Hoboes Bindlestiffs, Fruit Tramps, and the Harvesting of the West [Paperback]

When the railroad stretched its steel rails across the American West in the 1870s, it opened up a vast expanse of territory. Agriculture quickly followed the railroads, making way for Kansas wheat and Colorado sugar beets and Washington apples. With this new agriculture came an unavoidable need for harvest workers. These were not the year-round hired hands but transients who would show up to harvest the crop and then leave when the work was finished.

Variously called bindlestiffs, fruit tramps, hoboes, and bums, these menand women and childrenwere vital to the creation of the West and its economy. Amazingly, it is an aspect of Western history that has never been told. InHoboes: Bindlestiffs, Fruit Tramps, and the Harvesting of the West, the award-winning historian Mark Wyman offers a detailed, deeply sympathetic portrait of the lives of these hoboes, as well as a fresh look at the settling and development of the American West.

Vivid, accessible prose . . . Wyman colorfully describes the rough camaraderie among hobos riding the rails and sharing their scant food in outdoor jungles,' the only accommodations available to transients so distrusted by settled folks that any hobo venturing into a town was likely to be jailed as a vagrant. Later chapters stirringly cover the battles fought by the radical Industrial Workers of the World, the only group willing to represent migrant workers viewed by other labor unions as unskilled and impossible to organize. Wendy Smith, Los Angeles Times

Eye-opening, even for students and scholars familiar with the history of hoboes in agriculture from the end of the Civil War to the 1920s . . .Hoboesmoves ahead with energy and clarity. There are wonderful anecdotes throughout. Jonah Raskin, San Francisco Chronicle

Mark Wyman has written the prehistory of Steinbeck'sGrapes of Wrath, Murrow'sHarvest of Shame, and Cesar Chavez'sLa Causa.Hoboespresents l3,