Charity and the "Tramp": Itinerancy, Unemployment, and Municipal Government from Coxey to the Unemployed League

Abstract

DMITRI PALMATEER Charity and the "Tramp55 Itinerancy, Unemployment, and Municipal Government fromCoxey tothe UnemployedLeague What isa tramp? What a world ofmeaning isconveyedby the word "tramp!"Do you everstop to thinkof theseoutcastsofsociety? Do you everconsider what is thecause of theexistenceof theseoftendespised human beings? Doomed towalk fromplace toplace depending upon the charity of their brothers, can you conceive of a more miserable or humiliatingexistence? Friendless,horseless, forlorn,despised!Ah, thathumanitywould awaken from its lethargic state, and arouse to a true understanding of the "tramp" question! What a mockery tobeholda strong, able-bodiedwilling individual ina landof abundance seekinginvainfor an opportunitytowork tosustain life! ?Tacoma Sun, 1894 Up and down ourPacificCoast floats a motley band ofvagabonds. The criminal,the tramp, inmany cases thewandering, shiftless, working-man, make common protest against any useful laborand boycottitasfar as theycan. The resultis inevitable. The progress of the Coast Communities is retarded, and the men bring sorrow and poverty upon themselves and trouble and damage upon all they come in contact with. ? Thomas Strong, 1910address toAssociated Charities of Portland THE FORCES THAT ALTERED thelate-nineteenth-century Pacific North west landscape ? the rise of agribusiness, the expansion of the rail network, increased irrigation, technological advances in lumbering ? affectedmore than the regions ecology and economy. An army of itinerant laborers, only nominally tied to a particular place or occupation, was swept up into indus trial capitalism's westward expansion, which one historian has described as Research for thisarticlewas supported by the Oregon Historical Society'sDonald]. Sterling,Jr., Memorial Graduate Research Fellowship. OHQ vol. 107, no. 2 ? 2006 Oregon Historical Society The economyof theearly twentieth-century West reliedon a steadypool of migratoryworkers tiedneither toplace nor industry. By the1920s, itinerants increasinglytraveledbyautomobile. creating "aworld perpetually in the process of becoming, of reforming, and seemingly functioning (at times) on the edge of chaos."1 As the "great natu ral-resource reservoir" and "investment arena" forAmerican and European capital, the West was intimately connected to fluctuations in international markets, a situation that led to uncontrolled enthusiasm and expansion one moment and emptymining, construction, and logging camps the next. Itinerancy was a laborer's response to an economic system dominated by frequent bouts of unemployment and idleness, harsh working and living conditions, a cut-and-run mentality, and an uneven distribution of power. In other words, itinerancy was a creation as well as an individual response to the introduction of industrial capitalism in the Pacific Northwest.2 Dependent on these distant and frequently unstable markets, the regions dominant industries ? mining, lumbering, and agriculture ? could one moment draw thousands of job-seekers into a particular region and the next release thousands onto a job market with few alternatives other than continued unemployment or geographic relocation. Most of thesewestern Palmateer,Charity and the "Tramp" 229 industries were also seasonal innature, requiring massive amounts of labor in some seasons and needing far less in others. In confronting the region's unusual geography of labor mobility, workers had few options ? change their occupation, change their location, or bide their time living in one of the Pacific Northwest's emerging Skid Road districts.3 FACING LIMITED JOBPROSPECTS inhinterland work campsduring economic downturns, itinerant laborers ? predominantly single men, young, and native-born or from older immigrant families ? headed to the region's urban centers to find temporary employment, cheap accommoda tions, relief from dangerous and monotonous employment, and a wider variety of charity options. In these urban centers, the region's seasonally unemployed rubbed shoulders with the truly itinerant "tramps," the city's underemployed and laboring masses, and other denizens that serviced and preyed on laborers in the region's Skid Roads. Within this largelymale world, laborers and reformers were continually negotiating the construction of gender, class, sexual, and racial norms.4 In addition to providing affordable food and housing options, infor mal charity resources (such as free lunches), employment information, and places to sleep, cities such as Portland possessed an expanding formal charity network. Anxiety surrounding the impact of industrialization and urbanization on the supposedly staid and respectable communities of the region spurred municipalities to reflecton their responsibilities toward their unemployed and impoverished residents. Rather than viewing unemployment as a result of the region's economic structure, reformers, charity officers, and municipal authorities...