WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.600 Welcome back to the deep dive. I want to start 00:00:02.600 --> 00:00:04.740 today by looking at a specific number from the 00:00:04.740 --> 00:00:07.799 research stack that that really stopped me in 00:00:07.799 --> 00:00:10.380 my tracks. Oh, yeah. What was it? Twenty thousand. 00:00:10.380 --> 00:00:12.859 OK, that was the monthly circulation of a publication 00:00:12.859 --> 00:00:14.900 we're discussing today. And, you know, for the 00:00:14.900 --> 00:00:17.379 early 20th century, that is a highly respectable 00:00:17.379 --> 00:00:20.800 number for like a local daily or a specialized 00:00:20.800 --> 00:00:22.760 trade journal. Right. That's a lot of paper moving 00:00:22.760 --> 00:00:26.480 around. Exactly. But the publication we are talking 00:00:26.480 --> 00:00:30.289 about today. wasn't run by a media tycoon. It 00:00:30.289 --> 00:00:32.750 wasn't run by a traditional trade union. It was 00:00:32.750 --> 00:00:36.000 run entirely by homeless migrant workers. It 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:39.439 really creates this intense cognitive dissonance, 00:00:39.560 --> 00:00:41.880 doesn't it? Because we have these modern assumptions 00:00:41.880 --> 00:00:43.979 about homelessness. We think of it as a state 00:00:43.979 --> 00:00:47.000 of total disconnection socially, economically, 00:00:47.460 --> 00:00:49.560 informationally. But then here you have this 00:00:49.560 --> 00:00:53.119 highly organized, widely distributed media apparatus 00:00:53.119 --> 00:00:56.119 created specifically by that demographic. Right. 00:00:56.200 --> 00:00:58.560 We are talking about hobo news, sometimes stylized 00:00:58.560 --> 00:01:01.170 with quotation marks around the word hobo. And 00:01:01.170 --> 00:01:03.649 this ran out of St. Louis and Cincinnati starting 00:01:03.649 --> 00:01:06.849 in the 1910s, and then had this massive second 00:01:06.849 --> 00:01:10.870 wind in New York City in the 30s and 40s. And 00:01:10.870 --> 00:01:13.250 looking at the documents we have, this wasn't 00:01:13.250 --> 00:01:15.930 just a newsletter passed around a campfire. Not 00:01:15.930 --> 00:01:18.609 at all. This is a 16 -page monthly newspaper 00:01:18.609 --> 00:01:23.150 with serious literary ambitions, foreign correspondents, 00:01:23.390 --> 00:01:27.379 and a very specific political agenda. It really 00:01:27.379 --> 00:01:30.620 was a media empire of the disenfranchised, if 00:01:30.620 --> 00:01:33.200 you want to call it that. And our mission today 00:01:33.200 --> 00:01:35.579 is to unpack not just the history of this paper, 00:01:35.620 --> 00:01:37.959 but the actual mechanics of it. Yeah, how it 00:01:37.959 --> 00:01:40.439 work. Exactly. Because when you look at how it 00:01:40.439 --> 00:01:42.379 operated, you realize it wasn't just sharing 00:01:42.379 --> 00:01:46.040 news. It was legitimizing an identity. It was 00:01:46.040 --> 00:01:48.859 creating a distinct culture. And perhaps most 00:01:48.859 --> 00:01:51.000 surprisingly, it built the economic blueprint 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:53.239 for the street newspapers that we still see in 00:01:53.239 --> 00:01:55.280 major cities today. I definitely want to get 00:01:55.280 --> 00:01:57.159 into the mechanics of the printing press and 00:01:57.159 --> 00:01:59.099 the business model. But first, I think we have 00:01:59.099 --> 00:02:00.819 to deal with the terminology. Oh, absolutely. 