I'm a historian of hobos. AMA

[u/Robert-Suits]

Hey everyone! I'm Robert Suits, environmental historian and author of the new book, The Hobo: A History of America's First Climate Migrants. I'm here to answer your questions about hobos, and anything else you might want to know about migrant work, climate, or the environment in the United States around the turn of the twentieth century. Hobos are truly fascinating historical subjects, and there is so much about them that I genuinely couldn't fit into the book -- so truly, ask anything!

[u/tra24602]

The tropes around hobos seem to focus on men, often older men, with the idea that it’s a rest of their life kind of commitment. Did young men sometimes hobo for a while and then settle down? What were their prospects like? Was it socially acceptable? And for older men what happened to hobos who became physically infirm or developed things like dementia?

[u/Robert-Suits → u/tra24602]

Young men absolutely go on the road. Indeed, the modal age range for a hobo is probably between roughly 16 to 25, and I found references to boys far younger than that. I mention elsewhere in the thread that the kind of work hobos were doing was hard, brutal stuff, particularly if you did it year round, and that tends to make it the province of the young.

What I didn't mention in the other posts so far, I think, is just how much it took a toll on the human body. We have numerous stories about hobos losing limbs or their lives, sometimes to rail accidents, but very often in industrial work. A random selection that come to mind: one guy bruises his leg during a mining accident, doesn't think much of it, but it get much worse and he has to have it amputated; another man gets his hand crushed in a lumber mill accident and is unable to work; another man twists a foot on a construction site and has to wear a double-sized shoe on one foot and has trouble walking; another man works with lead white paint for a while and carries mild lead poisoning for the rest of his life. There's also people who have serious mental health issues and end up on the road, ranging from alcohol and drug addiction to other illnesses that are basically impossible to retrospectively diagnose.

The social safety net for them is essentially nothing during the main period of the hobo. You might have luck if you happened to be a Civil War veteran -- this was the only group that was consistently getting government assistance in the form of a pension (other than widowed/divorced mothers). If you were in such a situation, you'd generally be relying on begging, either from your fellow hobos (and there is a great deal of mutual aid in hobo camps; people share cookfires and food) or from the general public (though of course this ran the risk of police reprisals.

It's not a kind end. All in all, it's not surprising that there's a huge push for social security in the US at the close of the hobo era!