing on anxiety over the growing ranks of the unemployed and the presence of skilled workmen among the city's idle population pushed municipalities toward extending a helping hand.8 During moments of heightened unemployment and economic despair, Portlanders' anxiety about the "tramp problem" grew in relationship to the increasingly visible wandering poor, and the individual tramp became part of the hobo army and, in later years, the "anarchistic" Wobblies. Itinerants' success in creating a spot for themselves at the charitable table required that these largely single, migratory, and unskilled workers counter the image of the work-averse tramp by emphasizing their fruitless attempts to secure honest labor and their victimization at the hands of bad weather, competition with Chinese labor, and corrupt labor agents.

 8
MOST CHARITY ORGANIZATIONS and civic leaders saw the provision of any temporary relief to single, geographically mobile laborers as foolish and dangerous and responded by using work tests and municipal rock piles to separate the "worthy" workingman from the vagrant and the tramp.9 In contrast, unemployed itinerant laborers saw the provision of food and lodging as essential to maintaining the health and spirits of those performing productive labor. Itinerants viewed charities' requirements to perform nonremunerative tasks such as chopping wood and breaking rock as perpetuating laborers' unemployment and poverty. 9
      While mobility, charity, and government's role in providing temporary relief to unemployed laborers remained contested ideas throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, moments of heightened economic distress, such as the 1893–1897 depression, brought itinerancy to the forefront of political debates in the Pacific Northwest. In 1893, a financial panic that began with the collapse of silver prices spread across the West, leaving ruined banks, unemployed workers, and resentment in its wake. While precise numbers of the unemployed are difficult to ascertain, Oregon Governor Sylvester Pennoyer penned an open letter to President Grover Cleveland declaring that two-thirds of Oregon's wageworkers were out of work. More conservative estimates placed the number of displaced workers at roughly 25 percent.10 10
      While seasonal unemployment was the norm for most laborers in the Pacific Northwest, such moments of cyclical unemployment swept up into its ranks workers from the skilled trades and crafts, stimulating local newspapers and organized labor to express their dismay at the extent of unemployment. For example, the Evening Telegram reported: "For the first time in the history of Portland, have stationary and locomotive engineers complained of scarcity of work. A good percentage are idle and will likely remain so for some months.... Several good job printers are out of work in the city. In past years job men have been able to keep busy at all times." Portland's labor leaders told the Evening Telegram that every trade was burdened by an overabundance of workers and that "for the past three months workmen have been coming and going in larger numbers than ever before in the history of Portland."11 11
      At the frontline of this economic distress were the city's charities, many of which reported being overwhelmed by the number of individuals seeking assistance. In the winter of 1893–1894, during its first ten days of operating a soup kitchen, the Salvation Army of Portland fed nearly eight hundred people, only half of whom were able to afford the five-cent minimum payment. Surveying the city's charity organizations, the Oregonian notified its readers: "Down at the Pacific Gospel Mission, more men are sheltered now than ever before. This is the refuge for nearly all of the unemployed, who pass part of the day in the reading room...." Hinting that poverty was reaching critical levels, the paper reported: "There was another rush of unemployed at the free eating-house of the Sisters of Charity yesterday, and about 200 meals were served."12 12
      For Portland's religious and charitable community, the primary concern surrounding the distribution of charity was "how, promptly and generously, to aid the deserving, without encouraging the undeserving in a life of dependence which will destroy their self-respect, and thus not only impose upon the community but injure their own character." To this end, a constant appeal among the city's religious and municipal leaders was for all aid to be organized by the City Board of Charities (CBC). According to Arthur J. Brown, head of the First Presbyterian Church in Portland, the CBC was comprised of "public-spirited, wise and kindly men and it represents citizens of every creed and nationality." The existence of such a body of intelligent and generous souls meant that it was "unwise to establish free labor bureaus, or to organize additional societies, or to open free souphouses, or to form unions of churches...." For Brown, the real fear was making Portland a "rendezvous for all the shiftless and fraudulent of the whole Northwest, who will eagerly flock to places which seem to promise a maximum of relief with a minimum of investigation."13 13
      By late 1893, there was a growing recognition among municipal leaders, heads of charity organizations, and local clergy that the demand for charity would not only stretch limited resources but also present a dilemma for those concerned with the questions of supporting those who shirked society's requirement for labor. The idea was floated in a conference of local clergy, for example, to establish a municipal woodyard, where employment would be provided to worthy men and public attention called to their plight. The plan was almost immediately attacked by a number of the city's newspapers, as well the CBC. According to Thomas Strong, president of the CBC, providing work to the unemployed by municipal governments "has always been disastrous both to the corporation and the poor...." Yet, Strong's resistance focused primarily on having the city run the woodyard. If it fell under the responsibilities of the CBC, as it eventually did, "few professional beggars and tramps" would seek assistance because it was well-known that "only the really needy need apply." Indiscriminate giving was the real danger to the community, and Portland's civic leaders responded by granting the CBC broad powers over the distribution of charity.14

 14
AMONG THE MORE PROMINENT protest movements to emerge during 1893 was a quirky crusade led by an eccentric Ohio businessman named Jacob Coxey. In late March 1894, Coxey's "armies of the unemployed" began their pilgrimages from the wheat fields of the Dakotas, the empty mining camps of the Rocky Mountains, and the forests and fields of the Pacific Northwest. Their goal was to reach Washington, where they would amass and demonstrate to the federal government the extent of unemployment in the country and the necessity of governmental action in resolving the crisis. While Coxey's movement was, in the words of historians, "picturesque and curious" and "a twenty-ring circus with half a dozen side shows," it also kept the public in a state of enthusiasm and anxiety. Across the West, in small towns and major cities, small armies of unemployed laborers organized to join the march to Washington, D.C. Many of the movement's supporters were itinerants who had arrived in the region's urban centers in search of work.15 15
      As the organization of the "industrial army" on the West Coast picked up momentum, the city's press turned more hostile and dismissed the movement as a collection of tramps and vagrants.16 From all sides of the political spectrum, Portland's newspapers described the movement as nothing more than an "aggregation of unemployed who are determined to remain so." The Evening Telegram, traditionally more sympathetic toward organized labor than the establishment-oriented Oregonian, asserted that the organization was "largely comprised of tramps and hobos" and that it constituted a "mobilization of bandits" and represented a "menace to law and order." The Oregonian declared it "grotesque in the extreme ... made up of tramps and hobos, whose only anxiety was to evade police and avoid the work offered them."17 By the time Portland's contingent of the industrial army organized, local press reports viewed the movement with distrust and open animosity. 16

 
Figure 3
    Thomas Strong, the longtime president of the City Board of Charities, made a connection between itinerancy and gambling, drunkenness, and sexual debauchery.

