Hobos

"I worked forty years as a fireman, boy
On the Pennsylvania line
And I ended up just a derelict
Drinkin' Boone's Farm apple wine
Oh, where can a bum find bed and board?
When you gonna make it stop rainin', Lord?"

— Warren Zevon, "Stop Rainin' Lord"

Hobos are either homeless people viewed through an industrial-strength Nostalgia Filter or living Americana: freewheeling folks, usually men, who for any number of reasons live a wealth-free life, stowing away on freight trains and moving from town to town looking for campfires and a good can of beans. The Great Depression Theme Park isn't complete without these boxcar barons.

Having been everywhere, seen everything and met everyone, the patricians of poverty are full of tall tales and song — not to mention sage advice. Some may claim to have been men of status (i.e., mayors, railroad tycoons or heavyweight champs) brought low by dumb luck, while others willfully renounced the stationary life. Both varieties of hobo will recount his story in detail, if you have the time.

These regents of the rails are never far from train tracks and almost always carry Bindle Sticks. They are usually found clad in their traditional attire, such as trousers filled with mismatched patches and ragged shoes that leave the big toe prominently exposed; oftentimes, one shoe will be missing and replaced by a rag tied about the foot. Their natural habitats are moving boxcars and campfire circles, though ramshackle hobo metropolises do occur. Any gathering of five or more hobos will feature a hobo gentleman, identified by ragged top hat, cane and swagger.

Unlike street persons or the colloquial bum, hobos prefer rural settings, rarely panhandle, and generally conduct their affairs with some sense of dignity and etiquette. Newcomers to hoboism are often adopted by old timers and taught to observe some variety of "The Hobo's Code". When and how a hobo receives his nickname is unclear, but every hobo has one — it's usually "Boxcar" something.

Hobos are allergic to hard work, unless promised beans or alcohol, and are magnetically attracted to pies cooling on the window sill (whose aroma may cause spontaneous levitation). Kindly old women and farmers' daughters are friends of the hobo; police officers, bulldogs and employees of the railway ("railroad bulls") are natural hobo predators.

Bonus points are awarded whenever a hobo plays the harmonica.

Note: This applies only to hobos as a trope. According to tradition that is now, at best, antiquated, the term "hobo" refers strictly to homeless travelers subsisting on odd jobs, whereas "tramps" travel without seeking work and "bums" do neither.

Compare Disposable Vagrant. See also Impoverished Patrician, with which formerly-wealthy hobos often overlap.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• In Blattodea, the protagonist Chiyuri Haijima is a kind and hard-working homeless girl raised and trained in combat by a depiction of Leiji Matsumoto as a King of the Homeless. On the positive side, Chiyuri is the Only Sane Woman in a Crapsack World controlled by deranged Social Darwinist assassins and rapists — though she's very naïve and glamorizes her status too much. On the negative side, the story takes any excuse it can to portray homeless men as freakishly ugly bastards. As early as chapter 4, a zombie outbreak causes a group of middle aged people who helped her adoptive father Yamato look after Chiyuri to assault her and they act like that's what they wanted all along.
  "I'll use my privilege to sleep anywhere I want, whenever I want. That's kind of hard to beat. Hmmm... In the end... Not having a home... is the best!"

Comic Books

• In The Golden Age of Comic Books, Marvel Comics (then called Timely Comics, among other name changes) had a character variously called the Fighting Hobo or the Vagabond, who was a comical hobo who fought crime. These days it's panned as politically incorrect for glossing over the hardships of real hobos' lives.
• In The Goon, hobos appear as cannibalistic cavemen/jungle savages who have their own language. Their leader, the Hobo King may be a caricature of Woody Guthrie.
• Kings In Disguise was serialized for years in Dark Horse Presents and later published in book form. It's a grim look at the desperate lives of hobos during the Great Depression, and deconstructs the carefree popular image of the hobo.
• Namor the Sub-Mariner, after World War II suffered from a bout of Easy Amnesia, and spent a good deal of the 50's and early 60's as a bearded homeless person until Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four stumbled upon him and brought him home to the Baxter Building.

Comic Strips

• Dick Tracy: Steve the Tramp was one of the early villains in the strip.