00:02:01.000 --> 00:02:02.980 The language is key here. Because the word hobo 00:02:02.980 --> 00:02:05.420 has drifted a lot in the last 100 years. Today, 00:02:05.540 --> 00:02:08.520 it's often used pejoratively or just as a generic 00:02:08.520 --> 00:02:11.300 catch -all term for homelessness. But reading 00:02:11.300 --> 00:02:13.979 through the editorials in Hobo News, they were 00:02:13.979 --> 00:02:17.280 incredibly specific and honestly really defensive 00:02:17.280 --> 00:02:20.219 about what that word meant. They weren't just 00:02:20.219 --> 00:02:22.819 quote unquote homeless. That is a crucial distinction 00:02:22.819 --> 00:02:25.379 to make for anyone listening. In the sociology 00:02:25.379 --> 00:02:28.639 of the early 20th century, there was a strict 00:02:28.639 --> 00:02:32.419 acknowledged hierarchy. You had hobos, cramps, 00:02:32.620 --> 00:02:34.800 and bums. Right. And this wasn't just street 00:02:34.800 --> 00:02:37.219 slang. It was a legitimate class distinction 00:02:37.219 --> 00:02:40.199 within that community. A hobo was a migratory 00:02:40.199 --> 00:02:42.960 worker. These were men and some women, too, who 00:02:42.960 --> 00:02:44.460 traveled to work. They followed the seasons. 00:02:44.759 --> 00:02:46.419 Exactly. They followed the harvest. They laid 00:02:46.419 --> 00:02:48.300 railroad track. They worked in the lumber camps. 00:02:48.680 --> 00:02:51.759 They were the mobile labor force of an industrializing 00:02:51.759 --> 00:02:53.780 America. I actually found a quote in the source 00:02:53.780 --> 00:02:56.300 notes that sums it up perfectly. It says, a hobo 00:02:56.300 --> 00:02:59.139 works and wanders. A tramp dreams and wanders, 00:02:59.439 --> 00:03:01.900 and a bum drinks and wanders. That's the classic 00:03:01.900 --> 00:03:04.439 definition right there. Yeah. And the organization 00:03:04.439 --> 00:03:06.520 that published the paper, the International Brotherhood 00:03:06.520 --> 00:03:10.639 Welfare Association, or IVWA, they seemed absolutely 00:03:10.639 --> 00:03:12.919 obsessed with this worker identity. They weren't 00:03:12.919 --> 00:03:15.159 asking for charity at all. They were demanding 00:03:15.159 --> 00:03:18.139 recognition as a vital labor force. Precisely. 00:03:18.240 --> 00:03:20.159 They called themselves the Knights of the Road. 00:03:20.319 --> 00:03:23.020 They viewed themselves as an essential part of 00:03:23.020 --> 00:03:25.659 the American economy that was just being exploited 00:03:25.659 --> 00:03:29.099 and ignored by the mainstream. So Hobo News wasn't 00:03:29.099 --> 00:03:32.680 a cry for help. It was essentially a union newsletter 00:03:32.680 --> 00:03:34.879 for a union that didn't officially exist yet. 00:03:35.060 --> 00:03:37.719 It was fundamentally about dignity. Let's talk 00:03:37.719 --> 00:03:39.539 about the man who sparked all this, because he 00:03:39.539 --> 00:03:42.400 is a fascinating contradiction. James Eads Howe. 00:03:42.520 --> 00:03:44.759 The millionaire hobo. A millionaire hobo. And 00:03:44.759 --> 00:03:47.439 that is not an exaggerated nickname. He was literally 00:03:47.439 --> 00:03:50.699 an heir to a massive family fortune in St. Louis. 00:03:50.840 --> 00:03:52.960 Yes, his family built the Eads Bridge, among 00:03:52.960 --> 00:03:55.340 other things. Right, but he gated all away. He 00:03:55.340 --> 00:03:58.099 chose to live on the rails and organize migrant 00:03:58.099 --> 00:04:01.520 workers. He is such a singular figure in American 00:04:01.520 --> 00:04:04.199 labor history. He could have lived a life of 00:04:04.199 --> 00:04:07.560 absolute, untouchable luxury. Instead, he founded 00:04:07.560 --> 00:04:11.580 the IBWA and in 1913, launched the predecessor 00:04:11.580 --> 00:04:14.419 to Hobo News. Which had the most incredible title. 