Hobos, Tramps, Trainriding, Monikers, Wobblies
A
Aaron, Chester. 1986. Lackawanna, New York: Lippincott.
A novel, aimed at the Jr. High level, of a gang of abandoned children living in NYC during the depression. They take to the rails when one of their younger members is kidnapped by a "jocker". Lots of rail riding as they travel from NYC to Chicago and back.
Abel, Allen. 2005. The Art of Vandalism, for Saturday Night.
Aberski, Adela (editor). 1977. The Social Reform Papers of John James McCook, Hartford: The Antiquarian and Landmarks Society, Inc., of Connecticut.
An edited volume of the writings of John James McCook, a social reformer whose writings included articles on tramps and hobos in the last 1800s and early 1900s.
Adams, Charles E. 1902. The Real Hobo: What He Is and How He Lives. Forum, June, pp. 438-49.
"Adelaide Freight Train Workers Discover Joy-riding Koala". 9 News. October 16, 2015. Available online.
Adrian, Lynne Marie. 1984. Organizing the Rootless: American Hobo Subculture, 1893-1932, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa. Advisory Committee of the Municipal Lodging House. 1915. The Men We Lodge: A Report to the Commissioner of Public Charities, New York: New York Advisory Social Service Committee.
---. "Hoboes", in American Masculinities: A Historical Encyclopedia, ed. Bret E. Caroll, 210-211. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA. 2003.
Alger, Horatio Jr. 1910. Driven From Home: Carl Crawfords Experience. Hurst and Company, New York.
Algren, Nelson. 1935. Somebody in Boots. Vanguard Press, New York.
Algren's first book is a dark tale of a rail-riding Texas-based vagabond drifting around during the Great Depression, suffering at times and slowly drifting into the criminal life.
---. 1995. (edited by Bettina Drew). The Texas Stories of Nelson Algren, University of Texas Press.
This is an edited volume of short stories and excerpts from books (including the classic hobo book Somebody in Boots) by Nelson Algren.
"All About the Entity of the Ego is Taught at the Hobo University", 1919. Literary Digest. July 12. Page 52, 54.
Allen, John. 2004. Homelessness in American Literature: Romanticism, Realism, and Testimony. Routledge, New York.
"Allen offers an analysis and criticism of tramp memoirs, sometimes referred to as "life on the road" stories. Given that approximately forty of these memoirs were published between 1890 and 1940, readers may be surprised to find that Homelessness in American Literature is one of only two books that include literary criticisms of the subgenre".
Allen, Victor M. 1904. Hobo Life. paper covers, 64 pages, printed in Genesse, PA.
Allsop, Kenneth. 1993. Hard Travellin': The Story of the Migrant Worker. London: Pimlico.
---. 1967. Hard Travellin': The Hobo and His History. New York: New American Library, 448 pages. Includes eight leaves of plates, illustrations, portraits, bibliography.
Amarilla, Estrella. 2021. "On the Road with Russia's Train Hoppers". New East Digital Archive, November 5. Available online.
Short article with many photos about freight train riding in Russia.
Anderson, Edward. 1935. Hungry Men. Doubleday/Doran. NY
A novel in which an unemployed musician travels around America as a hobo until he stops in Chicago and forms a band with other homeless musicians. Other writers of the era, including Tom Kromer, have criticized Hungry Men for a sanitized view of hoboing and for its strong anti-Communist orientation. Has been republished several times including by University of Oklahoma Press in 1993.
Anderson, Nels. 1923. The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless Man. reprinted 1967, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 296 pages. Includes illustrations and bibliography.
A study prepared for the Chicago Council of Social Agencies under the direction of the Committee on Homeless Men, published 1923.
---. 1940. Highlights of the Migration Problem Today. Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work, 67, pp. 109-17.
---. 1940. Men on the Move. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, University of Chicago Sociological Series. Reprinted 1974, New York: Da Capo Press, 357 pages. Includes illustrations and bibliography.
Anderson stated in the introduction that one of the failures of The Hobo was the overlooking of the labor implications. This work is the rectification of that oversight. It focuses on the life of the migrant worker the migrant family, the current problems of migrancy, the plans and programs that attempted to deal with such issues, and the effects of technology and industrialization.
---. 1975. The American Hobo. Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill.
