watch tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern and enjoy american history tv every weekend on c-span3. during the great depression, almost one quarter of the united states working population was unemployed. this gave rise to an increasing number of migrant workers referred to as hobos. jeffrey urban explained the origins of this term and how hobos have been rowe mant sized in popular culture. >> hi, there, jeff urban from the presidential library and museum on behalf of our director, paul sparrow and the roosevelt staff, welcome you to another one of our talks today. today we're talking about hobos and hoovervilles. and as i said, i'm jeff urban and i'm the education director here and it is our pleasure to present these programs for you. now hobos an hoovervilles.

these are two things that came out of the great depression. and a lot of people throw around the term hobo, and throw around the term hooberville, but who were these people and what were these things actually. we'll talk about that today. and is goes back to the great depression of course. and when we learn about the great depression in school, we learned that the great depression occurred on october 29th, 1929 when the stock market crashed. that is not really accurate. that is when most people got -- it got everybody's attention, but it had begun for farmers ten years earlier with the dust bowl and the overplanting of the crops out there in the midwest and the southwest. the farmers were really hitting on hard times with the brought conditions that were occurring. now why that is important is

that 50% of the population were farmers at that time and so if you got 50% of your population having that kind of an economic problem, it is going to have an impact on the rest of your economy. so, yes, we could point to october 29th, 1929 as an indicator of the great depression, but it had been going on for much longer than that. also, we'd like to talk about the great depression as if it was an economic problem. and it was an economic problem, right. stock market crashed, people were losing jobs and people were losing their homes. but it was really not just an economic situation with 25% unemployment and a thousand banks closing each day and those sort of things. it was really a social problem as well. families tended to split up. if you a 17, 16, 18-year-old boy at home you might ask him to leave the house because there simply wasn't enough money to feed him and baby brother or

sister. if you had a grandma or a grandpa living on their own, they might move in with you simply because you could pool resources and it would work a little bit better. so the family dynamics changed a lot. sometimes the dads would go off looking for work and it was left up to mom to hold the family unit together. so it was a social problems as well. and it was also an emotional problem. people lost their jobs. and when you lose your job, yes, you lose a paycheck, there is definitely an economic impact to that, but you lose an person part of your identity. you lose an important part of who you are. right, we have identify ourselves by our jobs. i'm a banker, a lawyer, a bus driver, a lawyer, a teacher, whatever it is. so if you lose that job, if you lose that occupation, you lose a big part of who you are and how you define yourself. so the great depression was a terrible, terrible time. sometimes people would leave

their children at post offices or sign them into orphanages because they couldn't feed them. and an economic and social and emotional problem gives you a better understanding of just how much of an impact this great depression had on people. and in fact when the depression was over, some of those feelings, those emotions, those actions that people took stayed with them, those attitudes stayed with them the rest of their lives. that is how much of an impact that it had. so let's talk a little bit about a group of people that originated in this time period. or are said to have originated and that would be hobos. now hobos, the idea of a hobo goes back probably to after the american civil war. there were folks that traveled around and such. but the heyday of the hobo was

the 1930s. and nobody knows where the name hobo originated. some people say, as i said it came from the end of the civil war where people were homeward bound. home bound, hobo. some say it originated from migrant workers going around and they would carry hoes and say do you need extra hands here on the farm and these were hoe boys, going door-to-door with their hoe looking for work and so they would hire them. other people said well maybe it is just a greeting, ho boy and shortened down to hobo from there. so if you could come up with something that sounds legitimate, it is legitimate as any other origin for the name of hobo. now, the idea of a hobo is somewhat rowe mant sized as

well. we think of the hopo as out there on the open road making his way around, calling his own shots. and there was some truth to that. but we'll talk about that in just a minute. the 1930ss with the heyday of the hobo and there may have been as many as 20 million hobos across the country looking for work. it is difficult to know the exact number because they were transient and so it is hard to tie them down. but before we go any further, let's define what a hobo is. and there is a big difference between a hobo, a tramp and a bum. although many, many people use these interchangeably. a hobo was a migratory laborer. so it was someone looking for work. they were going from place to place to place looking for some kind of work. hopefully some kind of long-term