00:04:14.680 --> 00:04:17.540 Hobo's Jungle Scout. Hobo's Jungle Scout. It 00:04:17.540 --> 00:04:19.759 just captures the vibe perfectly. It really does. 00:04:20.060 --> 00:04:23.180 But by 1915, they professionalized it, changed 00:04:23.180 --> 00:04:26.699 the name to Hobo News. Now, the business model 00:04:26.699 --> 00:04:29.660 here is where this deep dive gets really interesting. 00:04:30.040 --> 00:04:33.060 Because this was not a free pamphlet handed out 00:04:33.060 --> 00:04:35.319 at Soup Kitchen. Right, it cost money. It did. 00:04:35.339 --> 00:04:37.839 It was five cents a copy initially and later 00:04:37.839 --> 00:04:40.740 raised to 10 cents. And this is the genius of 00:04:40.740 --> 00:04:42.980 the model that James Yead's Howe championed. 00:04:43.120 --> 00:04:44.879 The paper wasn't just something for a migrant 00:04:44.879 --> 00:04:47.100 worker to read. It was a product for them to 00:04:47.100 --> 00:04:49.439 sell. This is the street seller model. Exactly. 00:04:49.980 --> 00:04:51.980 The organization would print the papers and sell 00:04:51.980 --> 00:04:54.319 them to the hobos at a wholesale rate, say three 00:04:54.319 --> 00:04:56.500 cents a copy, and then the hobo would sell it 00:04:56.500 --> 00:04:58.480 to the public for a nickel. And they kept the 00:04:58.480 --> 00:05:01.860 two cent profit. Yes, which meant that a migrant 00:05:01.860 --> 00:05:05.019 worker who is maybe too old to shovel coal or 00:05:05.019 --> 00:05:07.180 couldn't find a harvest job that week could still 00:05:07.180 --> 00:05:09.399 earn a living. They weren't begging for change 00:05:09.399 --> 00:05:11.180 on the corner. They were merchants. They were 00:05:11.180 --> 00:05:14.100 newspaper men. That distinction between begging 00:05:14.100 --> 00:05:18.100 and selling is huge psychologically, and it connects 00:05:18.100 --> 00:05:20.180 directly to what you might see today with papers 00:05:20.180 --> 00:05:23.660 like The Big Issue in the UK or Real Change in 00:05:23.660 --> 00:05:26.019 Seattle. It's the exact same mechanism. It is 00:05:26.019 --> 00:05:28.970 identical. And it's so effective because it completely 00:05:28.970 --> 00:05:31.370 breaks the barrier between the housed and the 00:05:31.370 --> 00:05:34.250 unhoused. It forces an interaction based on commerce, 00:05:34.370 --> 00:05:36.649 not pity. You are making a transaction with a 00:05:36.649 --> 00:05:38.490 fellow citizen. But there's another economic 00:05:38.490 --> 00:05:40.970 detail about this early St. Louis era of hobo 00:05:40.970 --> 00:05:43.449 news that I think is even more significant. You 00:05:43.449 --> 00:05:45.689 mentioned it was 16 pages long earlier. Right. 00:05:45.970 --> 00:05:47.790 Did you notice what was missing from those pages? 