---. 1923. The Juvenile and the Tramp. Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, August 1, pp. 290-312.
---. 1931. The Milk and Honey Route: A Handbook for Hoboes. New York: Vanguard Press.
B
Bahr, Howard M. 1968. Homelessness and Disaffiliation. New York: Bureau of Applied Social Research, Columbia University, under the direction of Theodore Caplow, 437 leaves.
Based upon the materials collected during Bahr's eight-year program of research conducted at the Bureau of Applied Social Research. The social organization, history, types and characteristics of homeless men and women, public attitudes about homeless men and means of control and rehabilitation are presented.
---. 1970. Disaffiliated Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Essays and bibliography on skid row, vagrancy, and outsiders, 428 pages with an annotated bibliography.
---. 1973. Skid Row: An Introduction to Disaffiliation. New York and London: Oxford University Press. Includes notes, name and subject indexes.
Bailey, William. 1973. Bill Bailey Came Home: As a Farm Boy, as a Stow-away at the age of Nine, a Trapper at the Age of Fifteen, and a Hobo at the Age of Sixteen. Logan: Utah State University Press, 183 pages.
Although most of the story related involves growing up on a farm, first in Colorado and then moving at the age of 10 to another farm in the Snake River Basin of southern Idaho, the last part of the book describes the year he spent hoboing in the western US at the age of 16.
Baltimore Red. 2013. Boxcar Sing Along: Songs for Hoboes & Tramps, Bums & Boomers, Wobblies & Wanderers, Riff-Raff & Rabble-Rousers. Weed, CA: Black Butte Center for Railroad Culture.
Barth, Charles P. 1969. Hobo Trail to Nowhere. Philadelphia: Whitmore Publishing Co., 150 pages.
C
Campbell, Bart. 2001. The Door Is Open. Anvil Press
A memoir of volunteering at a skid row drop-in center in Vancouver's downtown eastside.
Cannon, James Patrick. 1971. The I.W.W.. New York: Merit Publishers.
Cassady, Neal. 1971. The First Third. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 225 pages.
Conover, Ted. 1984. Rolling Nowhere: A Young Man's Adventures Riding the Rails with America's Hoboes. New York, NY: Viking Press, 274 pages. Includes two pages of plates and a journey map.
Conover, an anthropology student, gives his account of riding sixty-five freight trains over 12,000 miles in fifteen states.
Cotton, Eddy Joe. 2002. Hobo: A young man's thoughts on trains and tramping in America. New York, NY: Harmony Books.
A poorly written account of hoboing in the 1990s that has received more attention than it deserved. Contains a long "hobo glossary" full of errors.
Cresswell, Tim. 2001. The Tramp in America. London: Reaktion Books.
D
Dactyl, Aaron. 2014-2020. Railroad Semantics #1 to #7. Microcosm Publishing, Portland, OR.
The first four issues were self-published before Microcosm began printing and distributing them around 2014. Microcosm now publishes all seven issues. Lots of in-depth travel stories and art work focusing on freight trains, grafittii/monikers, and related aspects of railroad culture.
Dahlberg, Edward. 1930. Bottom Dogs. Simon and Schuster, New York.
A novel that has been described as an attempt at a "fictional equivalent of Black and Tully's memoirs". Introduction by DH Lawrence.
Daniel, Bill. 2023. Mostly True, 3rd Edition, Microcosm Publishing: Portland. 192 pages.
This is a revised and expanded edition of the book originally published in 2008.
Davies, William Henry. 1908. The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp. A.C. Fifield. London. Preface by George Bernard Shaw. First US edition 1917 by A.A. Knoff, New York.
Davis, Ed. 2022. The Last Professional. Artemesia Publishing LLC. Albuquerque, NM.
Depastino, Todd. 2003. Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America. University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 325 pages with an index.
E
Eberhardt, David and Xavier Tavera. 2012. Home Free. Minneapolis: PhotoBook Press.
A book of photographs based on art shows hosted by the Minnesota Center for Media Arts in St. Paul, MN in 2012. Eberhardt's photo collection is called "By Rail" and features shots of tramps in the western US, mainly in the 1990s.
Edge, William. 1927. The Main Stem. New York: Vanguard Press.
A memoir of the author, nicknamed Blondey, taking place during the World War 1 years of 1917 and 1918. Edge runs away from a middle-class home in search of adventure and lands in Cleveland.