work. but if not, they would take whatever they could get. sometimes it was a job that would last a couple of weeks if they were picking fruit at an orchard or a vineyard. sometimes it was a project for days, chopping leaves, they would take whatever they could take. and the hobos were willing to travel and they were willing to work. and it was important to the hobo to put in a full day's work for whatever compensation they got and they would negotiate with whoever they were working with. sometimes it was money. sometimes it was maybe a warm, safe place to sleep. other times maybe it was a meal or two. it depends upon what the person that was offering the job had to give in exchange for the actual job. so a hobo is someone who is willing to work, wanting to work, looking for work and moving around doing that. a tramp was somewhat different. a tramp was more of a traveller. a tramp would go from place to

place and they would work if they had to but they would rather not. they would rather just kind of go from place to place looking for adventure and excitement and such. and it is probably the most famous one of course is charlie chaplain's personification of the little tramp. but a tramp is somebody that would work if they have to but not necessarily looking to do that. if they could get a freebie or a handout, they would be happy to do that just as well. and then we have the bums. and the bums are the lower level of the sort of hierarchy. and a bum was someone who didn't want to work. a bum was someone who was looking for pure handout, what could you give me and i don't want to have to give anything in return. very often bums had some alcohol problems, they were known for getting drunk and creating problems and trouble and such. and this was a real problem for

hobos, because if people were mixing up hobos, tramps and bums all in their mind, when they came looking for work and someone thought they were a tramp, they were less likely to em the hobo and that is what they were looking for, the hobos. the popular character of freddy the free loader, he was a bum. and you could sort of see that reflected in his actions as a character. so why do people become hobos? the number one reason was out of economic necessity. they were searching for work, searching for food, searching for shelter and sometimes they would get this stuff and then be able to have a little extra and send it home, other times they were just able to maintain their own existence as they went along. and of course the thing about that is that if you're able to

maintain your own existence, at least you're not a burden back to your family. so economic necessity number one reason why people became hobos. there were some who became hobos for the adventure. the ability to call your own shots and come and go as you like, be your own boss. that is sort of the romantic version that we have of hobos over the course of time. and then the third reason that people became hobos was for escape. sometimes they were trying to escape from the law, sometimes they were trying to escape from abuse. sometimes they were trying to escape from a lack of opportunity. which of course goes back to the psyche of economic necessity. so lots of reasons why people left, but primely they were looking for a better life in terms of economic ability. now, the hobos life is romantic in culture, but it was anything but romantic in real life.

it was an incredibly hard life to live. you were traveling around, constantly or exposed out to the elements. they were hopping on a freight train that might be moving at five or ten miles an hour. very dangerous, the ability to lose life and limb always with you when you are jumping on this giant piece of machinery or jumping off. and the hobos would ride on the cars, on train cars, going from city to city, town to town. and that is basically how most of them traveled. riding freight trains was very, very dangerous. sometimes you rode out in the open on a flat car. and of course there you were exposed to the sun, the rain, the snow, whatever exposure was going on, the wind and also you were on a flat car. so as things shifted and

changes, if you weren't careful you could be thrown off of that. you were very vulnerable and visible to what were called bulls and they were the railroad police. and these folks tended to be -- they took their job very seriously and tended to be very brutal about the way they enforce their job and the job was to protect railroad property. and if you were a hobo, traveling on that train, you were trespassing and so they felt very within their rights to beat you up, hit you, sometimes shoot you on sight or throw you off the moving train. you weren't supposed to be on there, sorry pal, and the fact that i'm throwing you off is your fault for being here, not my fault for throwing you off. so flat cars exposed you to a lot of different things. you also might try to travel in a box car. now a box car was great because it provided you protection from the elements and you were able to sort of be inside and you could sleep without having to

worry about falling off and less visible to the bulls but if you got locked in the boxcar, the chances of starvation or suffocation were good. if you were in a car that was off to -- maybe didn't get moved for three or four days you might be out in that exposed box without a whole lot of circulation of air and such. sometimes would you ride on top of the boxcars, which had its own set of dangers. your exposed to the bulls and there is the danger of underpasses and branches and always a danger of falling off. but riding the rails meant riding on a car in one way or the other. and hobos knew you never rode on a car with pipes because they rolled an shifts as the train was moving along and it was an easy opportunity for you to get crushed. you also didn't ride between the