00:05:48.009 --> 00:05:51.730 Ads. Zero advertisements. And looking at the 00:05:51.730 --> 00:05:54.370 context of 1910's publishing, this was the era 00:05:54.370 --> 00:05:57.839 of the penny press. were dirt cheap, specifically 00:05:57.839 --> 00:06:00.120 because they were absolutely plastered with ads 00:06:00.120 --> 00:06:02.600 for patent medicines in department stores. For 00:06:02.600 --> 00:06:05.560 Hobo News to refuse ads, they were leaving so 00:06:05.560 --> 00:06:08.079 much money on the table. It was a massive financial 00:06:08.079 --> 00:06:11.180 sacrifice. But for James Eadshow, it was non 00:06:11.180 --> 00:06:13.800 -negotiable. He believed that the moment you 00:06:13.800 --> 00:06:16.759 took advertising money, you were censored. You 00:06:16.759 --> 00:06:18.899 couldn't genuinely write about the abuses of 00:06:18.899 --> 00:06:20.939 capitalism if you were literally being funded 00:06:20.939 --> 00:06:23.519 by capitalists. That makes sense. He wanted the 00:06:23.519 --> 00:06:25.699 paper to be, and this was their official slogan, 00:06:26.160 --> 00:06:29.220 of the hobos, by the hobos, and for the hobos. 00:06:29.399 --> 00:06:32.079 Very Gettysburg address. It really is, and it 00:06:32.079 --> 00:06:34.300 meant they were answerable only to their readers. 00:06:34.800 --> 00:06:37.100 If the readers stopped buying it, the paper died. 00:06:37.459 --> 00:06:39.980 It was pure market validation coming straight 00:06:39.980 --> 00:06:41.860 from the bottom of the social ladder. And because 00:06:41.860 --> 00:06:44.639 they didn't have advertisers to please, the content 00:06:44.639 --> 00:06:47.379 was wild. I went in expecting, I don't know, 00:06:47.660 --> 00:06:50.420 train schedules or lists of safe zones for camping. 00:06:50.500 --> 00:06:52.740 Extractical tips. Yeah. And there was some of 00:06:52.740 --> 00:06:55.560 that. News about labor strikes and police crackdowns. 00:06:55.860 --> 00:06:58.839 But the actual texture of the paper is shockingly 00:06:58.839 --> 00:07:01.040 literary. That's what often surprises people 00:07:01.040 --> 00:07:03.259 when they look at the archives. The sheer intellectual 00:07:03.259 --> 00:07:06.100 density of it. I mean, they had robust poetry 00:07:06.100 --> 00:07:08.660 sections. There were travelogues written in this 00:07:08.660 --> 00:07:12.560 really flowery, almost Victorian style describing 00:07:12.560 --> 00:07:14.850 the beauty of the American landscape. from the 00:07:14.850 --> 00:07:18.170 top of a moving boxcar. And the contributor's 00:07:18.170 --> 00:07:20.670 list is basically a who's who of the radical 00:07:20.670 --> 00:07:23.149 left at the time. It wasn't just migrant workers 00:07:23.149 --> 00:07:25.470 writing in. You had people like Nina Van Zant 00:07:25.470 --> 00:07:29.370 Spies, who was the widow of the Haymarket anarchist 00:07:29.370 --> 00:07:32.370 August Spies. Wow. You had Voltairine Déclair, 00:07:32.470 --> 00:07:35.069 one of the most prominent feminist anarchists 00:07:35.069 --> 00:07:38.230 of the era. And of course, Eugene Debs. The five 00:07:38.230 --> 00:07:40.569 time socialist presidential candidate. The very 00:07:40.569 --> 00:07:44.569 same. Debs wrote for Hobo News. Now, we're just 00:07:44.569 --> 00:07:46.370 looking at what the source material shows us, 00:07:46.410 --> 00:07:48.649 not taking any political sides here, but it clearly 00:07:48.649 --> 00:07:50.970 demonstrates that the Hobo community wasn't isolated. 00:07:51.449 --> 00:07:53.730 They were deeply integrated into the intellectual 00:07:53.730 --> 00:07:56.589 radicalism of the early 20th century. They saw 00:07:56.589 --> 00:07:58.689 themselves as the vanguard of a labor revolution. 