    OHS neg., CN 014886
 
 
      As it became clear that marchers from California would soon reach Portland and join up with local contingents from Oregon and Washington before heading east, the Portland police department prepared to give a "proper reception" for the industrial army. Reports from cities along the railroad in southern Oregon and the Willamette Valley predicted that as many as three hundred "tramps and hobos" were expected to reach Portland within days. Police planned to "arrest the whole bunch" when they arrived in the Southern Pacific railroad yard and march them to the city jail. The chief of police hoped to interview them in order to find any fugitives and crooks among their members before sending them away on the next outbound train.18 17
      By April 19, 1894, Portland's newspapers reported the appearance in the city of the first large installment of Coxey's Army. Arriving from San Francisco on Southern Pacific freight cars, Company e, which consisted of fifty to sixty men, set up camp in a grassy field a short distance from the railyard. Among the marchers' first tasks were raising an American flag and gathering firewood. Their leader, Captain Kain, and a few other men soon met with Portland's police chief, Charles H. Hunt. An Evening Telegram reporter was struck by the organized nature of the camp, in particular the presence of a barber, who was busy providing shaves. As it became clear that the industrial army marchers included numerous unemployed skilled workingmen, the movement gained a degree of sympathy from some in the local press. In contrast to earlier reports that the men were nothing more than "tramps and hobos," the paper reported that marchers were mostly unemployed mechanics, with a sprinkling of common laborers.19 18
      Portland's municipal leaders soon recognized that they faced a problem. Coxey's Army was made up of unemployed workers, a number of whom represented the skilled trades; they marched under American flags and drew upon patriotic imagery. The large number of marchers in Portland and fears of more arriving daily forced the police chief to consider alternatives to the traditional methods of dealing with the men — jail, the rock pile, or deportation. Hunt requested the guidance of CBC President Thomas Strong, who argued that the men should be forced to leave town as soon as possible, preferably with empty pockets. Nevertheless, Strong offered to give the men food in exchange for six hours of work apiece breaking rock for the Jefferson Street project.20 19
      Hunt rejected Strong's advice and instead called in acting Mayor Shelby for further instruction. Hunt asked Shelby for permission to feed the men for one day, with the assurance that the marchers would board the train to Seattle the following day. While some of Hunt's motivation was probably a result of his having been confronted by workingmen rather than the tramps of press reports, he explained that he wished to avoid having to arrest the men for begging or vagrancy, which would end up costing the city more than a day's worth of food.21

 20
AFTER THE MAYOR DECIDED to support Hunt's relatively compassionate, if temporary proposal to feed the marchers, Strong angrily confronted the marchers as they left the meeting. He reportedly approached Kain and declared:
We can furnish help and work to worthy, industrious men who have families to support, but we are not in favor of feeding an organized, crack regiment of dirty vagrants roaming aimlessly from one place to another. If these men want work, we can give them meal and lodging tickets for six hours' work....22
 Clearly, Strong and others defined worthiness by whether or not the men possessed homes and families. The marchers' willingness to organize and their embrace of mobility further defined them as unworthy in the eyes of charity officers such as Strong.		 21
      Kain responded to Strong: "I don't want any man to follow us if he can get work at living wages." To Kain, nonremunerative or low-paying jobs — especially chopping wood, breaking rock, and other jobs provided by charities — perpetuated itinerants' marginalized status. He told Strong: "We have been living all winter on Salvation Army soup tickets; we are tired of that. We want work, work, sir — at honest wages — at wages on which we can support a family." By staking their claims on the need for family-wage jobs, Kain contested itinerants' supposedly debased nature, arguing that their single status resulted from their inability to secure meaningful employment. Further, Kain challenged the notion of family, arguing that while he did not have a family in the traditional sense, "I have a helpless, dependent sister ... and I haven't been able to get enough to support her, not to mention myself."23 In other words, Kain argued that he and the others were unemployed, honest workingmen, not tramps. 22

 
Figure 4
    Coxey's Army gathered on Main Street in Seattle in 1894. Seen by most historians as a largely quixotic response to unemployment, the Coxey's Army march to Washington, D.C., can be seen as a predecessor to the Bonus Army march (1932) and the civil rights marches of the 1960s.