cars because the cummings would go back and forth and that was a dangerous place to ride as well. so you sort of took your chances whether you're in a flat car, boxcar or whoever it was. there were also folks who maybe you've heard the expression riding the rods. and riding the rods was even more dangerous. and the rods were large steel basically rods that were underneath the train and across the section to give torque to the car. and they were underneath, between the sets of reels were these rods and they were easy to get on to when the train was stopped. so if the train was in a yard, you could easily get on the rods, so there was a box car, you could get on the rods. they were dangerous because you're basically traveling under a train hanging on to some steel rods just inches from the grade

going past as the train was moving along. if you fell asleep and let go, would you be killed, no doubt about it. so riding the rods was very, very dangerous. the bulls, as i said, they were out to get you. they had very little sympathy. they had jobs. their job was to protect the railroad property. and so they had very little sympathy for the hobos that were moving through and would toss them from the train. there were also some unsavery hobos. there were people out there riding the rails who were looking to get over on people. who were looking to take advantage people. that is not the predominant number of hobos. most were just people looking for work, trying to work their way through and we'll talk about the hobo code in a minute. there was a code that they lived by. but you run into somebody out there looking to take advantage of you, to rob you or steal from you or to abuse you. so you had to be careful with who you came into contact with

while you were out there riding the rails. and there are also unsavory people. there were people who looked down upon you and said you're just a hobo. so they didn't value you necessarily as a person or maybe they mistook you for a bum and so they felt somehow justified in the ability to sort of abuse you or treat you as less than who you are. so a lot of times people will say to me, okay, jeff, let's say i wanted to be a hobo, what would i need. well you need to have some kind of economic necessity, we talked about that. you would need to have access to a train. to move from place to place. and you would also have to have a certain amount of equipment that you would bring with you as well. and just before i talk about that, let's talk about how you find those trains. and the trains usually, there is a train yard and just about a

mile or so outside of the train yard, that is where the hobos would congregate. they wouldn't go into the yards because of course the bulls were there. but when the train was leaving the yard, or a train was entering the yard, the train would be slow enough that you could relatively safely jump off or relatively safely hop on. so outside of these train yards there would be placed that they call hobo jungles. and these would be little basically villages or camps that the hobos would congregate in and wait for the trains to come in and out. so what kind of equipment do you need? well, basically it would come down to two things. number one would be if you were lucky enough to have a bed roll. and a bed roll would simply be a blanket, maybe you were lucky enough to have something as a pillow, although you were probably use an extra set of clothes wrapped up as a pillow and you had your bed roll and tie that with a piece of rope at the top and the bottom and loop

it through and you're able to put that over your back and pass along through that way. you could use that as a blanket, you could use it in the cold. you could use it as a cozy place to sleep in the boxcar or on the flat car. so a bed roll was pretty important. the other thing that was important was the iconic bindle stick. and this is sort of the symbol of what a hobo would have. and there is quite a bit of utility to this. number one is, because you would have a small bundle and again your mostly traveling just with a bed roll because you're hopping on and off with trains and so you can't travel with luggage and a whole budge of stuff, you have to travel light. the lighter you travel the easier it is to hop on and off the trains. so you tie yourself in a bundle like this and have a stick and what it allowed to you do was just with very little pressure

you could have balance to this depending on the length of the stick. so if you're walking long distances in between trains or off the train and now walking into the village, this was an opportunity and a good way for to you carry these bundles without it tiring yourself down too much. you could also use it as a walking stick. if you're walking long distances, you could use this to sort of, as a walking stick to work your way through and along. you could also use it as a weapon or a potential weapon. if you came across an unsavory person or such. and you could also use it as an opportunity to pull on to a train or have somebody pull you on or pull somebody on to the train as a device on helping you get on that way. so, the bindle stick had a lot of utility. sometimes at the end of the bindle stick you would have a key tied on here with a piece of string or twine or piece of leather. and the idea of the key was that you were a hobo, you had a home, you just weren't able to make