00:07:58.790 --> 00:08:01.550 They even had high -quality art. I saw that John 00:08:01.550 --> 00:08:03.730 Buscema, who later became an absolute legend 00:08:03.730 --> 00:08:05.769 at Marvel Comics drawing the Avengers and Conan, 00:08:06.449 --> 00:08:09.379 he contributed artwork. It's incredible. It paints 00:08:09.379 --> 00:08:12.959 a picture of this vibrant creative intellectual 00:08:12.959 --> 00:08:16.160 hub that just happened to be mobile. It was a 00:08:16.160 --> 00:08:17.839 counterculture before we even had the phrase 00:08:17.839 --> 00:08:20.699 counterculture. But as you can imagine, publishing 00:08:20.699 --> 00:08:23.600 Eugene Debs and railing against capitalism during 00:08:23.600 --> 00:08:26.339 World War One, that puts a target on your back. 00:08:26.519 --> 00:08:28.199 Yeah, this is where the story takes a darker 00:08:28.199 --> 00:08:31.060 turn. We have to talk about the Espionage Act 00:08:31.060 --> 00:08:34.730 of 1917 and the Red Scare. The government was 00:08:34.730 --> 00:08:37.230 cracking down hard on the IWW, the Wobblies. 00:08:37.330 --> 00:08:40.190 Oh, right. And since the IBWA and the IWW shared 00:08:40.190 --> 00:08:42.970 a lot of the same members and the same radical 00:08:42.970 --> 00:08:46.590 ideology, hobo news got caught right in the crossfire. 00:08:46.830 --> 00:08:49.769 It was inevitable, really. After the war, the 00:08:49.769 --> 00:08:52.350 paper shifted tone. It became less about immediate 00:08:52.350 --> 00:08:55.210 welfare and much more about systemic revolution. 00:08:55.549 --> 00:08:57.309 And the government didn't just ban the paper 00:08:57.309 --> 00:08:59.090 outright because that would be a messy First 00:08:59.090 --> 00:09:01.549 Amendment issue. They used a much more subtle 00:09:01.549 --> 00:09:04.570 weapon. The post office. The post office. Specifically, 00:09:04.669 --> 00:09:06.929 they revoked the paper's second class mailing 00:09:06.929 --> 00:09:08.990 privileges. Can you explain how big of a deal 00:09:08.990 --> 00:09:11.309 that is for a publication back then? It's a death 00:09:11.309 --> 00:09:14.190 sentence. Second class mailing is essentially 00:09:14.190 --> 00:09:17.309 a government subsidy for newspapers. It allows 00:09:17.309 --> 00:09:20.289 you to mail periodicals at a tiny fraction of 00:09:20.289 --> 00:09:23.169 the cost of regular mail. It's the only thing 00:09:23.169 --> 00:09:25.250 that makes a national subscription model viable. 00:09:25.929 --> 00:09:28.470 If you lose that privilege, your distribution 00:09:28.470 --> 00:09:31.289 costs triple or quadruple overnight. So the government 00:09:31.289 --> 00:09:34.269 declares Hobo News subversive, strips the privilege, 00:09:34.769 --> 00:09:37.129 and basically bankrupts their distribution. Exactly. 00:09:37.230 --> 00:09:39.570 It's a form of soft censorship. You don't burn 00:09:39.570 --> 00:09:41.289 the printing press down, you just make it too 00:09:41.289 --> 00:09:43.409 expensive to operate. They couldn't get the papers 00:09:43.409 --> 00:09:45.549 out to the sellers in different cities efficiently 00:09:45.549 --> 00:09:48.590 anymore. And reading between the lines of the 00:09:48.590 --> 00:09:50.929 historical record, this external pressure caused 00:09:50.929 --> 00:09:53.029 internal fractures, too. We start seeing this 00:09:53.029 --> 00:09:55.610 other paper, Hobo World, popping up around the 00:09:55.610 --> 00:09:58.129 same time. Yes. And it's not totally clear if 00:09:58.129 --> 00:10:00.730 that was a rival competitor or just Hobo News 00:10:00.730 --> 00:10:02.789 trying to rebrand to escape the government heat. 00:10:03.029 --> 00:10:05.809 The historical record gets very murky right there. 