THE MIND OF THE HOBO: REFLECTIONS UPON THE RELATION BETWEEN MENTALITY
AND LOCOMOTION
In the evolutionary hierarchy, as Herbert Spencer has sketched it for
us, the animal series occupied a higher position than that of the
plants. But in spite of all the progress represented in the long march
from the amoeba to man, it is still true that the human creature is a
good deal of a vegetable. This is evident in the invincible attachment
of mankind to localities and places; in man’s, and particularly woman’s,
inveterate and irrational ambition to have a home—some cave or hut or
tenement—in which to live and vegetate; some secure hole or corner from
which to come forth in the morning and return to at night.
As long as man is thus attached to the earth and to places on the earth,
as long as nostalgia and plain homesickness hold him and draw him
inevitably back to the haunts and places he knows best, he will never
fully realize that other characteristic ambition of mankind, namely, to
move freely and untrammeled over the surface of mundane things, and to
live, like pure spirit, in his mind and in his imagination alone.
I mention these things merely to emphasize a single point, namely, mind
is an incident of locomotion. The first and most convincing indication
of mind is not motion merely, but, as I have said, locomotion. The
plants don’t locomote, don’t move through space; they respond more or
less to stimulation, even though they have no nerves, but they do not
move through space, certainly not of their own motion. And when they do
move, they have no goal, no destination, and that is because they have
no imagination.
Now it is characteristic of animals that they can and do change their
spots. The ability to do this implies that they are able not merely to
wag a tail or move a limb, but that they are able to co-ordinate and
mobilize the whole organism in the execution of a single act. Mind, as
we ordinarily understand it, is an organ of control. It does not so much
initiate new movements as co-ordinate impulses, and so mobilize the
organism for action; for mind, in its substantive aspect, is just our
disposition to act; our instincts and attitudes, in other words.
Mental activity begins on the periphery, with stimuli which are
antecedent to, but ultimately discharged in, actions. But mind in the
transitive, verbal aspect is a process by which, as we say, we “make up
our minds” or change them; that is to say, it is a process by which we
define the direction in which we are going to move, and locate in
imagination the goal that we intend to seek.
Plants carry on, apparently, all the processes of metabolism which are
characteristic of animals—these are, in fact, what we mean by the
vegetative processes—but they do not go anywhere. If the plants have
minds, as some people assume they do, they must be of that brooding,
vegetative sort characteristic of those mystics who, quite forgetful of
the active world, are absorbed in the contemplation of their own inner
processes. But the characteristic of the animal, and of the higher types
of animal—everything above the oyster, in fact—is that they are made for
locomotion and for action. Furthermore, it is in the processes of
locomotion—involving, as they do, change of scene and change of
location—that mankind is enabled to develop just those mental aptitudes
most characteristic of man, namely, the aptitude and habit of abstract
thought.
It is in locomotion, also, that the peculiar type of organization that
we call “social” develops. The characteristic of a social organism—if we
may call it an organism—is the fact that it is made up of individuals
capable of independent locomotion. If society were, as some individuals
have sought to conceive it, an organism in the biological sense—if it
were made up of little cells all neatly and safely inclosed in an outer
integument, or skin, in which all cells were so controlled and protected
that no single cell could by any chance have any adventures or new
experience of its own—there would be no need for men in society to have
minds, for it is not because men are alike that they are social, but
because they are different. They are moved to act by individual
purposes, but in doing so they realize a common end. Their impulses are
private, but actions are public.
In view of all this we may well ask ourselves what, if anything, is the
matter with the hobo’s mind. Why is it that with all the variety of his
experiences he still has so many dull days? Why, with so much leisure,
has he so little philosophy? Why, with so wide an acquaintance with
regions, with men, and with cities, with life in the open road and in
the slums, has he been able to contribute so little to our actual
knowledge of life?
We need not even pause for a reply. The trouble with the hobo mind is
not lack of experience, but lack of a vocation. The hobo is, to be sure,
always on the move, but he has no destination, and naturally he never
arrives. Wanderlust, which is the most elementary expression of the
romantic temperament and the romantic interest in life, has assumed for
him, as for so many others, the character of a vice. He has gained his
freedom, but he has lost his direction. Locomotion and change of scene
have had for him no ulterior significance. It is locomotion for its own
sake. Restlessness and the impulse to escape from the routine of
ordinary life, which in the case of others frequently marks the
beginning of some new enterprise, spends itself for him in movements
that are expressive merely. The hobo seeks change solely for the sake of
change; it is a habit, and, like the drug habit, moves in a vicious
circle. The more he wanders, the more he must. It is merely putting the
matter in an another way to say that the trouble with the hobo, as Nels
Anderson has pointed out in his recent volume, _The Hobo_, is that he is
an individualist. He has sacrificed the human need of association and
organization to a romantic passion for individual freedom. Society is,
to be sure, made up of independent, locomoting individuals. It is this
fact of locomotion, as I have said, that defines the very nature of
society. But in order that there may be permanence and progress in
society the individuals who compose it must be located; they must be
located, for one thing, in order to maintain communication, for it is
only through communication that the moving equilibrium which we call
society can be maintained.
All forms of association among human beings rest finally upon locality
and local association. The extraordinary means of communication that
characterize modern society—the newspaper, the radio, and the
telephone—are merely devices for preserving this permanence of location
and of function in the social group, in connection with the greatest
possible mobility and freedom of its members.
The hobo, who begins his career by breaking the local ties that bound
him to his family and his neighborhood, has ended by breaking all other
associations. He is not only a “homeless man,” but a man without a cause
and without a country; and this emphasizes the significance, however,
futile of the efforts of men like James Eads How to establish hobo
colleges in different parts of the country, places where hobos can meet
to exchange experiences, to discuss their problems, and all of the
problems of society; places, also, where they can maintain some sort of
corporate existence and meet and exchange views with the rest of the
world on a basis of something like equality and with some hope of
understanding.
The same thing may be said of the Industrial Workers of the World, the
only labor organization that has persistently sought and to some extent
succeeded in organizing the unorganizable element among laboring men,
namely, the seasonal and casual laborers. The tendency of their efforts
to organize the hobo in his own interest has been, so far as they have
been successful, to give him what he needed most, namely, a
group-consciousness, a cause, and a recognized position in society.
If they have failed, it is due in part to the fact that so large a part
of modern industry is organized in a way which tends inevitably to the
casualization of labor. It is due, in part, to the fact that the hobo,
in so far as he is a congenital type, finds in casual and seasonal labor
a kind of occupation congenial to his temperament, for the hobo is the
bohemian in the ranks of common labor. He has the artistic temperament.
Aside from the indispensable labor of his hands, the only important
contribution which he has made to the permanent common fund of our
experience which we call our culture has been his poetry. It is an
interesting fact, however, that some of the best of this poetry has been
produced in jail. During these periods of enforced quietude, when he
could no longer move, the hobo has vented his habitual restlessness in
songs, songs of protest, the hymns of the rebellious I.W.W., tragic
little ballads describing some of the hardships and tragedies of life on
the long, gray road.
There have been many hobo poets. The most eminent of them, Walt Whitman,
reflected the restlessness and rebelliousness and individualism of the
hobo mind not only in the content but in the very formlessness of his
verse.
What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk free and own
no superior?
Nothing could better express the spirit of the old frontier which, more
than any other feature in American life, has served to characterize
American institutions and American mores. The hobo is, in fact, merely a
belated frontiersman, a frontiersman at a time and in a place when the
frontier is passing or no longer exists.
ROBERT E. PARK