    University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, UW 11395
 
 
      To individuals like Strong, however, itinerants' worthiness for compassion, let alone charity, was negated not only by their single status but also by their lack of established roots in a community. He challenged the marchers' itinerancy: "Why all this aimless traveling about the country? And what are you doing here?" They were headed to Washington, D.C., Kain replied, "for the purpose of showing the national authorities the actual condition of the unemployed in this country." For itinerants whose lives were defined by their geographic and occupational mobility, tramping to the nation's capital represented the most obvious form of politicized mobility, actions that allowed Kain to ask: "We are starving in a land of plenty! Why?" According to the Evening Telegram, Strong had no answer, except to declare that the marchers were nothing more than a collection of "organized vagrants for the purpose of terrorizing the community."24 23
      This final insult drew Kain's ire. He jumped to his feet and angrily uttered "some uncomplimentary things in the face of the smiling Strong, which were only half understood." For the time being, it was Kain who enjoyed the upper hand. The paper reported that "general sympathy was expressed for the men, and large crowds assembled along the river to gaze at the camp." Shelby authorized Hunt to secure supplies for the men, and Hunt responded by obtaining 150 pounds of meat, 3 sacks of potatoes, 10 pounds of coffee, and 100 loves of bread. By evening, a group of men had gathered at the corner of Burnside and Third Street to demonstrate in support of the marchers and possibly to organize a regiment to join Coxey's Army. The next morning, it was reported that organizers had collected 300 volunteers willing to join the marchers, most of whom described themselves as "workingmen" intent on earning an "honest living."25 24
      With the support of organized labor, the marchers unveiled their political program, which called for "plenty of work and free silver." F.W. Phelan of the American Railway Union delivered a speech in support of the industrial army: "We stand here as a living protest to present conditions. If you remain in the city of Portland nothing awaits you but souphouses and the chain gang. We do not want charity, but we ask for employment. Is it living to subsist on charity?" The crowd answered: "No! No!" Then, Phelan called for perhaps the most fundamental demand of the marchers: "It is the duty of the government to take care of its subjects in times like these. All other governments do so, but so far the United States is not preparing to meet the emergency." Another speaker told the crowd: "We hope to induce the members of congress to create some great national work, so that we can secure food and clothing."26 The demands outlined by the afternoon's speakers called not for charity but for an activist government willing to intervene during moments of economic distress to provide employment to able-bodied and willing workers. 25
      The words of Kain and Phelan are striking on a number of levels. First, there was a general dismissal of what they termed "charity." For Strong, charity was given to those who could not work because of a physical or mental defect. For Kain and Phelan, charity perpetuated itinerants' dependent status; in particular, charity in the form of breaking rock or chopping wood only provided a meal ticket. As Shier told the crowd: "Most of us are willing to work hard for what we get, and have a right to refuse to be dependent upon public charity." Working only for the next meal did little to assist itinerant workers in achieving honest employment. Yet, Kain and Phelan believed that their demand for the immediate provision of food and supplies was not charity. It was well-deserved assistance meant to sustain workers until they were able to press their demands on the federal government or find work elsewhere. Their status as Americans and their position as unemployed but honest workingmen, they believed, allowed them to make these claims for assistance without the taint of charity.27

 26
PERHAPS MOST TROUBLING to civic leaders such as Strong was the support and sympathy the marchers found among Portland's residents. Throughout the evenings of April 19 and 20, "throngs of visitors went to visit the camp and view the members" and brought with them numerous donations. The Evening Telegram reported that the marchers signed up an additional four hundred local men to join their pilgrimage to the nation's capital and made special mention of the "noteworthy fact... that there was not a solitary person in that assemblage showing the slightest trace of liquor."28 27
      Despite the strong support that marchers found in the community — for instance, over fifteen hundred residents reportedly rallied in support of the marchers on the afternoon of April 20 — the Oregonian was unrelenting in its criticism and its dismissal of any sympathy for their plight. The paper placed blame on voluntary idleness among the marchers: "For years there has been plenty of work for all, and high wages. But these men did not make the most of their opportunities. Some of them did not use their opportunities at all. Those who did work worked out fitfully or irregularly, and did not save money. They 'blew it in.'" Instead of seeing itinerancy as a result of industrial capitalism's particular expansion in the Pacific Northwest, the Oregonian blamed itinerants for their irregular employment, particularly for their willingness to spend frivolously on women and liquor.29 28
      The Oregonian also blamed municipal authorities for "meddling with what does not concern them." Taking the side of Thomas Strong, the newspaper declared: "Neither the mayor nor the city council has any legal right to feed tramps.... The chief of police has no right to buy bread, beef and coffee for free distribution among an army of sturdy beggars."30 The paper proposed that "if meddling sentimentalism, private and official, will keep hands off, the city board of charities will do the rest." The industrial army was hiding its "bare indecency of beggary" behind the "pretence of political agitation."31 At no point did the Oregonian identify the problem as the unsteady and erratic employment opportunities provided by an economy dependent on natural resource extraction. 29
      The goodwill and sympathy of officials such as Chief of Police Hunt and Mayor Shelby soon wore thin as fresh press reports brought news of the arrival of even more marchers and as those already in Portland decided to wait for reinforcements. Adding to the confusion was a growing unwillingness by railroad companies to allow marchers to travel to Washington, D.C., via empty boxcars or any other means. On April 21, the Oregonian reported that the industrial army "had the audacity to ask for provisions enough to enable them to remain here until next Monday evening." Hunt told the marchers that "if they want work, let them apply to the city board of charities and earn what they need during their residence here."32 30
      This turn of events amused CBC President Strong. "If the city officials had minded their own business in the first place," he declared, "and permitted the organized charitable societies to deal with this unorganized band of tramps and vagrants, there would have been no occasion for all this fuss." Strong asserted that the marchers' unwillingness to leave Portland proved what he had said all along: "These men are natural rovers, without ambition, and without any aim in life, who simply want enough to keep soul and body together, and do as little work as possible." According to the new leader of the Portland contingent, Captain Short, the request for more food was meant to sequester the marchers on the outskirts of town rather than allow them to fend for themselves among the city's saloons and charities.33 31
      By April 25, the marchers began leaving Portland, reportedly with a plan to hijack a Northern Pacific train headed east. Perhaps because Hunt had sent deputies to protect the trains in the Northern Pacific yards and had encouraged the railroad to send its trains out earlier than scheduled, most of the marchers headed out of town on foot, walking along the Union Pacific lines. Leaving town around nine o'clock that night, over six hundred marchers were sent off by a crowd of over five hundred supporters. On April 26, the local contingent of Coxey's Army was camped fifteen miles outside Portland, near Troutdale, where local authorities granted them permission to stay in the livery and vacant buildings and where local merchants fed them.34 32
      Portland's newspapers carried daily updates of the industrial army's progress, with the Oregonian continuing its rhetorical assault on the marchers and all those who sympathized with them.35 On April 28, the industrial army finally secured a train — a westbound train carrying the general superintendent of the Union Pacific and his wife. When the special arrived, the commonwealers took possession of the engine
and in a few moments had run the coaches on a switch, detached the locomotive, deposed the company's engineer and firemen, installed their own engineer, and within twenty minutes had coupled to the freight train in the yards and pulled out towards Bridal Veil, the six hundred industrialists comfortably piled into the empty freight cars.
 Within hours, the U.S. marshal, together with troops from the Vancouver Barracks and Walla Walla, Washington, were in hot pursuit of the industrial army. The marchers got as far as Arlington — about 120 miles east of Portland on the Columbia River — before they were captured by members of the U.S. Cavalry. The train was immediately put under military escort and returned to Portland.36		 33

 
Figure 5
    Portland during the mid-1890s served as a hinterland that stretched from the farms of the Willamette Valley to the mines and forests of northern Idaho and western Montana, and was a major port for the shipment of wheat, wool, and lumber.