00:10:06.129 --> 00:10:08.210 It seems like the broader movement splintered. 00:10:08.620 --> 00:10:11.259 James Eads Howe was aging, the Great Depression 00:10:11.259 --> 00:10:13.960 was looming on the horizon, and that original 00:10:13.960 --> 00:10:16.659 radical energy was being systematically crushed 00:10:16.659 --> 00:10:19.940 by the state. By the time Howe died in 1930, 00:10:20.240 --> 00:10:22.559 the St. Louis iteration of the paper effectively 00:10:22.559 --> 00:10:25.519 faded away. But, and this is the plot twist I 00:10:25.519 --> 00:10:27.779 didn't see coming, the brand didn't die. It went 00:10:27.779 --> 00:10:29.639 dormant for a few years and then right in the 00:10:29.639 --> 00:10:31.600 middle of the Great Depression, it popped back 00:10:31.600 --> 00:10:34.980 up. It did. But this time in New York City. And 00:10:34.980 --> 00:10:37.509 the vibe was completely different. Night and 00:10:37.509 --> 00:10:40.710 day difference. We move from the 1910s radical 00:10:40.710 --> 00:10:43.669 labor struggle in the Midwest to the 1930s and 00:10:43.669 --> 00:10:46.870 40s New York media spectacle. The second era, 00:10:46.870 --> 00:10:50.769 which ran roughly from 1936 to 1948, wasn't funded 00:10:50.769 --> 00:10:53.210 by a socialist philanthropist. It was funded 00:10:53.210 --> 00:10:57.169 by a banker. Gary A. Solsberg. It is such a strange 00:10:57.169 --> 00:11:00.289 pairing. A Wall Street banker financing a hobo 00:11:00.289 --> 00:11:03.429 newspaper. Was this just a pure business opportunity 00:11:03.429 --> 00:11:05.730 for him or was it a kind of poverty tourism? 00:11:05.960 --> 00:11:08.879 It's likely a mix of both, honestly. Stoltzberg 00:11:08.879 --> 00:11:12.259 clearly saw a market. The Depression had created 00:11:12.259 --> 00:11:15.139 a massive underclass, and the hobo figure had 00:11:15.139 --> 00:11:17.679 suddenly become a kind of folk hero in popular 00:11:17.679 --> 00:11:20.240 culture. But the guys actually running the paper 00:11:20.240 --> 00:11:23.090 on the ground, they were the real deal. You had 00:11:23.090 --> 00:11:25.330 Ben Benson, who is known as the Coast Kid. Right. 00:11:25.470 --> 00:11:28.850 And Pat Mulkern, whose moniker was The Roaming 00:11:28.850 --> 00:11:30.629 Dreamer. The Roaming Dreamer. You just have to 00:11:30.629 --> 00:11:32.529 love the commitment to the persona. They were 00:11:32.529 --> 00:11:35.389 incredibly colorful characters. And under their 00:11:35.389 --> 00:11:38.570 leadership, the paper became less of a political 00:11:38.570 --> 00:11:40.870 weapon and much more of a mainstream curiosity. 00:11:41.129 --> 00:11:44.509 It was slicker. It had cartoons. It had advice 00:11:44.509 --> 00:11:47.330 columns. It was explicitly designed to entertain 00:11:47.330 --> 00:11:49.769 as much as to inform. And the numbers completely 00:11:49.769 --> 00:11:52.419 reflect that shift. The St. Louis paper hit 20 00:11:52.419 --> 00:11:55.019 ,000, which was impressive, but the NYC Hobo 00:11:55.019 --> 00:11:58.240 News hit 50 ,000 in circulation. That is a massive 00:11:58.240 --> 00:12:01.299 reach for the 1940s. Massive. It was sold on 00:12:01.299 --> 00:12:03.240 street corners all over New York. It became part 00:12:03.240 --> 00:12:05.860 of the city's fabric. If you were a tourist visiting 00:12:05.860 --> 00:12:08.799 Times Square in 1940, you might buy a copy of 00:12:08.799 --> 00:12:10.740 Hobo News just to see what the Underground was 