Film — Live Action

• Woody Guthrie meets many during his travels in Bound for Glory, at one point riding in a railroad boxcar full of them. A hobo brawl ensues.
• Any of Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp films.
• The film Emperor of the North, set in the 1930s, depicts the brutal battle between a sadistic train conductor and a legendary hobo nicknamed A#1. (A rare example of a realistic depiction of the hobo life in a Hollywood production.)
• Flodder in Amerika!: Sjakie ends up befriending a homeless person out of necessity. Fortunately, said hobo turns out to be one of the nicest people in the city (his hatred for social workers notwithstanding), helping Sjakie get his hand loose after he's been stuck in a stormdrain for a day and a night, taking him to a food court after Sjakie says he's really hungry, and making sure he gets to the hospital after it appeared that Sjakie tried to take his own life (Sjakie accidentally walked into traffic because he saw the Flodders on the other side of the road).
• Heroes for Sale: Tom and Roger become hobos and are treated horribly even though they are WWI veterans.
• The protagonist of Hobo with a Shotgun is a hobo who becomes a vigilante. With a shotgun.
• In Meet John Doe, a reporter fabricates a letter from a John Doe who says he will kill himself on Christmas to protest the state of the country. When the story draws sympathy from the readership, she hires a former baseball player hobo to portray this fictional person in public.
• Mickey One: After Mickey fled Detroit but before he settled in Chicago, he spent four and a half years traveling around, mostly by train.
• The heroes in O Brother, Where Art Thou? are not hobos, but they briefly encounter some while attempting to sneak aboard a moving train. They still steal pies, though.
  • They pay for the pies by replacing the pie with money held down with a rock.
• Pee-wee's Big Adventure - Pee-Wee encounters a friendly hobo when he hops a freight train, but the hobo's delight in singing old songs finally becomes too much for him.
• In the closing section of Pulp Fiction, Jules declares his intention to quit his job as a hitman, leave Los Angeles and "walk the earth" in the style of Caine from Kung Fu (1972). His partner, Vincent, responds that he would be nothing more than a bum. Better a live bum than getting shot up on the toilet with your own gun, as Vincent finds out.
• Sullivan's Travels by Preston Sturges features a film director who wants to make a gritty, realistic film about The Great Depression, but he's lived a privileged life, so he dresses as a hobo and goes out and rides the rails to help him learn what it's really like to experience that level of poverty.
• Who Is Bozo Texino? documents filmmaker Bill Daniel's 16-year quest for the most famous boxcar artist in history.
• While hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in Wild, Strayed runs into a reporter from the Hobo Times who assumes that she is a hobo and starts interviewing her. She insists that she isn't a hobo, but has to admit that she doesn't actually have a job or a place to live.
• Wild Boys of the Road: Lacking any better options, Eddie and Tommy start riding the rails, looking for work. It is a bad, bad life, nowhere near as romantic as it is often portrayed in other works. Hunger and fear plague the children as they travel across America. One child is sickened on the train by eating rotten food. Another is raped.

Literature

• The Areas of My Expertise: Hodgman gives a detailed history of the Hobo Conspiracy, including how a hobo (Hobo Joe Junkpan) once became Secretary of the Treasury and then gives 700 Hobo names (and 100 more in the paperback version). He does, however, make a point of distinguishing between normal homeless people and hobos (it's a lifestyle choice).
• Cities in Flight: James Blish has the character Mayor Amalfi liken the titular cities, which turned themselves spaceflight-capable and took to wandering around the stars to flee totalitarianism on Earth, to the migrants of the United States, saying that most cities are hobos, migrant workers, but some are tramps, basically petty criminals, and a few are the lowest sort: bindlestiffs, migrants who live by robbing other migrants.
• Fahrenheit 451: The climax has literary hobos after Montag escapes the Mechanical Hound by jumping in a river. It is later revealed that these are all former English professors and stuff; they're keeping the books in their heads until contemporary society crumbles.
• The Green Hills of Earth: Old blind Rhysling, the Singer of the Spaceways, is a kind of hobo. He's an unusual example, as he's built up something of a reputation as a wandering poet and is well-regarded by pretty much everyone.
• "The Haunted Trailer" by Robert Arthur: The narrator finds his trailer haunted by the ghosts of three hobos.
• Ironweed is about Francis, once a professional baseball player, now a dirty drunken hobo who's nearly 60. Francis abandoned his family 22 years ago and is living as a bum because he is plagued with guilt about the death of his infant son, whom a drunk Francis dropped while attempting to change his diaper.
• Of Mice and Men, a novel by former hobo John Steinbeck, has George and Lennie, a pair of wanderers who sign on to farms as workers and move on once the work dries up.
• Sixth Column (also titled The Day After Tomorrow) by Robert A. Heinlein includes a hobo character. The hobo used to be a graduate student who decided to research the hobo lifestyle. He discovered he liked it and gave up being a student to be a hobo. He also points out to the protagonist that hobos are not tramps or bums, and in fact lays out an entire social taxonomy of American transients, with bindlestiffs at the bottom and true hobos at the top.