F
Feied, Frederick. 1964. No Pie in the Sky: The Hobo as American Cultural Hero. Michigan State University/Citadel Press, New York.
Ferrall, Jeff. 2018. Drift: Illicit Mobility and Uncertain Knowledge. University of California Press, Oakland. 280 pages.
An academic book in which a sociology professor rides the rails with the 'Krew, and "highlights a distinctly North American form of drift — that of the train-hopping hobo — by tracing the hobo's legal and political history and by detailing his own immersion in the world of contemporary train-hoppers.
Flynt, Josiah. 1894. "The Tramp at Home". The Century. February. pp. 517-26.
---. 1899. Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond Life. New York: Century Company. Reprinted 1972, Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith Publishing Corp.
Fox, Charles Elmer. 1989. Tales of an American Hobo. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 226 pages. Preface by Albert A. Stone, introduction by Lynne M. Adrian. Includes bibliographic references.
Reefer Charlie rode the rails from 1928-1939 and from 1939 to 1965 he hitchhiked and traveled by foot.
Free, John. 2021. End of the Line: Railroad Tramps of the Los Angeles Freight Yards. Available Light Press, Los Angeles.
An excellent book of black and white photographs, with text, from the mid-1970s in and around Southern Pacific's Taylor Yard in Los Angeles.
Free, Ritch. 2022. Becoming a Hobo. Outskirts Press.
Relatively few book have been written to date about trainriding in the early 2000s. This book, a personal account, written while on the road, helps to fill this gap. Self-published almost 20 years later, this is a tale of Free's adventures when 19 and 20 years old.
G
Gastman, Roger, D. Rowland and I. Sattler. 2006. Freight Train Graffiti. New York: Abrams, Inc. 352 pages with index.
While this well-illustrated book is mainly about aerosol graffiti, Chapter 8, "Monikers", features 32 pages of hobo and railworker graffiti.
Graham, Maury "Steam Train" and Robert J. Hemming. 1990. Tales of the Iron Road: My Life as King of the Hobos. New York: Paragon House, 222 pages.
Grant, Richard. 2003. Ghost Riders: Travels with American Nomads. Little, Brown. 288 pages.
Describes his travels over 15 years meeting a variety of nomadic types. Only peripherally about hoboing.
Guthrie, Woody. 1943. Bound for Glory. New York, NY: E.P. Dutton. Reprinted 1983, New York: New American Library, 320 pages with illustrations.
Gypsy Moon. 1996. Done & Been: Steel Rail Chronicles of American Hobos. Indiana University Press, 216 pages with 22 photos. Includes recipes and interviews with contemporary riders and erstwhile riders.
H
Harper, Douglas A. 1982. Good Company. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
The dialogue between Harper (a sociologist), his riding partner Carl (a hobo) and the various hoboes encountered during Harper's month-long field work riding the rails.
Higbie, Frank Tobias. 2003. Indispensable Outcasts: Hobo Workers and Community in the American Midwest 1880-1930. University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago.
Historic Graffiti Society. 2020. Wandering Women. Salt Lake City.
A well-done compilation of newspaper articles, from the 1870s to the 1940s about women riding the rails.
I
Industrial Workers of the World. 1909. IWW Songs: To Fan the Flames of Discontent. Chicago: IWW. 38th edition updated and reprinted by the IWW in May, 2010.
J
No major entries beginning with J in library collection
K
Keeley, Bo. 2015. Hobo Moments: 30 Years of Pictures. Newington: Service Press.
A self-published memoir of train hopping adventures and various memorabilia including a hobo glossary and bibliography. Some cool shots of gringo riding in Mexico before it became popular.
Kennedy, William. 1983. Ironweed. New York: Viking Press.
Fiction.
Kerouac, Jack. 1960. Lonesome Traveler. New York: McGraw-Hill. Reprinted 1989, New Evergreen edition, New York: Grove Press, copyright 1988, 183 pages.
Krakauer, Jon. 1996. Into the Wild. New York: Anchor Books.
L
Leen, Daniel. 1979. The Freighthopper's Manual for North America: Hoboing in the 1980s. Santa Barbara: Capra Press.
