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“Whenever he ‘hit’ Vancouver he found that when the pangs of hunger forced him to look around for a meal, the citizens had no hesitation in granting his request,” the World reported after London’s death in 1916. “Not so in other towns, London used to say. He used to be looked over very sceptically and it was about ‘50-50’ whether he got a meal or not.”

Newspapers would resurrect the image of a Hobo Army from time to time, often when activists organized marches of the unemployed.

On Jan. 14, 1908, 800 “hungry, out of work and thinly-clad men” marched to city hall in St. Louis to demand work. St. Louis mayor Rolla Wells promised to do what he could and the march ended peacefully.

A little over a week later Chicago radical Dr. Benjamin L. Reitman organized a march of several hundred hoboes in the Windy City, but the reaction of the authorities was much different — the police came out swinging, engaging in street fights with marchers and dispatching Reitman to jail.

Believe it or not, hoboes were somewhat organized at the time — there was a national hobo organization called the Unskilled Migratory and Casual Workers Association.

The politics in the hobo world could be intense. Reitman was denounced as a “fake tramp” and deposed as head of Chicago’s hobo party on March 31, 1908 after he started having an affair with the famed anarchist Emma Goldman.

“This Reitman says he was a hobo for 18 years,” said hobo Cincinnati Fat in a speech reported by the Chicago Tribune. “I don’t believe it. To be a full-fledged hobo a man must hit the road every so often. Now spring is comin’ and it is the time to hit the road. What is he doin’? Bumming around Minneapolis with this Goldman woman and stirring up trouble for the police.”

jmackie@postmedia.com

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