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who: The Second Doctor was basically a Space Hobo.
• iCarly: Hobos are often found or mentioned as a joke. In "iEnrage Gibby", Carly even has a "hobo party" where everyone dresses up a hobo. Hobos are present in pretty much all of his works, too. He actually offered a definition for the term and how it's different than just "homeless" in a blog post. Not that it helped; multiple complaints forced iCarly to stop with the hobo jokes in 2011.
• Dave Attell encountered one on his show Insomniac with Dave Attell. After referring to him as a hobo, the man corrected him: "I'm a tramp."
• In It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Rickety Cricket is gradually worn down by the gang after abandoning his ambition to become a priest. In each episode, he becomes more and more dishevelled, injured and scarred depending on what the gang makes his do. Eventually, he fits the profile of a stereotypical hobo.
• In Mad Men, Don Draper had a life-changing encounter with a hobo, as he remembers in the episode: "The Hobo Code."
• Outside Dave in New Girl is a stereotypical homeless man who often shares strange wisdom, dresses in an assortment of clothes and rags he's found and wears cracked glasses.
  Outside Dave: Now I'm going to mash a muffin into the phone. You tell me if it makes its way through.
• In season 2 of Oliver Beene, a homeless man (played by Norm Macdonald) moves into Oliver's treehouse, sparking outrage amongst he and his friends.
• Our Miss Brooks: Miss Brooks deals with hobos in the episodes "Hobo Jungle" and "Miss Brooks Writes About a Hobo".
• The Red Skelton Show: In an interview on the "Funny Faces" video, Red Skelton described his "Freddie the Freeloader" character from his long-running TV series:
  Red Skelton: “I get asked all the time; Where did you get the idea for Freddie the Freeloader, and who is Freddie really?
  Well, I guess you might say that Freddie the Freeloader is a little bit of you, and a little bit of me, a little bit of all of us, you know. He’s found out what love means. He knows the value of time. He knows that time is a glutton. We say we don’t have time to do this or do that. There’s plenty of time. The trick is to apply it. The greatest disease in the world today is procrastination. And Freddie knows about all these things. And so do you.
  He doesn’t ask anybody to provide for him, because it would be taken away from you. He doesn’t ask for equal rights if it’s going to give up some of yours.
  And he knows one thing … that patriotism is more powerful than guns.
  He’s nice to everybody because he was taught that man is made in God’s image. He’s never met God in person and the next fella just might be him.
  I would say that Freddie is a little bit of all of us.”
• The Murdoch Mysteries episode "Ballad of Gentleman Jones" is set around Toronto's hobo community. Watts and Crabtree go undercover to investigate a hobo killer, learn about hobo coins, and get into a fight with railway bulls.

