Keep in mind that back then you always had to work. If you didn’t have a home/job and you wanted a family, you moved to the woods and worked the land (hunted, farmed, trapped...) just enough to eke out a living for your family. If you weren’t married you’d tramp around the country looking for work and board.
It was a rugged lifestyle but it was dignified work.
Now we’ve turned them into straight up bums.
Hobos looked down severely on bums.
BTW, my wife gets mad at me when I call them bums. I asked her: "We've been seeing the same guy at the same intersection for almost 6 years now. If that's not a bum I don't know what it is." And I was only half-joking when I said wouldn't it be something if we saw a second bum on the opposite corner? it would be like seeing a double rainbow.
Sure enough, the rare "double bum".