    OHS neg., OrHi 8293
 
 
      Though brief and spasmodic, the struggles of Coxey's Army in Portland illuminate the centrality of the "tramp" to discussions about charity, itinerancy, and unemployment. While municipal authorities and reformers were beginning to see unemployment as a result of larger structural forces, itinerancy was still defined as a matter of choice. The boundary between an "honest workingman" — a subject worthy of limited charitable assistance — and a "tramp" — worthy of nothing but the pangs of hunger — was hazy and usually based on a person's residency and familial ties. Nevertheless, perhaps because itinerancy was a common experience among many working-class families, the industrial army received the support and goodwill of many Portlanders and members of other communities that the men passed through on their way to Washington, D.C.37 While acts of political resistance such as the Coxey movement represented the exception rather than the norm for most itinerants, throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries itinerants demonstrated an ability to secure temporary relief from hostile and unsympathetic municipal authorities.

 34
ROUGHLY TWENTY YEARS AFTER the industrial armies of Jacob Coxey captured the public's attention, the Pacific Northwest again found itself overwhelmed by unemployment, working-class frustration, and questions about the proper role of government in responding to economic downturns. The resistance that had grown out of the Coxey movement was overtly political, but the resistance provoked by the 1913–1915 downturn was more subtle and involved slightly different strategies and goals. Instead of taking their concerns to the federal government, Portland's unemployed laborers made their appeal directly to municipal authorities. While worthy applications for assistance were determined primarily on gender and residency, unemployed itinerants requested temporary employment on public works and the extension of charity resources. In particular, itinerants pushed the city to provide them with temporary municipal lodging in a facility that would be governed by the unemployed themselves. 35
      Throughout this era, police and municipal authorities continued to either run vagrants and unemployed itinerant workers out of town or force them to break rock in the city jail. The Portland police department's roundup and deportation of itinerants from the cheap lodging houses of the North End was so routine, for example, that the police chief's informal policy of deporting itinerants was satirically referred to by the press in 1904 as "Chief Hunt's Kangaroo Court."38 The second tactic was the sporadic use of incarceration — sentences for vagrancy usually ranged from one week to three months, depending on the season of arrest or the severity of the vagrant problem — followed by enforced labor. Portland used itinerants to break rock, clear brush from empty lots, dig ditches for sewers, and chop wood.39 36
      In 1915, an estimated million workers were idle nationwide, with the highest unemployment rates occurring in the West. By the middle of 1915, the cities of the West Coast and Rocky Mountains had official unemployment rates of between 10 and 20 percent. Unemployment reached 20 percent in Portland, 16 percent in San Francisco, 13 percent in Seattle, and 11 percent in Los Angeles. Wood estimated the number of unemployed in Portland in December 1913 at around nine thousand: another estimate based on a spot count of Portland charities one night in April 1915 placed the number at ten thousand. Portland's mayor, H.R. Albee, told the Oregonian that not a day passed "that he does not receive letters, telephone calls, or personal calls from persons who cannot get work and have families to support."40 37
      Concerns about the influx of itinerants into Portland during winter months led to a number of proposals aimed at discouraging tramps from making Portland their destination, providing temporary employment to worthy individuals, and reducing the negative influences that vagrants introduced into the city's working-class population. Portland's leaders considered broadening the functions of the city's free employment bureau, for example, an idea that dated back to 1893.41 While the attempt had failed in 1893, employing itinerants and local unemployed workers on municipal projects became increasingly common as a form of temporary relief during seasonal and cyclical downturns.42 38

 
Figure 6
    During economic downturns, the city's resident working class, such as these men in St. John's in 1913, joined itinerants heading into Portland from the region's forests, fields, and mines to stretch the municipality's informal network of charity resources.

    OHS neg., OrHi 70876
 
 
      As the scope of the city's unemployment problem became clear in 1913, some sympathetic municipal authorities began asking the city to shift its work projects from spring and summer to the winter. In late December 1913, the Portland city council passed an emergency ordinance that shifted city projects such as sewer work, park maintenance, and street construction to the winter months. Despite the large number of itinerant laborers in Portland, the mayor and city council adopted a policy that gave married male residents of the city first crack at securing those jobs and warned against the efforts of "outsiders and those who do not want to work to cause trouble." The mayor ordered city officials to take "special precautions" and to "employ only those who are worthy." By that, he meant that "no outsiders will be cared for unless they are deemed worthy of a few days of work; none of them will be worked as long as Portland men are unemployed."43 39

 
Figure 7
    Before machines became prevalent in farmwork, much of the region's wheat harvest was performed by itinerant laborers.