00:12:10.740 --> 00:12:13.679 thinking. It was lighter, sure, but we shouldn't 00:12:13.679 --> 00:12:16.240 dismiss it. It still provided vital income for 00:12:16.240 --> 00:12:18.320 the sellers and it still gave a platform to that 00:12:18.320 --> 00:12:20.759 community. It just adapted to the commercial 00:12:20.759 --> 00:12:23.470 reality of New York City. It does feel like it 00:12:23.470 --> 00:12:26.330 became a bit of a novelty act, though. The source 00:12:26.330 --> 00:12:28.669 material mentions they printed these stylized 00:12:28.669 --> 00:12:31.809 cartoons and hobo advice that felt a bit like 00:12:31.809 --> 00:12:34.230 they were playing up the stereotype for a mainstream 00:12:34.230 --> 00:12:36.450 audience rather than fighting for labor rights. 00:12:36.649 --> 00:12:38.750 To an extent, yes, they definitely leaned into 00:12:38.750 --> 00:12:41.889 the lovable rogue archetype. But remember the 00:12:41.889 --> 00:12:45.129 context. This was the 1940s. The world was at 00:12:45.129 --> 00:12:47.789 war again. The labor movement had fundamentally 00:12:47.789 --> 00:12:50.929 changed. The IWW was a shadow of its former self. 00:12:51.090 --> 00:12:54.019 Right. The hobo, as a distinct, organized labor 00:12:54.019 --> 00:12:56.600 class, was disappearing, being replaced by the 00:12:56.600 --> 00:12:59.379 modern, much more disenfranchised concept of 00:12:59.379 --> 00:13:02.039 homelessness. So the paper became almost a nostalgia 00:13:02.039 --> 00:13:04.039 trip for a lifestyle that was actively fading 00:13:04.039 --> 00:13:07.039 away. And eventually the paper faded too. It 00:13:07.039 --> 00:13:10.480 folded in 1948. There was a brief attempt to 00:13:10.480 --> 00:13:13.139 revive it as bowery news, but that didn't stick. 00:13:13.879 --> 00:13:15.879 And this brings us to the legacy part of our 00:13:15.879 --> 00:13:18.820 dive, which I found surprisingly emotional. I 00:13:18.820 --> 00:13:21.799 so. Well, we're talking about a paper that printed 00:13:21.799 --> 00:13:25.580 tens of thousands of copies a month for decades. 00:13:26.440 --> 00:13:28.759 But if you want to go find one today, good luck. 00:13:28.919 --> 00:13:31.620 It is the ultimate tragedy of ephemeral media. 00:13:32.279 --> 00:13:34.779 These papers were printed on the cheapest possible 00:13:34.779 --> 00:13:37.240 newsprint. They were sold to people living outdoors. 00:13:37.419 --> 00:13:39.620 They were read, passed around, and then used 00:13:39.620 --> 00:13:42.179 to insulate a coat or start a campfire. Right, 00:13:42.320 --> 00:13:44.000 they're a utility. They were never meant to be 00:13:44.000 --> 00:13:46.740 saved for posterity. The numbers in the archive 00:13:46.740 --> 00:13:49.570 report are stark. The New York Public Library, 00:13:49.710 --> 00:13:51.850 one of the biggest archives in the world, only 00:13:51.850 --> 00:13:55.029 has 19 issues of the original run. And the St. 00:13:55.090 --> 00:13:58.250 Louis Public Library has 63 issues out of hundreds 00:13:58.250 --> 00:14:00.610 and hundreds that were published. It really drives 00:14:00.610 --> 00:14:03.990 home how fragile this history is. If those specific 00:14:03.990 --> 00:14:06.490 librarians hadn't decided to save this quote 00:14:06.490 --> 00:14:08.970 -unquote trash literature, we wouldn't know any 00:14:08.970 --> 00:14:11.649 of these details. We would have completely lost 00:14:11.649 --> 00:14:14.009 the internal voice of an entire generation of 00:14:14.009 --> 00:14:16.210 workers. We would only know them through police 00:14:16.210 --> 00:14:19.210 arrest reports or charity ledgers. Because the 00:14:19.210 --> 00:14:21.570 paper survived, even in fragments, we know them 00:14:21.570 --> 00:14:24.629 as poets and political theorists and businessmen. 