A compact and useful book, in the 1980s, before the Basic Guide, this was the only comprehensive written guide on train riding available and was influential for those who began riding during this period.
Lennon, John. 2014. Boxcar Politics: The Hobo in U.S. Culture and Literature, 1869-1956. University of Massachusetts Press. Amherst, MA. 232p.
Littlejohn, Duffy. 1993. Hopping Freight Trains in America. Los Osos, CA: Sand River Press, 354 pages. Includes 70 photos, index, and bibliography.
Livingston, Leon Ray (aka "A No. 1"). 1910. Life and Adventures of A-No. 1: America's Most Celebrated Tramp. Erie: A-1 Publishing Co.
London, Jack. 1907. The Road. New York: The MacMillan Company.
M
Maharidge, Dale. 1985. Journey to Nowhere: the Saga of the New Underclass. Garden City, N.Y.: Dial Press, 192 pages. Includes illustrations, and photographs by Michael Williamson.
Maharidge, Dale. 1993. The Last Great American Hobo. Rocklin, CA: Prima Publishing, 278 pages. Includes illustrations, photographs by Michael Williamson, and index.
Mathers, Michael. 1973. Riding the Rails. Boston: Gambit, 136 pages with illustrations.
The works of Kerouac and London inspired Mathers to take to riding the rails and ultimately the publication of this photographic essay about contemporary hobo life.
McIntyre, Iain. 2018. On the Fly!: Hobo Literature and Songs, 1879-1941
The first anthology of its kind, On The Fly! collects dozens of stories, poems, songs, stories, and articles produced by hoboes to create an insider history of the subculture's rise and fall.
Minehan, Thomas. 1934. Boy and Girl Tramps of America. New York: Farrar and Rinehart.
Monkkonen, Eric H. ed. 1984. Walking to Work: Tramps in America 1790-1935. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
N
Nazario, Sonia. 2006. Enrique's Journey. The Story of a Boy's Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with his Mother. New York, Random House, 292 pages.
O
Ogburn, Charlton. 1977. Railroads: The Great American Adventure. National Geographic Society, Washington DC. With photographs by James A. Sugar.
A book about many aspects of railroading with lots of the excellent photographs you would expect of a National Geographic publication. Unlike many general railroad photo books, this one includes several pages of photos and text focusing on hobos.
P
Phillips, Susan. 2019. The City Beneath: A Century of Los Angeles Graffiti. Yale University Press. New Haven.
Among the many genres of urban graffiti covered in this excellent volume are chapters on hobos, railroad workers and punks. Phillips discovered some amazing old hobo monikers up under bridges along the LA River in the course of her research.
Porrazzo-Ray, Julianna. 2021. Wisdom and Nonsense: My Adventures as a Train Rider and Hobo Queen. Media Mix Productions.
An auto-biographical account by "Minneapolis Jewel", a friend to many a hobo and long-time key figure at the Britt Hobo Convention.
Q
Quinn, Carrot. 2021. The Sunset Route: Freight Trains, Forgiveness and Freedom on the Rails in the American West. Dial Press/Random House, New York.
While there are lots of zines and short stories produced by the generation of punk train riders who came of age in the 1990s/early 2000s, there hasn't actually been much in the way of published autobiographical full-on books so far. Carrot Quinn is an exception — she's a good writer and followed through on this project over several years.
R
Rachleff, Peter (editor). 2005. Starving Amidst Too Much and Other IWW Writings on the Food Industry. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr.
Rachleff edited and introduces this collection of writings by T-Bone Slim, L.S. Chumley, Jim Seymour and Jack Sheridan on the food industry.
Reitman, Ben L. (as told to). 1937. Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Box-Car Bertha as Told to Dr. Ben L. Reitman. New York: Harper & Row Publishers.
Renshaw, Patrick. 1967. The Wobblies: The Story of Syndicalism in the United States. New York: Doubleday. Reprinted 1968, New York: Anchor. Reprinted with a new preface by the author in 1999 by Ivan R. Dee, Chicago.
Rosemont, Franklin (editor). 1992. Juice is Stranger than Friction: Selected Writings of T-Bone Slim. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing.
Frank Rosemont edited and wrote an introduction to this compilation of the writings of T-Bone Slim, a workingstiff, a hobo, and an irreconcilable revolutionist.