Music

• "Big Rock Candy Mountain" is a humorous folk song describing a fictional hobo paradise. There, cigarettes grows on trees, rivers run with alcohol, and boxcars are always empty and full of fresh hay. Bowdlerized versions have been found on compilations of music for little kids; on the other end of the stick, probably in protest to the romanticizing of the hobo life, it has also been covered by the likes of Tom Waits, whose version is without accompaniment and consists of him slurring, screaming, and sobbing the lyrics even more drunkenly than usual. The original version, written by Harry McClintock in 1898, ends on this deeply cynical and very much non-kid-friendly note:
  The punk rolled up his big blue eyes
  And said to the jocker, "Sandy,
  I've hiked and hiked and wandered, too,
  But I ain't seen any candy.
  I've hiked and hiked till my feet are sore
  And I'll be damned if I hike any more
  To be buggered sore like a hobo's whore
  In the Big Rock Candy Mountains."
  • "The Appleknocker's Lament", in a similar vein as the above, is about a boy taken in by the "big rock candy mountains" promises of a jocker, who proceeded to abuse and molest him during their six long months of traveling together.
  • Harry McClintock wrote another song called "Hallelujah I'm a Bum" that sings about spending the spring and summer as a hobo, wandering and begging for food. It posits the hobo life as an alternative to the oppressive nature of working for bosses within the capitalist system.
• "Waltzing Mathilda" is the Australian version. It comes from a wave of German immigrants who brought with them some of their habits, such as nicknaming their awesome Great Coat Mathilda. A German swagman would refer to himself as "Auf der waltz mit mein Mathilda" (on the walk with my Mathilda), with all his belongings (swag) wrapped up in his coat.
• "Hobo Jungle" by The Band is a song about the death of an old hobo.
• Captain Beefheart's song "Orange Claw Hammer" is told from the perspective of a delirious old sailor who is "on the bum where the hobos run". Also note the song "Hobo Chang Ba", from the same album: Trout Mask Replica.
• Roger Miller's "King of the Road" describes a "man of means, by no means", a hobo who travels about by boxcar wearing old worn-out clothes and smoking slightly used cigars, is well-known by the engineers and their families and well-acquainted with the handouts in every town, and two hours of pushing a broom earns enough to stay in an 8' x 12' room for 50 cents a day.
• Tom Paxton, a former hobo, has written many songs about it, including "Bottle of Wine", "I Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound" and "Ramblin' Boy".
  Well, if you see me passing by
  And you sit and you wonder why
  And you wish that you were a rambler too
  Nail your shoes to the kitchen floor
  Lace 'em up and bar the door
  Thank your stars for the roof that's over you!
  And I can't help but wonder where I'm bound, where I'm bound
  Can't help but wonder where I'm bound
• "Hobo's Lullaye", written by George Reeves and recorded by Woody Guthrie and David Rovics (amongst others) is about the harshness of the hobo lifestyle and the importance of finding solace where you can:
  I know the police cause you trouble
  They cause trouble everywhere
  But when you die and go to Heaven
  You'll find no policemen there
• "The Ghost of Tom Joad", by Bruce Springsteen, is a hymn to the hobo life.
• Tom Waits himself has written "Bottom of the World" from Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, a song about hobo life in Australia.

Tabletop Games

• Arkham Horror has "Ashcan" Pete, a hobo who makes a living being sneaky on the streets and traveling with his dog. He's one of the playable characters, and uses his sneaky stats to easily evade combat.
• Call of Cthulhu allows player characters to choose "hobo" as an occupation.
• A violent variation most associated with Dungeons & Dragons (but also applies to most role-playing games) is the murderhobo: parties of adventurers with no fixed abode who go from place to place attacking whatever's in their way but not showing much in the way of Character Development or even personality. It's thought to have started as a reaction to the Killer DM tactic of using character backgrounds against them ("Oh, your character has a little sister? Guess who got kidnapped by cultists and possessed by the Big Bad"), leading to armed sociopaths caring only about the next source of gold and experience.
• The Others (2015): One of the acolytes that the Sin player can choose is the Corrupted Hobo. They're not particularly strong (not that any of the acolytes are), but their ability allows them to be summoned once per turn to the board in a non-ranged fight and disable an upgrade that the player has for the remainder of combat.
• Promethean: The Created basically has you playing Frankenstein.

Video Games

• ClayFighter 63 1/3: One of the possible characters is HoboCop (yeah, like RoboCop), a hobo who becomes a vigilante and use tin cans as his "armor". Being so politically incorrect, he was deleted from production for lack of time and later became the only character unadded from the discarded ones in Sculptor's Cut.
• Daraku Tenshi: The Fallen Angels has Torao Onigawara, a karateka hobo (in reality a Retired Badass who became homeless). Also doubles with The Pig-Pen with flies surrounding him all the time.
• Hobo: Given his name, the titular Hobo is naturally one of these. Several other hobos appear as enemies in the first game.
• In Potion Permit, Zeke is a homeless man who sleeps on the bench with his pet cat Kipps. He used to be a merchant from the capital, but he retired because his success became meaningless to him, and he chose to live the life of a carefree nobody in Moonbury.
• Power Pro-kun Pocket 9: The Vagabond Nice Guy scenario features a honorable wanderer who helps a shopping district's community face a corrupt supermarket chain. In most story routes he hangs out by an Artificial Riverbank with a tent and a fishing rod. It is also hinted he is the reincarnation of Red, the misguided sentai warrior from Koshien Hero, on something of a redemption journey.