    OHS neg., OrHi 6337
 
 
      To ensure that only "worthy men" received jobs, the city adopted a policy of giving temporary employment only to those who were able to secure a recommendation from a "reputable citizen" of the city. By Christmas Eve 1913, Portland's Municipal Free Employment Bureau had over two thousand names on its rolls. After sitting down with officials from Multnomah County, Portland's city government drafted a policy in which "unemployed men who are not bona fide residents of Portland are to be given work breaking rock, chopping wood, and clearing land. If they do not take this work supplied they will be arrested and either required to work or leave the city." Unlike their married counterparts, however, itinerants would not be monetarily compensated; the city simply agreed to provide food, lodging, and a degree of goodwill. After a short time of providing food and lodging to "tramps and hobos," the city decided it might be best to provide them with a small wage in order to help them move on to better prospects.44 40
      This unwillingness to aid "outsiders" and "lazy tramps" was quickly modified as city officials were confronted by large numbers of unemployed itinerants eager to break rock for the city. In one instance, a fight broke out among laborers waiting to receive one of the limited numbers of tools assigned to those who were breaking rock for new roads. The unemployed also attempted to circumvent these restraints by bringing their own tools. Actions such as these challenged the notion of the lazy vagabond whose only aim was to avoid work. City officials also were caught off guard by reports that "men are coming to Portland from all parts of the country, owing to the fact that the news has spread that work is being provided for them." In fact, the unemployed worked so efficiently that in a matter of days both the city and county faced having to close the quarries because more rock was crushed than was needed.45

 41
WHILE ITINERANTS IN NEED were somewhat at the mercy and goodwill of municipal authorities and charity officers, itinerant laborers acted on their own ideas of charity and pushed for a more activist city and state government.46 Their proposals focused on providing unemployed itinerants with the immediate necessities — namely, food and housing — so they could continue their search for genuine employment.47 Many itinerants viewed the work requirements of charities as obstacles to their quest for genuine employment and an attempt to extract cheap work from victimized laborers. They denounced the moralizing of charity officers and the irrelevance of many of the services charities provided to itinerants.48 Most importantly, they called for the creation of both private and public jobs at a "reasonable wage — a living wage."49 Unemployed itinerants also attempted to circumvent patronizing charitable organizations by calling for self-government. The most striking example of this effort, as well as a large degree of autonomy, was the establishment of a boardinghouse in the empty Gipsy Smith Tabernacle building, funded by the city but governed by the unemployed themselves.50 42
      By December 1913, it became clear that the city would have to involve itself in housing the large numbers of homeless unemployed. On Christmas Day, a group representing the city's unemployed — aptly named the Unemployed League — met with Portland city commissioner William Brewster to discuss the possibility of using a vacant building as a "bunkhouse" for the homeless unemployed. According to Arthur Evans Wood, the Unemployed League roster listed over thirty-five hundred names. The group's plan called for using the empty Gipsy Smith Tabernacle in Portland's North End to house the unemployed and for the city to provide the cots. According to Edward Gilbert, "They [itinerant leaders] realized the necessity of doing something, and they called a meeting at the Plaza, which was attended by about eight or nine thousand workingmen then unemployed." Brewster turned down the League's requests, citing the difficulties of using the building for that purpose.51 43

 
Figure 8
    Allen Rushlight (left) was photographed with Portland Mayor H.R. Albee in 1913, the year that Albee turned to businessmen to relieve the city's strapped charity resources.