S
Shepard, Lucius with photos by David Eberhardt. 1998. "Attack of the Freight Train-Riding Crazed Vietnam Vet Psycho Killer Hobo Mafia, or Not". SPIN Magazine, July.
In the midst of the late 1990s media frenzy regarding the Freight Train Riders of America (FTRA), Shepard spent two months with FTRA members and then attempted to dispel some of the exaggerated myths being perpetrated about the group.
Spradley, James. You Owe Yourself a Drunk: An Ethnography of Urban Nomads. Boston, MA: Little Brown and Company.
Stegner, Wallace. 1943. The Big Rock Candy Mountain. Doubleday & Co. New York.
A fictional account of a family drifting around the Pacific Northwest in the early twentieth century.
T
Terkel, Studs. 1970. Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. New York: Pantheon Books. Reprinted 1971, New York: Avon Books.
Terkel interviewed over one hundred-sixty people from various backgrounds and orientations about their experiences during the Great Depression (1929). The chapter Hard Travelin' includes interviews of fourteen people who hoboed or had experiences with hoboes.
Train Doc. 1988. A Basic Guide to Jumping Freight Trains and Railroad Crew Change Points in North America. Unpublished manuscript. Basic Guide revised in 2003. Crew change section revised every one to two years, 1993 to 2020.
Tully, Jim. 1924. Beggars of Life: A Hobo Autobiography. New York: Albert & Charles Boni, and Random House, 336 pages. Also published by Garden City Publishing Co., Garden City, NJ.
U
Urquhart, Chris. 2017. Dirty Kids. Greystone Books, Vancouver. Photos by Kitra Cahana.
The author is an aspiring journalist who tries to dive into Rainbow culture, intending to document the nomadic "dirty kids" within that scene, accompanied by her photographer friend Kitra.
Uys, Errol L. 1999. Riding the Rails: Teenagers on the Move during the Great Depression. New York, TV Books, Inc.
Inspired by Minehan's Boy and Girl Tramps of America. this book features numerous oral histories and in-depth interviews made in the 1990s.
V
Vance, James and Burr, Dan E. 1988. Kings in Disguise: A Novel. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
A long graphic novel featuring excellent and intricate drawings.
Vandercook, Mark S. 2000. An American Journey: Images of Railroading During the Depression. Mobile, AL: Hotbox Press, 164 pages.
This is a collection of the work of several photographers, including Dorothea Lange, John Vachon and others who were commissioned by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) to document the state of America and its people at the height of the Great Depression.
Vollmann, William T. 2007. "Catching Out. Travels in an Open Boxcar". Harper's Magazine, January, pp.70-79.
W
Wakin, Michele. 2020. Hobo Jungle: A Homeless Community in Paradise. Lynne Rienner Publishers. Boulder, Co.
"For many decades and for many reasons, people who are homeless have chosen to live in camps or other makeshift settings, even when shelters are available."
Wald, Tina. 2011. Railroad Man: The Legend of Lil' Jay. Clawson: Pelrin Press.
A non-fiction portrayal of the life and death of a young man, Jason Paul Litzner, who traveled and rode the rails in the early 2000s until killed in a train accident.
Williams, Cliff Oats (editor), 2003. One More Train to Ride: The Underground World of Modern American Hoboes. Indiana University Press. 163 pages.
A collection of short biographies and oral histories of late 1990s riders, with some verses thrown in.
Wormser, Richard. 1994. Hoboes: Wandering in America 1870-1940. Walker Publishing Company. Includes hobo dictionary, index, and bibliography.
A socio-historical survey of the American hobo. Wormser discussed the early pioneers, the distinctions between a hobo, tramp, and a bum, the tragedies, hardships, and glories of the road, the I.W.W., Chicago, and road kids.
Wyman, Mark. 2010. Hobos: Bindlestiff, Fruit Tramps and the Harvesting of the West. Hill and Wang. 336 pages.
Y
Yazell, Bryan. 2023. The American Vagrant in Literature: Race, Work and Welfare, Edinburgh, Scotland, Edinburgh University Press.
An academic book arguing, among other things, that, "the rapid development of anti-vagrancy laws in the late nineteenth century, written alongside widespread public fascination with 'tramps', facilitated a transatlantic dialogue between sources eager to modernise the state's ability to describe, catalogue and manage this roving population."