00:14:24.990 --> 00:14:27.169 And we can see their DNA in the present day. 00:14:27.809 --> 00:14:29.110 We touched on this earlier, but I want to make 00:14:29.110 --> 00:14:30.750 the connection explicit for everyone listening. 00:14:31.230 --> 00:14:33.990 When you walk past a vendor selling real change 00:14:33.990 --> 00:14:37.009 or streetwise today, you were looking at the 00:14:37.009 --> 00:14:39.389 direct descendant of James Ede's house experiment. 00:14:39.470 --> 00:14:42.190 Absolutely. The street paper movement is a global 00:14:42.190 --> 00:14:44.730 phenomenon now. The international network of 00:14:44.730 --> 00:14:47.289 street papers supports over 100 publications 00:14:47.289 --> 00:14:50.830 in 35 countries, and every single one of them 00:14:50.830 --> 00:14:53.669 operates on the core principle laid down in St. 00:14:53.789 --> 00:14:56.789 Louis in 1915. Economic independence through 00:14:56.789 --> 00:14:59.169 media completely shifts the power dynamic. It 00:14:59.169 --> 00:15:01.110 does. It says, I am not asking for your spare 00:15:01.110 --> 00:15:03.889 change. I am offering you a service. I am offering 00:15:03.889 --> 00:15:05.850 you a perspective you can't get anywhere else. 00:15:05.990 --> 00:15:08.710 It turns the homeless individual into a cultural 00:15:08.710 --> 00:15:11.190 con. That actually brings me to the thought I 00:15:11.190 --> 00:15:14.169 want to leave everyone with today. We live in 00:15:14.169 --> 00:15:17.730 the information age. We have blogs, tweets, an 00:15:17.730 --> 00:15:19.950 endless stream of content. Everyone has a platform. 00:15:20.850 --> 00:15:22.830 But there's something fundamentally different 00:15:22.830 --> 00:15:25.389 about Hobo News. It wasn't just information. 00:15:25.529 --> 00:15:27.950 It was a physical badge of belonging. That's 00:15:27.950 --> 00:15:30.389 a really great point. Carrying that paper meant 00:15:30.389 --> 00:15:32.909 something tangible. Right. If you had Hobo News 00:15:32.909 --> 00:15:36.029 in your pocket in 1920, you were part of a brotherhood. 00:15:36.269 --> 00:15:38.750 You were a knight of the road. In our digital 00:15:38.750 --> 00:15:40.950 world, where we have infinite content but often 00:15:40.950 --> 00:15:43.769 feel totally isolated, do we have anything that 00:15:43.769 --> 00:15:46.830 compares? Do we have communities as distinct 00:15:46.830 --> 00:15:49.649 and organized as those hobo jungles, or have 00:15:49.649 --> 00:15:52.370 we traded that deep physical connection for just 00:15:52.370 --> 00:15:55.750 more scrolling? It's a profound question. Hobo 00:15:55.750 --> 00:15:58.070 news proved that real community isn't built by 00:15:58.070 --> 00:16:00.549 algorithms, it's built by shared struggle and 00:16:00.549 --> 00:16:03.690 shared stories, and sometimes by a printing press 00:16:03.690 --> 00:16:06.019 in a basement. Something to think about the next 00:16:06.019 --> 00:16:08.559 time you see a street paper vendor. Don't just 00:16:08.559 --> 00:16:11.460 walk by. Buy a copy. You're buying a piece of 00:16:11.460 --> 00:16:13.919 history. Thanks for joining us on The Deep Dive. 00:16:14.019 --> 00:16:15.379 A pleasure as always. See you next time.