    OHS neg., CN 023696
 
 
      While Brewster rejected the League's proposal, Mayor H. Russell Albee ordered the police department to erect sleeping quarters for 100 to 175 men. In addition, he told reporters, the city had struck a deal with J.J. Russell, the owner of the Cabaret Grill, to allow homeless men to sleep in a 50-by-100-foot empty room. Meanwhile, the Civic League appealed to the city's churches to open their doors to the homeless and called on the Associated Charities, the Salvation Army, and the Men's Resort to issue 150 meal tickets each to help feed unemployed laborers. Most importantly, the Oregon Civic League called on the city to use the Armory and the Gipsy Smith Tabernacle buildings for housing the city's unemployed.52 44
      Although city officials were hesitant to use vacant buildings as housing for the city's homeless and unemployed, the combined efforts of sympathetic reformers and the unemployed were successful in changing Portland's policy. According to Isaac Swett, a Portland lawyer and executive secretary of the Oregon Civic League, "Every effort was made to induce the city authorities to open that [auditorium]. The city authorities were very loath to do so. There was, I believe, pressure brought to bear upon them by certain interests to do so." According to Swett, around nine hundred men slept in the auditorium every night between the beginning of January and the middle of March.53 45
      While the city provided much of the initial financial support for the Gipsy Smith lodging house, an elected committee of the unemployed managed its everyday governance. Residents were responsible for policing themselves, particularly in keeping general order and ensuring that the building was free of alcohol. In addition, leaders of the unemployed drew on their members' varied work experiences and expertise to provide basic services to residents. There was a barber shop in which members with barbering experience provided haircuts and shaves in exchange for food and housing. Shoemakers repaired the residents' shoes. The organization also included committees designated to perform various tasks involved in the maintenance and order of the facility, such as a floor committee that kept the tabernacle clean and a rustling committee that secured donations.54 46
      The success of the Gipsy Smith Tabernacle caused anxiety among some city leaders, many of whom had worried about encouraging the congregation of itinerants in the city's North End, near the heart of the city. Opponents cited concern about encouraging idleness among the unemployed and feared an influx of idle itinerants to the city; they recommended closing the boardinghouse. By January 8, 1914, the Evening Telegram described efforts by some city leaders to close the auditorium because it "has become known throughout the Northwest that Portland is a 'soft place' for the 'riff-raff' of Tacoma, Seattle, and other Northwestern cities."55 One city commissioner saw as cause for concern the success of itinerant self-government — fifteen hundred men fed daily and nine hundred housed nightly.56 47
      In the end, concern over the spread of disease allowed the city to close the auditorium. On January 18, Portland's chief health officer requested that the city close the building after a case of smallpox was reportedly discovered among its residents. According to the Daily Journal, the men took the news that they had to leave the auditorium in "good grace," but wondered why the city did not simply quarantine them inside the building. They expressed doubt that the city was concerned about the spread of smallpox, since they were sent out among the general population while the building was being fumigated. Nevertheless, the once sympathetic Evening Telegram attacked "the professional idlers," noting the "appearance of malignant disease there, resulting from congregated filth."57 Perhaps the disease that reformers feared most was not smallpox, but the contagion of political empowerment among itinerants and unemployed laborers. 48
      Following their removal from the auditorium, the men marched into police stations in groups of twenty to thirty, demanding a place to sleep, and the city agreed to reopen the Gipsy Smith auditorium. Yet, these unemployed itinerants were still seen as a threat to the city's respectable citizenry, and city officials expressed particular dismay at the men's inability to secure meaningful employment. After an agent of the Oregon-Washington Railway and Navigation Company offered 150 men employment laying track near Cascade Locks at a rate of $1.50 a day (minus bedding and twenty-five cents a meal), only eleven of the twelve hundred men living in the auditorium expressed interest. The agent told the Oregon Daily Journal that evidently "the men at the auditorium are not of the kind who want to work." In the minds of many of Portland's business and civic leaders, "there is more work to be had, if the men are candidly and honestly looking for it."58 49
      Even among the leadership of the Unemployed League, there was opposition to the notion of charity. According to Edward Gilbert, "Our one object was not charity ... our banner that we carried ... was: 'We want work and not charity.'" Nevertheless, outspoken itinerants shared an awareness that necessity, not a desire to avoid work, drove men to accept charity. Measured by their ability to secure employment for unemployed laborers, the Unemployed League and the city of Portland were unsuccessful, according to Gilbert. He explained to the CIR: "There was no work established. There was no provision made for using the men." The city found a way to house and feed the unemployed, "but that is no solution to the unemployed problem."59 50
      By April 1915, the city closed the Gipsy Smith auditorium for good, citing the opening up of work in the forests and fields of the Pacific Northwest. Nevertheless, with the region still stuck in an economic downturn, cities such as Portland faced similar problems the following winter. This time, Portland's city government and its charitable organizations worked to establish a more coordinated system for housing the unemployed and the homeless. During the winter of 1914–1915, the city rented the old Troy Laundry at the foot of East Taylor Street for four months and used it as a lodging house. On the upper floors, 420 bunks were available; on the lower floor were showers, washtubs, a barber shop, tables for reading and playing games, a piano, a restaurant, and an office. At the same time, the city still hoped to weed out "tramps" and "hobos" from the "honest workingmen" down on their luck.60 While the unemployed had governed the Tabernacle, the organization of the Old Troy Laundry building was more typical of traditional charitable institutions. Unemployed men cut and piled cord wood at a rate of a dollar per cord, redeemable in tickets for lodging, meals, and other services such as haircuts, shaves, and shoe repair. Profits from wood sales were used to pay operating expenses.61 51
      There was another, far less publicized city-supported lodging house in Portland's North End during the winter of 1914. Reluctantly financed by the city and affiliated with the Unemployed Union, the abandoned New Clarendon Hotel provided beds to over 750 unemployed men every night during the winter of 1914–1915. The Unemployed Union's admitted affiliation with radical organizations such as the International Workers of the World (iww) made the group a far less preferable partner to the city than charitable organizations such as Portland Commons and the Salvation Army.62 The previous winter, the iww lost a much publicized struggle to recruit itinerant leaders into its ranks and control the distribution of charity in the Gipsy Smith Tabernacle. This gave the Unemployed Union some space to operate the New Clarendon free from municipal opposition. Despite the difficulties that such perceived alliances generated, the Unemployed Union was as successful in operating the New Clarendon as it was the Gipsy Smith Tabernacle. Rather than relying on a fickle city council for survival, it drew on its ability to solicit private donations. Sympathetic businesses provided the majority of donations — for example, the Union Meat Company gave 160 pounds of beef, Cardwell and Struger contributed two bags of beets, and Hazelwood Dairy gave twenty gallons of buttermilk. The Unemployed Union also published a bulletin that printed radical political discussions and dissident poetry.63

 52
PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT outgrowth of itinerant laborers' politicization and agitation was a comprehensive set of proposals aimed at lessening the economic hardship that was a result of the region's erratic industrialization and development. The proposals moved beyond a work colony aimed at reforming the "tramp" into a disciplined worker and included shifting public employment to the slack months of winter, encouraging new manufacturing, expanding public involvement in clearing land, establishing a municipal employment agency, and creating housing legislation that would remove the working class from the city center and away from "unsanitary and unsatisfactory dwellings."64 Reformers and municipal leaders increasingly viewed unemployment and itinerancy as a permanent aspect of industrial society.65 53
      Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, itinerant laborers turned to cities for sustenance during moments of economic distress. They used existing informal charity resources, affordable lodging options, and urban day-labor opportunities to soften poverty's blow. The city represented a refuge for itinerant laborers, and itinerant districts such as Portland's North End provided them a degree of acceptance and tolerance. 54
      During exceptional moments of economic hardship, such as the downturns of 1893–1897 and 1913–1915, unemployed itinerant laborers in Portland turned to the city in numbers that stretched thin both formal and informal charity resources. The working class called on municipal governments, particularly in 1913–1915, to provide employment and temporary relief to the unemployed. In securing a place for themselves around the charitable table, itinerant laborers faced hostility and ambivalence from charity officers and municipal leaders who saw itinerancy as a moral weakness or who were primarily concerned with providing for their own "citizens," especially resident unemployed workers with families. In order to push municipal government and charities into providing relief, itinerants challenged notions of unemployment, itinerancy, and charity. They drew on their identity as productive laborers and victims of an unpredictable economic system to counter accusations that they were unwilling to work and intemperate. In the process, itinerants demonstrated their ability to persuade charity organizations and municipal governments to extend a helping hand. 55


Notes

Research for this article was supported by the Oregon Historical Society's Donald J. Sterling, Jr., Memorial Graduate Research Fellowship.


Introductory quotes are from George Savage, in "Scrapbook, 1886–1910," MS 1316, Research Library, Oregon Historical Society, Portland [hereafter OHS Research Library], and "1910 Address of the President," Thomas Strong Papers, MS 2382, OHS Research Library.

1. William G. Robbins, Colony and Empire: The Capitalist Transformation of the American West (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1994), xii. See also Mary Nolan, "Economic Crisis, State Policy, and Working-Class Formation in Germany, 1870–1900," in Working-Class Formation, eds., Ira Katznelson and Aristide R. Zolberg (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003); Thomas Klubock, Contested Communities: Class, Gender, and Politics in Chile's El Teniente Copper Mines, 1904–1951 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998).

