Hobos–a subculture of the wandering homeless–are a well-recognized part of railroading history in Nebraska. Most likely deriving the name from ‘homeward bound,’ Hobos rode the rails in search of both work and food for almost a hundred years.
In his 1911 book, What Hobos Cost The Nation, it was estimated by Professor Edmund Kelley that there were more than 700,000 displaced souls wandering the rails in the early 1900’s, thus establishing this group as a significant U.S. demographic subpopulation for the time.
Far more than just a matter of semantics to those who were living this transient life, the term ‘hobo’ referred to those men and women who wanted to work and were willing to travel to the locations where it was plentiful. In stark contrast, a tramp was someone who roamed America but had an aversion to work. A bum was someone who would do neither.
Developing their own social customs as well as an intricate system of interaction, hobos used terms like bullets (beans), banjo (frying pan), California blankets (newspapers), blowed-in-the-glass (a genuine, trustworthy individual) and catchin’ the westbound (dying in a railcar) when communicating with their kindred spirits.
Despite romantic depictions of hobos–complete with bindlestick and harmonica–the life was hard and dangerous. Indeed, it was not uncommon for mean-spirited conductors to evict hobos in remote territories, thus forcing them to walk for days in search of food and water.
During the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, thousands of hobos made their way across Nebraska in search of better lives. But because work was scarce and people had an inherent mistrust for these nomads, most hobos lived lives of stark poverty and died in relative obscurity.
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