living in your home town. and so a lot of hobos would have the key to their front door and they would carry this with them as a symbol and a reminder that some day i'm going back home. some day i'm going to get back to where i came from. this is just a temporary thing. i'm not a hobo for good. i'm a hobo for the time being. so the key really important to remind them of that. let's take a look at what you might find in a hobo's bindle stick here, in the actual bundle. so they would tie this up in a kerchief or handkerchief or extra piece of cloth or clothing. and in here you're going to find some items. let's take a look at what you're going to find. you might find something that looks like this. and this was a way for them to get water. it is just nothing more than a can with a string tied to it. it is been pierced through here with a hole and you would use this to get water. so if you were going to go to a

pond or a stream or a lake, you tried not to get wet, once you got wet, especially in the fall or early spring, you stay wet. the only way to dry out was just through natural drying out, which in the meantime is going to leave you pretty cold. so to keep your feet from getting wet, to keep your sleeves from getting wet you would drop this into the stream and hit the water, pull it up and maybe not flipping like that but pull it up like that so it has weight in it and then you have access to some water so you always are something like this because you didn't want to dehydrate along the way. you also might have some matches. because you're going to light a fire when you get to the hobo village, to the jungle, to keep warm, to have some light, maybe to cook some food and some a way to start a fire was always a good thing to have. you also might have, carry with you a deck of cards.

and the cards would be used for recreational purposes. you wouldn't gamble with these because the last thing you -- first of all you don't have much to gamble with and the last thing that you want to do is get on the wrong side of somebody when you're out there kind of on your own and in the wild. so you would use these cards to play cards with other hobos or maybe solitaire with yourself to pass along the lonely hours waiting for work to come by. you might also have a piece of fruit. so if you were working for someone and they paid you with food, you would very rarely eat the food all at once while you were right there because you never knew where the next meal was coming from. so if someone paid you with fruit, if shun paid you with food, would you eat a little and save a little for along the way. now this would come in very handy back at the hobo jungle. because the hobo jungle each night would feature what was called a milligan stew. so they would live in this

jungle, this village, and during the day they would go out and find work hopefully and then come back and they would create this milligan stew and part of the hobo code was that you could have access to the stew if you contributed to the stew. and you generally got one, maybe two days of leeway. if you went out and you couldn't find any work and you came back and you didn't have anything to contribute to the stew, they would still let you eat that day and maybe the next day but if you went more than two days without bringing in, chances are you're going to be considered to be a bum. so whatever it was, you would bring it back and maybe you won't put a pear in the stew but you might slice this up and share with some of your fellow hobos as a dessert item. but if you have tomatoes or eggs, all of that went into the hobo stew. you might also carry a little candle, again just for some lighting in a box car. you have to be very careful because you don't want to set the car on fire so you would use

this sort of as a sign of last resort. you also might carry a bible with you. and the bible was carried by hobos in part for what the bible intended to do, which is give you aspiration and positive thoughts and things. so you might use it for inspiration. you also might use it as a bit of a political proper. so if you go looking for work and someone sees you're a bible reader and you're a man of the word, then they're probably going to be more likely to feel good about hiring you to do a little job around the place as case may be. you also might carry a piece of coal. and i think why would i carry coal? we have a little blackout there. i might have to light that candle. the coal would be carried with you because the idea was that, a., coal was very readily

accessible. the trains were running on coal. and with this coal you could make markings. and that is where another part of the hobo code came in. so you could use this to scratch etchings on the sidewalk, on the side of a barn and we'll talk about that more in just a minute or two. you also would carry a pocket knife. and this tool was indispensable because it allowed you a knife blade that you could open cans with, it allowed you a little bit of protection, you could cut up your pear and share it with the other hobos, you could wittle time away by whistling. you could use this knife blade to make markings in fence posts with the hobo code and we'll talk about in a second or two and it offered you protection. if anybody did mess with you, at least you had a blade that you could sort of fend them off with and such. and then the other thing that they would carry would be a can of beans. beans were the sort of go-to

meal for hobos. because they were small and they could fit in your bundle and open a can with your knife and you open it and bend over the lid and you have a little handle and put that over your fire and you have yourself a meal and the can of beans according to hobo tradition, always had no more than 239 beans per can. and the reason you only had 239 was because if you went to one more, it would be 240. so you also might have a flask that you could carry with you. and this is is for warmth purposes, to keep you warm on the cold nights and maybe a little bit of pick-me-up here or there. and you would also use it maybe to sort of a pain killer if you had a -- take a splinter out or something like that. this was not a huge thing for hobos because reb hobos were not generally drunks. they were looking to work and