2. Robbins, Colony and Empire, 62, 14. See also Melvyn Dubofsky, Hard Work: The Making of Labor History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 37. On the role of migrant laborers, see Don Mitchell, The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers and the California Landscape (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); and Tim Creswell, The Tramp in America (London: Reaktion Books, 2002), 36.

3. See Robbins, Colony and Empire, 14, 15, 16, 62–63, Dubofsky, Hard Work, 37. See also William G. Robbins, "The Social Context of Forestry: The Pacific Northwest in the Twentieth Century," Western Historical Quarterly 16 (1985): 413–27; Richard White, 'It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own': A History of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 236; Carlos Schwantes, Hard Traveling: A Portrait of Work Life in the New Northwest (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 37; Eric Monkkonen, ed., Walking to Work: Tramps in America, 1790–1935 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981), 4–5. The term "geography of labor mobility" is borrowed from Gunther Peck, Reinventing Free Labor: Padrones and Immigrant Workers in the North American West, 1880–1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 2.

4. See Anne Butler, Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Mercy: Prostitutes in the American West, 1865–1890 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985); Creswell, The Tramp in America; and Virginia Scharff, "Lighting Out for the Territory: Women Mobility and Western Place" in Power and Place in the North American West, eds. Richard White and John M. Findlay (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999), 287–303 . For an examination of relationship between itinerancy, sex, and race, see Peter Boag, Same Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).

5. "1910 Address of the President," Thomas Strong Papers, MS 2382, OHS Research Library.

6. William Z. Foster, Pages from a Worker's Life (New York: International Publishers, 1939), 107–8.

7. The figure of the tramp in children's stories, cartoons, and tramping narratives can be seen as an item of conflict, a figure upon which competing understandings of itinerancy are imposed. See Michael Denning, Mechanic Accents (New York: Verso, 1987), 3.

8. Historians have written little about the economic downturn of 1913–1915. See Udo Sautter, "Government and Unemployment: The Use of Public Works Before the New Deal," The Journal of American History 73:1 (June 1986), 59–86.

9. The City Board of Charities had this saying on their official publications: "If a man will not work, neither shall he eat." See, for example, Biennial Report of the City Board of Charities, November 1895–November 1897, 8. The tramp and the itinerant were so central to the creation of organized charity in the Pacific Northwest that it was written into the constitution of the Portland's City Board of Charities that "the Board endeavors to meet and cope with the tramp evil."

10. One report estimated that roughly one-quarter of the breadwinners of Montana and Utah were unemployed as of January 1, 1894, and as many as 50,000 were unemployed in California. See Schwantes, The Pacific Northwest, 261.

11. Evening Telegram, November 21, December 20, 1893.

12. Oregonian, January 1, January 31, 1894. The Oregonian reported that nearly four thousand meals had been served in recent months.

13. Evening Telegram, November 6, 1893. A major goal of the City Board of Charities was to "wisely and systematically treat that large class of our needy population that lies midway between the tramp and the really worthy and needy class." See "Constitution of the CBC and a Directory of the Charitable and Beneficent Societies and Institutions of the City" (1890), 41. See also Kenneth Kusmer, Down & Out, On the Road: the Homeless in American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 73.

14. Evening Telegram, November 22, 1893; Oregonian, January 10, 1894; Evening Telegram, November 24, 1893; Oregonian, November 28, 1893. Thomas Strong proposed that Portland establish a centralized system whereby "the distressed tramp or unfortunate is taken in, washed, housed and fed, and is then required to work for what he has had, failing in which he is punished as a vagrant." See Oregonian, November 28, 1893. See also Kusmer, Down & Out, On the Road, 73.

15. Carlos Schwantes, Coxey's Army: An American Odyssey (Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1994), 11; Donald McMurry, Coxey's Army: A Study of the Industrial Army Movement of 1894 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1929), 7. See also Herman C. Voeltz "Coxey's Army in Oregon, 1894," Oregon Historical Quarterly 65:3 (September 1964): 263–95.

16. The entire Coxey movement became synonymous with "a tattered aggregation of disreputables." See McMurry, Coxey's Army, v.

17. Oregonian, March 17, 1894; Evening Telegram, March 17, 1894; Oregonian, March 17, 1894. On March 31, 1894, the Evening Telegram informed its readers that "Fool Coxey will start next Sunday with his army of tramps on their wild march to Washington. It will be a grotesque procession, furnishing food for jest and merriment to the unthinking."

18. Of the four men comprising a supposed advance party that reached the city on April 4, three were African Americans. One of them ended his interview with the chief of police by stating, "Times is tough, ain't they? Gimme a dime, partner." Evening Telegram, April 4, 1894.

19. Evening Telegram, April 19, 1894. The March 20, 1894, Oregonian described the group as a "well-organized and disciplined company of San Francisco mechanics," and listed the leaders as H. Hamilton, D. Deegan, A.J. White, C.W. Fairbrain, William Burns, E.F. Schier, Frank Burke, G.H.L. Mason, William Johnson, Lee Stevenson, John Murphy, and Dan Odrain.

20. Evening Telegram, April 19, 1894.

21. Ibid. See also Oregonian, April 20, 1894.

22. Evening Telegram, April 19, 1894. See also Oregonian, April 20, 1894.

23. Evening Telegram, April 19, 1894.

24. Ibid.

25. Oregonian, April 20, 1894; Evening Telegram, April 19, 1894.

26. Evening Telegram, April 19, 1894; Oregonian, April 20, 1894.

27. Oregonian, April 20, 1894.

28. Evening Telegram, April 20, 1894.

29. Ibid.; Oregonian, April 21, 1894.

30. See Oregonian, April 23, 1894.

31. Oregonian, April 21, 1894. See also Oregonian, April, 29, 1894.

32. Oregonian, April 21, 1894.

33. Ibid.; Evening Telegram, April 21, 1894.

34. Oregonian, April 25, April 26, 1894.

35. For more on Governor Sylvester Pennoyer and his refusal to call out the National Guard on the marchers, see Oregonian, April 27, 1894, Evening Telegram, April 27, 1894.

