Welcome back to the deep dive. I want to start
today by looking at a specific number from the
research stack that that really stopped me in
my tracks. Oh, yeah. What was it? Twenty thousand.
OK, that was the monthly circulation of a publication
we're discussing today. And, you know, for the
early 20th century, that is a highly respectable
number for like a local daily or a specialized
trade journal. Right. That's a lot of paper moving
around. Exactly. But the publication we are talking
about today. wasn't run by a media tycoon. It
wasn't run by a traditional trade union. It was
run entirely by homeless migrant workers. It
really creates this intense cognitive dissonance,
doesn't it? Because we have these modern assumptions
about homelessness. We think of it as a state
of total disconnection socially, economically,
informationally. But then here you have this
highly organized, widely distributed media apparatus
created specifically by that demographic. Right.
We are talking about hobo news, sometimes stylized
with quotation marks around the word hobo. And
this ran out of St. Louis and Cincinnati starting
in the 1910s, and then had this massive second
wind in New York City in the 30s and 40s. And
looking at the documents we have, this wasn't
just a newsletter passed around a campfire. Not
at all. This is a 16 -page monthly newspaper
with serious literary ambitions, foreign correspondents,
and a very specific political agenda. It really
was a media empire of the disenfranchised, if
you want to call it that. And our mission today
is to unpack not just the history of this paper,
but the actual mechanics of it. Yeah, how it
work. Exactly. Because when you look at how it
operated, you realize it wasn't just sharing
news. It was legitimizing an identity. It was
creating a distinct culture. And perhaps most
surprisingly, it built the economic blueprint
for the street newspapers that we still see in
major cities today. I definitely want to get
into the mechanics of the printing press and
the business model. But first, I think we have
to deal with the terminology. Oh, absolutely.
The language is key here. Because the word hobo
has drifted a lot in the last 100 years. Today,
it's often used pejoratively or just as a generic
catch -all term for homelessness. But reading
through the editorials in Hobo News, they were
incredibly specific and honestly really defensive
about what that word meant. They weren't just
quote unquote homeless. That is a crucial distinction
to make for anyone listening. In the sociology
of the early 20th century, there was a strict
acknowledged hierarchy. You had hobos, cramps,
and bums. Right. And this wasn't just street
slang. It was a legitimate class distinction
within that community. A hobo was a migratory
worker. These were men and some women, too, who
traveled to work. They followed the seasons.
Exactly. They followed the harvest. They laid
railroad track. They worked in the lumber camps.
They were the mobile labor force of an industrializing
America. I actually found a quote in the source
notes that sums it up perfectly. It says, a hobo
works and wanders. A tramp dreams and wanders,
and a bum drinks and wanders. That's the classic
definition right there. Yeah. And the organization
that published the paper, the International Brotherhood
Welfare Association, or IVWA, they seemed absolutely
obsessed with this worker identity. They weren't
asking for charity at all. They were demanding
recognition as a vital labor force. Precisely.
They called themselves the Knights of the Road.
They viewed themselves as an essential part of
the American economy that was just being exploited
and ignored by the mainstream. So Hobo News wasn't
a cry for help. It was essentially a union newsletter
for a union that didn't officially exist yet.
It was fundamentally about dignity. Let's talk
about the man who sparked all this, because he
is a fascinating contradiction. James Eads Howe.
The millionaire hobo. A millionaire hobo. And
that is not an exaggerated nickname. He was literally
an heir to a massive family fortune in St. Louis.
Yes, his family built the Eads Bridge, among
other things. Right, but he gated all away. He
chose to live on the rails and organize migrant
workers. He is such a singular figure in American
labor history. He could have lived a life of
absolute, untouchable luxury. Instead, he founded
the IBWA and in 1913, launched the predecessor
to Hobo News. Which had the most incredible title.
Hobo's Jungle Scout. Hobo's Jungle Scout. It
just captures the vibe perfectly. It really does.
But by 1915, they professionalized it, changed
the name to Hobo News. Now, the business model
here is where this deep dive gets really interesting.
Because this was not a free pamphlet handed out
at Soup Kitchen. Right, it cost money. It did.
It was five cents a copy initially and later
raised to 10 cents. And this is the genius of
the model that James Yead's Howe championed.
The paper wasn't just something for a migrant
worker to read. It was a product for them to
sell. This is the street seller model. Exactly.
The organization would print the papers and sell
them to the hobos at a wholesale rate, say three
cents a copy, and then the hobo would sell it
to the public for a nickel. And they kept the
two cent profit. Yes, which meant that a migrant
worker who is maybe too old to shovel coal or
couldn't find a harvest job that week could still
earn a living. They weren't begging for change
on the corner. They were merchants. They were
newspaper men. That distinction between begging
and selling is huge psychologically, and it connects
directly to what you might see today with papers
like The Big Issue in the UK or Real Change in
Seattle. It's the exact same mechanism. It is
identical. And it's so effective because it completely
breaks the barrier between the housed and the
unhoused. It forces an interaction based on commerce,
not pity. You are making a transaction with a
fellow citizen. But there's another economic
detail about this early St. Louis era of hobo
news that I think is even more significant. You
mentioned it was 16 pages long earlier. Right.
