Language of the Blues - Edmonton Blues Society

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H O B O
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over their shoulders and their belongings in a sack in order to find day work in the fields.
These migratory workers showed up in droves at planting time starting in the
mid-1800s. 223
By the time the Civil War began in 1861, railroads were being built at an astonishing rate.
The amount of track in the United States grew from 30,000 miles in 1860 to 230,000
miles by 1890. Riding the rails to search for work became a way of life for many people
during the economic depression of the 1870s and 1880s. By the 1930s, the country was
criss-crossed with a quarter-million miles of track carrying trains toting raw goods from
the South to factories and slaughterhouses in northern cities like Detroit and Chicago. In
1934, the U.S. Bureau of Transient Affairs estimated that there were 1.5 million hobos
Hobos were not all drunks and vagrants; many were filling gaps in the job market by
using the rails to flow to where they were needed- to haul lumber in the Northwest in the
winter, to harvest fields of wheat in the Midwest in the summer, and to pick cotton down
South in the fall.
phones and email, but traditionally hobos used
ideograms- signs marked in chalk or coal on a trestle, fence, or sidewalk. There are not
only American, but also British, French, and Swedish systems of hobo signs (sometimes
Two linked circles, for example, indicate handcuffs and
to watch out for police in the American system, but in the Swedish system the same sign
224
From the Hobo Jungle Web site comes this persp
early days the hobo was one into doing a lot of bad things, stealing and you name it, that
they would derail trains and take over the entire train. But in the rural communities
people would help them and give them jobs during the harvest time. Every hobo had a
thing that he do real well, repair shoes, make wire fruit bowls and he sure could hoe a
225
As someone unknown explained in the 1920s,
reams and wanders, the bum drinks
Songs:
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- John Lee Hooker
- Memphis Minnie (Lizzie Douglas)
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