Visual Novels

• Daughter for Dessert: Before arriving at the diner, Lily travels to different places on the whim of an app she downloaded, not working, subsisting on her social skills and the kindness of strangers.

Webcomics

• Hijinks Ensue features Boxcar Pete, a hobo who for some strange reason wears a monocle and talks like a pirate.
• Laugh Out Loud Cats: Hobos meet LOLCats.
• Guttersnipe, set in a Theme Park Version of a Theme Park Version of the Great Depression, has hobos that have become so numerous that they have taken over the entire center third of the nation, succeeding to become a sovereign nation called "Hobotopia" Hobos are depicted as a roaming barbarian tribe, armed with spears and wearing nothing but loincloths and the obligatory battered top hats.
• Realm of Owls: The hobos live in the outskirts of the city of Buffet. They look, act and live like real-life hobos, but are mostly perfectly fine or even happy with their lifestyle.

Web Original

• The Onion: In "Why Am I The Only Homeless Man Still Wearing Pickle Barrels?", the narrator is a homeless man who was once a powerful railroad tycoon before the fickle hand of fate robbed him of his mansion, wealth and fine suits, and set him on the wandering path of the hobo. He bears himself with dignity, seeking nothing more than a pickle barrel to clad himself in, a stray can of beans for his supper, and the company of his old friend Handsome Joe the Hobo King who lives down by the train yard. In recent days, however, he worries about the looming extinction of his traditional lifestyle — modern hobos have largely abandoned the traditional barrels for flashy, trendy wear such as be-patched trousers and shoes that leave the big toe exposed, suitable barrels have become rare as well as shipping companies have switched to glass jars and cardboard boxes, and fewer and fewer people transport their canned goods in poorly-secured bicycles where even a slight bump might send a hearty stew flying to the street.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: Lumpy Space Princess did a stint as one of these after she ran away from home.
  "I'm doing so awesome on my own, like right now, I found this can of beans."
• Baggy Pants and the Nitwits: The eponymous Baggy Pants is explicitly described in the theme as "the hobo everyone knows". It may be because he's a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of Charlie Chaplin.
• Every Child: The Doorstop Baby is eventually taken in by a pair of hobos after all the middle-class people of the neighborhood manage to find excuses not to take care of the child.
• The Easter Bunny Is Comin To Town: Hallelujah Jones is a heroic version of this trope complete with worn clothes and Bindle Stick. He is an ally to Sunny the Easter Bunny and the denizens of Kidville, helping them deliver Easter goodies and creating Easter traditions like jelly beans.
• Futurama has hobos... in space! Bender meets a reclusive chef Helmut Spargle who lives in a space hobo metropolis. Using only leftovers and garbage, Spargle can bake a pie with hobo-levitating aromatic properties (because they have jet packs somehow).
  • The hobos actually refer to Bender as a robo, a Robot Hobo; at first he's offended, because he thought they said "romo".
• Invader Zim mentions hobos, as well... as an urban legend on par with the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot.
  • One episode has Dib receiving advice from a friendly hobo. Immediately after their conversation the hobo abducts a screaming passerby and runs off.
• In The Legend of Korra, Korra encounters the strangely cheery hobo Gommu, who politely asks for one of her speared fish and gives her the first revelation that Republic City isn't all the shine and splendor she thought it was. Gommu later takes the Krew in for sanctuary during the late stages of the Equalist uprising as guests in the underground shantytown that he and other vagrants (bender and nonbender alike) had set up.
• In the "King of the Hobos" episode of Hanna-Barbera's series of The Little Rascals, Porky ran away and met an old hobo who called himself Boxcar Bill.
• Looney Tunes: Bugs Bunny deals with two hungry hobos based on Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton in the cartoon "Half-Fare Hare".
• In the early Merrie Melodies short "Hobo Gadget Band", a Trash-Can Band of hobos enter a singing contest and win a big recording contract. They reject it for a life on the tracks.
