Posted on 05/06/2021 7:23:04 PM PDT by Jamestown1630
When my father died in the mid 1970s, I found in his things a membership card in the ‘International Migratory Workers Union – Hoboes of America’. It’s exactly like the one pictured above, save the name and membership number.
Jeff Davis was apparently a vaudevillian and self-styled, long-term ‘King of the Hoboes’. He founded the ‘Hotels de Gink’, which were basically homeless shelters for itinerant men.
Jeff Davis appears to have been a patriotic man, and legend has it that he created his ‘hobo union’ in part to counter socialist outfits like the ‘Wobblies’ (q.v.) of the time .
This was the Jeff Davis instruction to itinerant men - ‘hobos’:
_______________________________________________________
Decide your own life, don’t let another person run or rule you.
1. When in town, always respect the local law and officials, and try to be a gentleman at all times.
2. Don’t take advantage of someone who is in a vulnerable situation, locals or other hobos.
3. Always try to find work, even if temporary, and always seek out jobs nobody wants. By doing so you not only help a business along, but ensure employment should you return to that town again.
4. When no employment is available, make your own work by using your added talents at crafts.
5. Do not allow yourself to become a stupid drunk and set a bad example for locals’ treatment of other hobos.
6. When jungling in town, respect handouts, do not wear them out, another hobo will be coming along who will need them as badly, if not worse than you.
7. Always respect nature, do not leave garbage where you are jungling.
8. If in a community jungle, always pitch in and help.
9. Try to stay clean, and boil up wherever possible.
10. When traveling, ride your train respectfully, take no personal chances, cause no problems with the operating crew or host railroad, act like an extra crew member.
11. Do not cause problems in a train yard, another hobo will be coming along who will need passage through that yard.
12. Do not allow other hobos to molest children, expose all molesters to authorities, they are the worst garbage to infest any society.
13. Help all runaway children, and try to induce them to return home.
14. Help your fellow hobos whenever and wherever needed, you may need their help someday.
15. If present at a hobo court and you have testimony, give it. Whether for or against the accused, your voice counts!
__________________________________________________
I was trying to figure out how my father came by this odd ‘membership’. And then I recalled that he had spent time in New York, and among his activities was romancing a showgirl; and I also noticed Jack Dempsey’s name (if it's the same one) on the card.
My father had been an amateur boxer who won the Golden Gloves, and fought one professional fight at Madison Square Garden. (He lost that last badly, and gave up fighting – he was handsome enough to have made it in Hollywood, and probably didn’t want his face messed-up; But Anyway, The War intervened.)
One of his Golden Gloves was buried with his stepfather, who had worn it for years on his watch chain; and my father had given the other to the showgirl. When they broke up and Daddy asked for it back, Showgirl claimed to have ‘lost it’.
Decades later, she admitted to him that she had lied, and still had it. (I’m still irritated by that; but I have a replica on my charm bracelet.)
If anyone else knows about this ‘Hoboes Union’, I’d love to hear.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_de_Gink
http://historycollection.com/look-life-hobos/
http://crosscut.com/2013/11/hotel-de-gink-seattle-boarding-house-homeless-men
yes. my dad mentioned that too.
I often wonder that so many of my forbears have had such strangely interesting and sometimes exciting lives, while my own has been pretty nondescript.
But maybe some of us are meant to simply appreciate, value, and remember.
The VALUES are what matters out of any generation. Holding on to those - when they are worthy - and communicating them into the future, is a very important job.
Amen Jamestown.
I did a communications project when in college on the ‘Secret Signs of Hobos’. Source Coronet magazine sometime during the 1960’s
Definitions: Bum=Drinks and doesn’t work and doesn’t travel;
Tramp=Drinks and travels, doesn’t work,
Hobo=works and travels.
As they traveled around, Hobos left secret signs for others to follow and make things easier .
I saw a video yesterday that dealt in ‘hobo signs’, and that’s what reminded me of my father’s connection with the ‘hoboes union’.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a25174860/hobo-code/
wait, you have a neighbor who was attending britt in the thirties who is still alive? can you possibly put them in touch with me? i know a lot of people in that world who would be interested in talking to them.
i know a lot of people who are in that world who would love to talk to someone who was attending the britt convention in that era. is your neighbor internet savvy?
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