RIDING THE RAILS: Teenagers on the
Move During the Great Depression
Wednesday, February 13, 13
At the height of the Great Depression, two hundred
and fifty thousand teenage hoboes were roaming
America
Wednesday, February 13, 13
Why Did They Leave Home?
1.  Some left home because they felt
they were a burden to their families
2.  Some fled homes shattered by the
shame of unemployment and
poverty.
3.  Some left because it seemed a
great adventure.
Wednesday, February 13, 13
With the blessing of parents or as runaways, they
hit the road and went in search of a better life.
Wednesday, February 13, 13
Public perceptions of the road kids differed:
•  There were people who saw the
American pioneer spirit embodied in
the young wanderers.
•  There were others who feared them
as the vanguard of an American
rabble potentially as dangerous as
the young Fascists then on the march
in Germany.
Wednesday, February 13, 13
•
By summer 1932, the "roving boy" had
become a fixture on the American landscape.
•
The occasional girl was sighted too, mostly passing
unrecognized in male garb.
•
Girls especially never took the decision to hit the
road lightly, for they knew they were stepping
into a world filled with danger.
•
Wednesday, February 13, 13
•  It was the same for
young AfricanAmericans, for
whom the
beckoning rails
could be doubly
perilous should they
lead into towns
where the color of
their skin would
make them outcasts.
Wednesday, February 13, 13
•  Girls traveled in pairs or threes,
sometimes with a boy-friend, and not
infrequently with a tribe of 10 or 12
boys.
Thomas Minehan, author of Boy and Girl Tramps of
America, estimated that 10 per cent of those he met
were girls.
Wednesday, February 13, 13
Minehan described "Kay," who was 15:
"Her black eyes, fair hair, and pale
cheeks are girlish and delicate.
Cinders, wind and frost have irritated but
not toughened that tender skin.
Sickly and suffering from chronic undernourishment, she appears to subsist
almost entirely upon her finger nails
which she gnaws habitually."
Wednesday, February 13, 13
•  Eighty-five per cent of the white
youths said they were seeking work;
•  For the African-Americans the
percentage was even higher at 98 per
cent.
•  Fifty percent of the African-Americans
had been unemployed for two years
or longer.
Wednesday, February 13, 13
Were these teenagers bums?
•  Not unless you
want to classify
a massive
section of the
remainder of
the country's
population as
such.
Wednesday, February 13, 13
•  It was a thrill to ride the top of a boxcar
running across the Great Plains or to catch
the blinds of a famous flyer like The
Twentieth Century Limited.
•  It was also a ride accompanied by constant
danger that could turn deadly in an instant.
Wednesday, February 13, 13
It Was Dangerous
•  The Interstate Commerce Commission's
annual reports show that during the years
1929 to 1939, 24,647 trespassers were
killed and 27,171 injured on railroad
property.
•  Since railroad agents placed the
percentage of minors at one third, there
can be no doubt that thousands of young
nomads met a gruesome fate on the rails.
Wednesday, February 13, 13
•  Hospitals treated transients only if they
were seriously ill.
•  They suffered diseases due to
exposure, lack of cleanliness, vermin,
contagion or infection.
•  Ill-clad and undernourished, sometimes
days would go by without food.
Wednesday, February 13, 13
•
•
Wednesday, February 13, 13
"I was hungry all the time. Dreadfully hungry,"
remembered John Fawcett. "I'd never been
hungry before. I went two or three days without
anything to eat. In a short time on the road, I lost
15 to 20 pounds. Your hunger hurts physically."
•
•
In summer, boys followed the harvests in the West.
A young hobo might start with the hay harvest in California and
the Rocky Mountain states in early summer.
•
Later on there was corn and wheat in the Mid-West; and in the
early fall, hops, berries and fruits in the Pacific North-West.
•
Winter could be spent in the cotton fields of Texas and the
South-West.
•
In early spring, a harvester might drift into Southern California
for the vegetable and citrus crops.
Wednesday, February 13, 13
Franklin D. Roosevelt Saves Them
•
Before the close of his first month in office, Franklin
D. Roosevelt signed an act creating the Civilian
Conservation Corps (CCC.)
•
Unemployed and unmarried men between the ages of 18
and 25 were eligible to enroll.
•
They were to be paid $30 a month, of which $25 was to
be sent directly to their needy and dependent families
Wednesday, February 13, 13
•
•
Wednesday, February 13, 13
So urgent and volatile did the administration view
the youth crisis that the first camp was set up on
April 17, 1933 — just 12 days after the CCC was
officially inaugurated.
By early July, 250,000 young men were settled in 1,468
forest and park camps.
•
•
Wednesday, February 13, 13
"As there's no single answer to why boys leave
home, there's no single answer to what will keep
them there after — and if — they go back," said one
case worker. "But if I had to make such an answer it
would be jobs. Just that. Honest-to-goodness jobs
that would let a fellow feel that he's a man, running
his own life."
Another Difficult Chapter In The Lives Of
These Boys:
•
•
Wednesday, February 13, 13
Those jobs would only come when the Great
Depression ended as the country prepared for war.
In 1942, even as the CCC camps were winding down,
thousands of "Depression Teenagers," who had served
in FDR's "Tree Army," were on their way to Europe
and Africa to fight.
•
•
•
Wednesday, February 13, 13
As trains carrying troops and materiel crossed the
country day and night, the occasional rider was still
glimpsed in a boxcar door or sitting on the catwalk.
It was the end of the last hobo era.
The boys and girls who rode the rails had gone to war.
•
Riding the rails was a rite of passage for a
generation of young people and profoundly
shaped the rest of their lives.
•
Self-reliance, compassion, frugality, a love of
freedom and country are at the heart of the
lessons they learned.
•
Their memories are a mixture of nostalgia and
pain; their late musings still tinged with the fear
of going broke again.
Wednesday, February 13, 13