Chicago's Skid Row

Chicago once was celebrated in hobo camps coast-to-coast as a good place to hole up for the winter, especially along a strip of West Madison Street called Skid Row, a 12-block stretch of flophouses, gin joints and battered dreams. Hobos, bums, and tramps were the names given to the homeless, the jobless and the hopeless in the early part of the 20th century. According to the 1923 book "The Hobo," "There are three types of the genus vagrant: the hobo, the tramp, and the bum. The hobo works and wanders, the tramp dreams and wanders and the bum drinks and wanders."