The Rise and Fall of the Hobo Labor Movement, 1865-1929
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University of Northern Iowa UNI ScholarWorks Dissertations and Theses @ UNI Student Work 7-2020 Labor's unsettled vagrancy: The rise and fall of the hobo labor movement, 1865-1929 Laura Kathryn Carpenter University of Northern Iowa Let us know how access to this document benefits ouy Copyright ©2020 Laura Kathryn Carpenter Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Carpenter, Laura Kathryn, "Labor's unsettled vagrancy: The rise and fall of the hobo labor movement, 1865-1929" (2020). Dissertations and Theses @ UNI. 1043. https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd/1043 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Work at UNI ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses @ UNI by an authorized administrator of UNI ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Copyright by LAURA CARPENTER 2020 All Rights Reserved LABOR’S UNSETTLED VAGRANCY: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE HOBO LABOR MOVEMENT, 1865-1929 An Abstract of a Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts Laura Kathryn Carpenter University of Northern Iowa July 2020 ABSTRACT The historiography of the hobo labor movement analyzes the impact of collective activities on the performance of traveling work with particular attention paid to the responsive organizing of the International Brotherhood Welfare Association (IBWA) from 1865 to 1929. Through the application of social theory, the inclusion of representative objects from the National Hobo Museum, narratives of hobos, government-sponsored investigations, and the consideration of prior scholarly works, hoboing nonwork is best understood as an anti-modern, reactionary counterculture to the working-class that managed to deflect the drastic changes in class and economy at the turn of the twentieth century until its gradual demise leading up to the present day. The rise and fall of the hobo class consciousness originated in localized jungles in the rural Midwest, gradually shifting to the city with the organization of the IBWA in 1905. By investigating the institutional history of the IBWA, hoboing nonwork is given a proper narrative of significance not only as a lifestyle of subversiveness and deviance, but with an additional narrative of political activism and agent of change. Consequently, hoboing nonwork at its height was inevitably infused with larger blue-collar politics that stripped the lifestyle’s identity of class struggle and forced the culture back to its rural roots. This is a story of local origin and national significance. With hope, readers will better understand the American hobo as a purposeful citizen, honest earner, remembered renegade in labor’s story, and by-product to American post-modernity. LABOR’S UNSETTLED VAGRANCY: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE HOBO LABOR MOVEMENT, 1865-1929 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts Laura Kathryn Carpenter University of Northern Iowa July 2020 ii This Study by: Laura Kathryn Carpenter Entitled: Labor’s Unsettled Vagrancy: The Rise and Fall of the Hobo Labor Movement, 1865-1929 has been approved as meeting the thesis requirements for the Degree Master of Arts Date Dr. Fernando Calderon, Chair, Thesis Committee Date Dr. Robert Neymeyer, Thesis Committee Member Date Dr. Brian Roberts, Thesis Committee Member Date Dr. Barbara Cutter, Thesis Committee Member Date Dr. Jennifer Waldron, Dean, Graduate College iii To the great wanderers of past and present. Carpenter, Laura. “Steamtrain Way.” Photograph. 2019. iv Thank you to the people of Britt, Iowa and the volunteers of the National Hobo Museum. Carpenter, Laura. “Hobo Jungle Freight: Britt, IA.” Photograph. 2019. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 Method ............................................................................................................................ 5 Literature ......................................................................................................................... 7 Britt ............................................................................................................................... 14 CHAPTER 1 THE HOBO: COUNTERCULTURAL ORIGINS, 1865-1929 ................. 19 The Craft of Hoboing Nonwork .................................................................................... 21 Economic Selfhood ................................................................................................... 26 Individualism: Freedom of the Rails......................................................................... 31 Josiah Flynt, Jack London, and James Eads How ........................................................ 36 The IBWA ................................................................................................................. 44 CHAPTER 2 “SIZE-UP”: THE RISE OF THE HOBOING NONWORKERS, 1865- 1900s ................................................................................................................................. 51 Historical Origins .......................................................................................................... 54 Outcasts in the Jungle: Class Formation in the Gilded Age ......................................... 57 Britt: Rural Origins ................................................................................................... 67 Downturn in the 1890s .................................................................................................. 72 Criminalization of Vagrancy ..................................................................................... 78 Rural Component .......................................................................................................... 83 CHAPTER 3 “PINCHED”: THE FALL OF THE HOBO LABOR MOVEMENT, 1905- 1929................................................................................................................................... 85 “Pinched” ...................................................................................................................... 91 How’s Hobos: Progressive Priorities ........................................................................ 98 vi “Of the Hobos, By the Hobos, and For the Hobos”: The International Brotherhood Welfare Association (IBWA) ..................................................................................... 104 Philosophy and Tactics ........................................................................................... 109 The Hobo News ....................................................................................................... 116 Downfall of the IBWA................................................................................................ 121 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................... 127 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 133 APPENDIX A ................................................................................................................. 139 APPENDIX B ................................................................................................................. 140 APPENDIX C ................................................................................................................. 141 APPENDIX D ................................................................................................................. 142 APPENDIX E ................................................................................................................. 143 APPENDIX F.................................................................................................................. 144 APPENDIX G ................................................................................................................. 145 APPENDIX H ................................................................................................................. 146 APPENDIX I .................................................................................................................. 147 APPENDIX J .................................................................................................................. 148 APPENDIX K ................................................................................................................. 149 APPENDIX L ................................................................................................................. 150 APPENDIX M ................................................................................................................ 151 1 INTRODUCTION The topic of hobohemia within the context of labor history underlies a unique counterculture adjacent to the American working-class.1 Poised as unwaged, casual nonworkers prone to traveling to wherever jobs were available, the American hobo as a traveling nonworker once subjected a labor movement sympathetic to the unemployed and homeless people infamous for its obscure lifestyle of both work and leisure. Characterized as primarily white, male, low-skilled workers, these people managed to balance a specific work ethic with the yearning to travel from 1865-1929. With the privileges that the rails afforded to them, hoboing job seekers hopped across the railways