Representing Homelessness
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The Hobo Colleges The Hobo Colleges
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Political Causes: Vagrancy Political Causes: Vagrancy
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Format and Writing Style Format and Writing Style
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Exclusions: Gender and Race Exclusions: Gender and Race
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Hobo, Tramp and Bum Hobo, Tramp and Bum
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Conclusion Conclusion
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10 ‘Who Said I Was a Bum?’ Self-Presentation in the “Hobo” News, 1915–1924
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Published:04 November 2021
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Abstract
In the early 20th-century United States, hobos were decried as lazy, dirty and unintelligent. Yet these marginalised people saw themselves as central to building the new American West. In their self-published newspaper, the “Hobo” News, transient writers challenged the stereotypes of mainstream society through humour, philosophical and political debate, as well as through detailed descriptions of work. This chapter explores the self-presentations of transient authors, noting how the various contributors to the “Hobo” News sought to distinguish between ‘hobos’, ‘tramps’ and ‘bums’. Hobos were, according to this schema, workers labouring to create modern America. In contrast, tramps and bums were guilty of the sins of laziness that society incorrectly attributed to hobos. Yet by making this distinction, “Hobo” News contributors played into conservative ideologies of work, and in so doing left a space for prejudice not simply against tramps and bums, but against all transients, whether they qualified as ‘workers’ or not. They also implicitly and explicitly excluded other figures who did not fit into the ideological construction of the hobo, in particular women and people of colour.
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