• The antagonist of the Rainbow Parade cartoon "Scottie Finds A Home" is a vagrant who heckles the kittens grandma for free food in her own home.
• Schoolhouse Rock!: "Conjunction Junction" has two train-hopping hobos passing through the Junction. They enjoy a fireside meal with the conductor and try to leave by hot air balloon, but it won't go any higher even when they cut loose the sandbags.
• The Simpsons have occasionally run into some hobos. Every third episode had a hobo joke for a while (some particularly cruel), mostly thanks to John Swartzwelder, a prolific writer and Preston Sturges fanatic.
  • In "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?" (1992), we learn that Homer's brother Herb went from Detroit bigshot to hobo after trusting Homer to design a new car. In the DVD commentary of the episode creator Matt Groening said "John Swartzwelder loves hobos!"
  • In ""Homer Bad Man" (1994), the family's babysitter choices have been narrowed down between a grad student and a "scary-looking hobo". Bart hopes for the hobo.
  • In "The Homer They Fall" (1996), Homer competes in Springfield's hobo boxing circuit, fighting Switchyard Sam and Boxcar Ira on his road to the title bout. As his trainer, Moe warns Homer that his opponents are "hungry fighters" in that they're only fighting to get a meal.
  • In "Kill the Alligator and Run" (2000), Bart asks if their Everglades tour guide has any hobo chunks to throw to the alligators.
  • In "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes" (2000), Nelson claims that Springfield Elementary science classes are dissecting frozen hobos. And he's got the bindles to prove it.
  • In a Formula-Breaking Episode, "Simpsons Tall Tales" (2001), a hobo explains that there are two kinds of hobos, stabbing and singing, and calls non-hobos no-bos. He works on a strict pricing plan: one story, one spongebath.
    Hobo: (singing) Nothing beats the hobo life... stabbing folks with my hobo knife!
  • Marge once asked when they became the bottom rung of society and Homer tells her "I think it was when that cold snap killed off all the hobos."
  • A Halloween episode where Homer becomes Death has Lisa demonstrating his job to her class on a hobo they brought in with the promise of a meal.
  • One episode has Grandpa traveling the countryside with Bart. He points out the various hobo codes left on fences. The first means "Good food", the second means "Sexy farmer's daughter", and the third means "Mass hobo grave in backyard".
• Steven Universe: In "On the Run", Steven and Amethyst try living as hobos for a day, inspired by Steven's new favorite book series The No-Home Boys. Not only does being a hobo turn out to be less glamorous than it looks, but the trip brings up some of Amethyst's baggage about being a Gem who was born on Earth in a life-force sucking Gem "Kindergarten".
• The Tex Avery characters George and Junior were often depicted as hobos (no surprise, since they are based on Lenny and George from Of Mice and Men). Their first cartoon was even titled "Henpecked Hoboes".

Real Life

• Real Life: Several famous Americans were hobos in their youth, including actors Clark Gable and Robert Mitchum, writers John Steinbeck and Eugene O'Neill, folk singer Woody Guthrie, and heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey.
  • Though closely connected to the American railways, a looser definition of hoboism requires only: transience, moochery, troubles with local authorities, and a habit of spontaneous narration. As such, hobos have a whole canon of nicknamed saints to inspire them, including "Confucius" K'ung-fu-tzu, Siddhārtha "The Buddha" Gautama, Jesus Christ "The Christ" of Nazareth, Paul "The Apostle" of Tarsus, etc.
  • Jesus especially was well-known to the hobos, since appealing to religion was a common way to get vittles. He was nicknamed Jerusalem Slim and Nazareth Blacky, as explained here.
  • The singer/historian/activist U. Utah Phillips was long famous in both American left-wing and folk-music circles for preserving the lore and history of hobos and their ethic.
• The Civilian Conservation Corps, one of FDR's New Deal programs during The Great Depression, was primarily designed to help homeless young men, many of whom fit the definition of hobos, by putting them to work improving public lands.

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