The Hobo Code Of Ethics Explained
Today, the word hobo carries a deeply negative connotation that is almost synonymous with the word bum. Any mention of a hobo immediately incites imagery of a middle-aged man with a bag slung over his back, hopping trains and living freely off the land. Indeed, it is even associated with the loose and criminal lifestyle of a wanderer who has chosen for himself a life without rules and is resigned to the railroad tracks to wander aimlessly on someone else's dime.
Collectors Weekly reports that was not always the case. During the era of the American railway, in the wake of the Great Depression, the transient workers referred to as hobos were viewed as the opposite of bums. Theirs were the hard-working hands that crafted the steel of steam engines and as an uncertain kind of gig economy swept the nation — theirs was the sweat of a hard-earned, laborious day.
According to History Daily, hobos strived to make the best of the short-term positions sparsely available as hundreds of thousands lived unemployed, contracting their freedom for a days' spoils. They toiled in the fields, tinkered on the train tracks, and moiled in the factories, creating a prideful new class of transient residents that were revered and even romanticized through art and literature.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qL7Up56eZpOkunCEkm5saW5fqbWmeceomahlk6SxpnnOn2SerJiesLR5xLGnpZmZo7Klew%3D%3D