Did you notice what was missing from those pages?
Ads. Zero advertisements. And looking at the
context of 1910's publishing, this was the era
of the penny press. were dirt cheap, specifically
because they were absolutely plastered with ads
for patent medicines in department stores. For
Hobo News to refuse ads, they were leaving so
much money on the table. It was a massive financial
sacrifice. But for James Eadshow, it was non
-negotiable. He believed that the moment you
took advertising money, you were censored. You
couldn't genuinely write about the abuses of
capitalism if you were literally being funded
by capitalists. That makes sense. He wanted the
paper to be, and this was their official slogan,
of the hobos, by the hobos, and for the hobos.
Very Gettysburg address. It really is, and it
meant they were answerable only to their readers.
If the readers stopped buying it, the paper died.
It was pure market validation coming straight
from the bottom of the social ladder. And because
they didn't have advertisers to please, the content
was wild. I went in expecting, I don't know,
train schedules or lists of safe zones for camping.
Extractical tips. Yeah. And there was some of
that. News about labor strikes and police crackdowns.
But the actual texture of the paper is shockingly
literary. That's what often surprises people
when they look at the archives. The sheer intellectual
density of it. I mean, they had robust poetry
sections. There were travelogues written in this
really flowery, almost Victorian style describing
the beauty of the American landscape. from the
top of a moving boxcar. And the contributor's
list is basically a who's who of the radical
left at the time. It wasn't just migrant workers
writing in. You had people like Nina Van Zant
Spies, who was the widow of the Haymarket anarchist
August Spies. Wow. You had Voltairine Déclair,
one of the most prominent feminist anarchists
of the era. And of course, Eugene Debs. The five
time socialist presidential candidate. The very
same. Debs wrote for Hobo News. Now, we're just
looking at what the source material shows us,
not taking any political sides here, but it clearly
demonstrates that the Hobo community wasn't isolated.
They were deeply integrated into the intellectual
radicalism of the early 20th century. They saw
themselves as the vanguard of a labor revolution.
They even had high -quality art. I saw that John
Buscema, who later became an absolute legend
at Marvel Comics drawing the Avengers and Conan,
he contributed artwork. It's incredible. It paints
a picture of this vibrant creative intellectual
hub that just happened to be mobile. It was a
counterculture before we even had the phrase
counterculture. But as you can imagine, publishing
Eugene Debs and railing against capitalism during
World War One, that puts a target on your back.
Yeah, this is where the story takes a darker
turn. We have to talk about the Espionage Act
of 1917 and the Red Scare. The government was
cracking down hard on the IWW, the Wobblies.
Oh, right. And since the IBWA and the IWW shared
a lot of the same members and the same radical
ideology, hobo news got caught right in the crossfire.
It was inevitable, really. After the war, the
paper shifted tone. It became less about immediate
welfare and much more about systemic revolution.
And the government didn't just ban the paper
outright because that would be a messy First
Amendment issue. They used a much more subtle
weapon. The post office. The post office. Specifically,
they revoked the paper's second class mailing
privileges. Can you explain how big of a deal
that is for a publication back then? It's a death
sentence. Second class mailing is essentially
a government subsidy for newspapers. It allows
you to mail periodicals at a tiny fraction of
the cost of regular mail. It's the only thing
that makes a national subscription model viable.
If you lose that privilege, your distribution
costs triple or quadruple overnight. So the government
declares Hobo News subversive, strips the privilege,
and basically bankrupts their distribution. Exactly.
It's a form of soft censorship. You don't burn
the printing press down, you just make it too
expensive to operate. They couldn't get the papers
out to the sellers in different cities efficiently
anymore. And reading between the lines of the
historical record, this external pressure caused
internal fractures, too. We start seeing this
other paper, Hobo World, popping up around the
same time. Yes. And it's not totally clear if
that was a rival competitor or just Hobo News
trying to rebrand to escape the government heat.
The historical record gets very murky right there.
It seems like the broader movement splintered.
James Eads Howe was aging, the Great Depression
was looming on the horizon, and that original
radical energy was being systematically crushed
by the state. By the time Howe died in 1930,
the St. Louis iteration of the paper effectively
faded away. But, and this is the plot twist I
didn't see coming, the brand didn't die. It went
dormant for a few years and then right in the
middle of the Great Depression, it popped back
up. It did. But this time in New York City. And
the vibe was completely different. Night and
day difference. We move from the 1910s radical
labor struggle in the Midwest to the 1930s and
40s New York media spectacle. The second era,
which ran roughly from 1936 to 1948, wasn't funded
by a socialist philanthropist. It was funded
by a banker. Gary A. Solsberg. It is such a strange
pairing. A Wall Street banker financing a hobo
newspaper. Was this just a pure business opportunity
for him or was it a kind of poverty tourism?