36. Evening Telegram, April 28, 1894; Oregonian, April 29, 1894.

37. See Monkkonen, Walking to Work, 8–9.

38. Mayor's Messages, 1904; Oregonian, December 5, 1901; Chris D. Sawyer, "From Whitechapel to Old Town: The Life and Death of the Skid Row District, Portland, Oregon " (Ph.D. diss., Portland State University, 1985), 231. See also Oregonian, December 5, 1901.

39. Sawyer, "From Whitechapel to Old Town," 231; Mayor's Messages, 1903; Mayor's Messages, 1904; Oregonian, December 3, 1901, January 23, 1902.

40. Carlos Schwantes, "The West Adopts the Automobile: Technology, Unemployment and the Jitney Phenomenon of 1914–1916," Western Historical Quarterly 15 (July 1985): 313–14; Oregonian, December 24, December 5, 1913. See also Sawyer, "From Whitechapel to Old Town," 285.

41. Oregonian, September 5, September 9, September 20, September 21, 1893; Sawyer, "From Whitechapel to Old Town," 197–8.

42. Sawyer, "From Whitechapel to Old Town," 198. The Associated Charities of Portland proposed the construction of a municipal lodging house paired with a free employment bureau and urged the state to establish a work colony for those "who otherwise would remain parasites." See 1913 Annual Report, 55.

43. Oregonian, December 22, 1913; Evening Telegram, December 23, 1913. See also "1910 Address of the President," Thomas Strong Papers, MS 2382, OHS Research Library; and William Brewster, "Report on the Problem of the Unemployed During the Winter 1914–15," (Portland: City of Portland, 1915), 3.

44. Evening Telegram, December 22, 1913; Oregon Journal, January 2, 1914; Evening Telegram, January 2, 1914; Oregonian, January 3, 1914.

45. Oregonian, January 10, 1914; Evening Telegram, January 26, 1914; Oregon Journal, January 30, 1914. On the expansion of public works to include the unemployed, see Brewster, "Report on the Problem of Unemployed," and Arthur Evans Wood, "A Study of the Unemployed in Portland, Oregon, January–February, 1914," Reed College Record (December 1914), 19–20.

46. John Spicer and Edward Gilbert of the Unemployed League told Peter Speek, an investigator for the CIR that the state should issue bonds to small landowners to pay unemployed laborers to clear their land. See Peter Speek, "Note on interview with Spicer and Gilbert," Unpublished Documents of the CIR, 1914, Reel 7, SUNY Binghamton, Binghamton, NY.

47. Ibid.

48. This sentiment is captured in "Sing a Song of Welfare": "Elevate your morals, cultivate your minds. Kindergartens, nurseries, bath tubs, books and flowers. Anything but better pay, or shorter working hours." See Clayton Payne Papers, MS 1310B, OHS Research Library. On the hostility toward moralizing and patronizing charity officers, see Oregon Labor Press, December 28, 1914, November 25, 1916.

49. See U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, "Testimony of Edward Gilbert," Final Report and Testimony (Washigton, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1914), 4722.

50. See Portland Labor Press, December 7, 1914.

51. U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, "Testimony of Dr. A.E. Wood," Final Report and Testimony, 4609; Oregonian, December 25, 1913. According to Gilbert, the main goal of the Unemployed League "was to secure work at a reasonable living wage for the unemployed." See U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, "Testimony of Edward Gilbert," Final Report and Testimony, 4721.

52. Oregonian, December 31, 1913.

53. Peter Speek, "Note on interview with Spicer and Gilbert," Unpublished Documents of the CIR, Reel 7; U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, "Testimony of Isaac Swett to CIR," Final Report and Testimony, 4598; Wood, "A Study of the Unemployed in Portland," 5.

54. U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, "Testimony of Isaac Swett," 4598-9; U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, "Testimony of Dr. A.E. Wood," 4609-10; Evening Telegram, January 2, 1914; Wood, "A Study of the Unemployed in Portland," 5.

55. Evening Telegram, January 8, 1914. See also Oregonian, January 18, 1914.

 
Figure 9
 

56. Oregon Journal, January 20, 1914; Wood, "A Study of the Unemployed in Portland," 5. See also Oregonian, January 18, January 22, 1914.

57. Oregonian, January 18, 1914; Oregon Journal, January 20, 1914; Evening Telegram, January 22, 1914.

58. Evening Telegram, January 21, 1914; Oregon Journal, March 3, 1914; U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, "Testimony of Amadee M. Smith, member of the Industrial Welfare Commission," Final Report and Testimony, 4682.

59. U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, "Testimony of Edward Gilbert to CIR," Final Report and Testimony, 4721.

60. Peter Speek, "Notes on Interview with Father Edwin O'Hara," Unpublished Documents of the CIR, Reel 7, 966. For lodging houses in Seattle, see U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, "Testimony of Warren D. Lane to CIR," Final Report and Testimony, 4375.

61. William Brewster, letter to the Citizens Employment Committee, 13–14; Sawyer, "From Whitechapel to Old Town," 282; Evening Telegram, April 9, April 14, May 26, 1915; Oregonian, April 18, May 12, 1915.

62. See Speek, "Notes on Interview with Father Edwin O'Hara," 966.

63. Oregonian, March 22, 1915; Unemployed Union, Unemployed Bulletin, February 9, 1915, MS 1505, OHS Research Library. On a similar establishment in Seattle, see "Testimony of Warren D. Lane to CIR," Final Report and Testimony, 4375. On the residents of the New Clarendon lodging house, see Isaac Swett to William Brewster, May 6, 1915, printed in Brewster, "Report on the Problem of the Unemployed," 18.

64. "Testimony of Father Edwin O'Hara to CIR," Final Report and Testimony, 4675. See also "Testimony of W.C. Francis to the CIR," Final Report and Testimony, 4729.

65. Frank Tobias Higbie, Indispensable Outcasts: Hobo Workers and Community in the American Midwest, 1880–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 86.

Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.

 



Summer, 2006 Previous Table of Contents Next