It's likely a mix of both, honestly. Stoltzberg
clearly saw a market. The Depression had created
a massive underclass, and the hobo figure had
suddenly become a kind of folk hero in popular
culture. But the guys actually running the paper
on the ground, they were the real deal. You had
Ben Benson, who is known as the Coast Kid. Right.
And Pat Mulkern, whose moniker was The Roaming
Dreamer. The Roaming Dreamer. You just have to
love the commitment to the persona. They were
incredibly colorful characters. And under their
leadership, the paper became less of a political
weapon and much more of a mainstream curiosity.
It was slicker. It had cartoons. It had advice
columns. It was explicitly designed to entertain
as much as to inform. And the numbers completely
reflect that shift. The St. Louis paper hit 20
,000, which was impressive, but the NYC Hobo
News hit 50 ,000 in circulation. That is a massive
reach for the 1940s. Massive. It was sold on
street corners all over New York. It became part
of the city's fabric. If you were a tourist visiting
Times Square in 1940, you might buy a copy of
Hobo News just to see what the Underground was
thinking. It was lighter, sure, but we shouldn't
dismiss it. It still provided vital income for
the sellers and it still gave a platform to that
community. It just adapted to the commercial
reality of New York City. It does feel like it
became a bit of a novelty act, though. The source
material mentions they printed these stylized
cartoons and hobo advice that felt a bit like
they were playing up the stereotype for a mainstream
audience rather than fighting for labor rights.
To an extent, yes, they definitely leaned into
the lovable rogue archetype. But remember the
context. This was the 1940s. The world was at
war again. The labor movement had fundamentally
changed. The IWW was a shadow of its former self.
Right. The hobo, as a distinct, organized labor
class, was disappearing, being replaced by the
modern, much more disenfranchised concept of
homelessness. So the paper became almost a nostalgia
trip for a lifestyle that was actively fading
away. And eventually the paper faded too. It
folded in 1948. There was a brief attempt to
revive it as bowery news, but that didn't stick.
And this brings us to the legacy part of our
dive, which I found surprisingly emotional. I
so. Well, we're talking about a paper that printed
tens of thousands of copies a month for decades.
But if you want to go find one today, good luck.
It is the ultimate tragedy of ephemeral media.
These papers were printed on the cheapest possible
newsprint. They were sold to people living outdoors.
They were read, passed around, and then used
to insulate a coat or start a campfire. Right,
they're a utility. They were never meant to be
saved for posterity. The numbers in the archive
report are stark. The New York Public Library,
one of the biggest archives in the world, only
has 19 issues of the original run. And the St.
Louis Public Library has 63 issues out of hundreds
and hundreds that were published. It really drives
home how fragile this history is. If those specific
librarians hadn't decided to save this quote
-unquote trash literature, we wouldn't know any
of these details. We would have completely lost
the internal voice of an entire generation of
workers. We would only know them through police
arrest reports or charity ledgers. Because the
paper survived, even in fragments, we know them
as poets and political theorists and businessmen.
And we can see their DNA in the present day.
We touched on this earlier, but I want to make
the connection explicit for everyone listening.
When you walk past a vendor selling real change
or streetwise today, you were looking at the
direct descendant of James Ede's house experiment.
Absolutely. The street paper movement is a global
phenomenon now. The international network of
street papers supports over 100 publications
in 35 countries, and every single one of them
operates on the core principle laid down in St.
Louis in 1915. Economic independence through
media completely shifts the power dynamic. It
does. It says, I am not asking for your spare
change. I am offering you a service. I am offering
you a perspective you can't get anywhere else.
It turns the homeless individual into a cultural
con. That actually brings me to the thought I
want to leave everyone with today. We live in
the information age. We have blogs, tweets, an
endless stream of content. Everyone has a platform.
But there's something fundamentally different
about Hobo News. It wasn't just information.
It was a physical badge of belonging. That's
a really great point. Carrying that paper meant
something tangible. Right. If you had Hobo News
in your pocket in 1920, you were part of a brotherhood.
You were a knight of the road. In our digital
world, where we have infinite content but often
feel totally isolated, do we have anything that
compares? Do we have communities as distinct
and organized as those hobo jungles, or have
we traded that deep physical connection for just
more scrolling? It's a profound question. Hobo
news proved that real community isn't built by
algorithms, it's built by shared struggle and
shared stories, and sometimes by a printing press
in a basement. Something to think about the next
time you see a street paper vendor. Don't just
walk by. Buy a copy. You're buying a piece of
history. Thanks for joining us on The Deep Dive.
A pleasure as always. See you next time.