willing to work and you did not want to show up at a potential job smelling like liquor, so you would use this back in the jungle as a little night cap for yourself. you have to have some fun through the course of the day. so you put this all together and you have yourself a bindle stick and you could go from place to place and town to town and you have a lot of the things that you're going need to survive. so you need economic necessity. you need a train and you need some of this hobo equipment. now a minute ago i mentioned the hobo code. there were two types of codes. one was an ethical code. and again this speaks to the fact that these hobos were people that were looking for work. and so the hobo ethical code consisted of always doing a full day's work for a full day's pay, whatever that might be. so if you say you're going to sweep out the barn, you sweep it

out like nobody's business and you do the absolute best job that you can. do you this for two reasons. number one, because that is going to put you in good stead with whoever asked to you sweep out of the barn and you might get a little extra handout and the other thing is that these hobos understood that there were many of them out there. they have these villages, these jungles and as they traveled across the country, they were literally, maybe two million of these folks. so they understood that they needed to do a good job wherever they were because after they left, another hobo would come through. and so if you cheated someone and took advantage of someone, the next hobo that came along would have a much harder time. so you always did the best job you could for what it was that you were getting your handout for. you also, when there was no employment available, then you would just sort of hang low. you didn't just hang around in town looking like a bum or

making a nuisance of yourself. when you were in the jungle, in the jungle community, you always pitched in. you wanted to pull your own weight. you wanted to be a valuable member of that society. when you were on the train, as much as possible, you acted like a member of the crew. now the bulls were there to try to get you off. but the other -- get you off the train and get you out of the way and off the property of the train company. but the crews were often traveling with less than full crews. so if you could get on the train and make yourself helpful and make yourself useful, the crew members of the train would appreciate that extra helping hand and they might, you know, step in for you when the bulls are trying to get you off the train or abusing you along the way. you always helped fellow hobos. because fellow hobos were people just like you. just like people, just like you

that were in need, that were looking for a way to make a living, looking for a way to get home. you also always tried to keep yourself as clean as possible. and the hobos refer to this as boiling up. so every chance you got, you would boil yourself up. which basically meant heat up some water and clean yourself up so that you look presentable. you didn't look like a bum. that you looked like someone that might actually be employable. and the basic idea of the hobo code was to be kind. you're out there and you're looking for work, and it is a value for value. it is a win-win. you do the work. the people get the work done for them and you get some kind of a handout. my grandmother said that during the great depression her mother ran a boardinghouse just outside of naybrook, new york, which was a big rail hub and hobos were coming to the back door looking

for some work to do. so my great grandmother maybe would give them the opportunity to cut some wood in ex change for a sandwich or beat the rugs for exchange for sleeping in the car port or the barn. so again looking for work and looking for something many exchange. that was the hobo code of ethics. but there was also another type of hobo code and that is where the knife and the coal come in handy. because what these hobos would do is they developed their own special way of communicating with each other. and they would leave messages for each other as they traveled through towns. so if the next hobo that came through could look for these messages, these symbols and they would know something about the town, you're traveling on these trains and going to places where you don't know anybody or anything going on in the towns and you're coming in completely blank so if you could come in and get some advice left by a hobo who have h been there

before, that was very, very useful to you. so they created it code and it was basically made up of symbols. so this symbol with a banana with a plus sign meant dishonest man. if this was scratched on the sidewalk, in coal out in front of the sidewalk or scratched in the fence post with a knife, you knew you were likely to be given a job but you might not get the payoff. a dishonest person. oh, sure go over there and rake up them leaves and then i'll give youa sandwich but get the leaves done first. if you saw this symbol, you want to make sure you have the sandwich from because chances are this dishonest man wasn't going to pay you. a symbol like this meant man with a gun. so if you saw this, you were on your extra guard, extra careful. this meant good water. so if you saw this carved on a tree next to a stream, you know

that was good water and you could use your cup to get some water from there. this meant they'll let you sleep in the barn. if you saw this by a farm or a work shed, they would let you sleep in the barn if you saw this symbol there as well. this was a symbol for good for a handout. so i have a feeling that this symbol was probably carve somewhere near my great grand ma's boarding home because she working for folks to help her out with some work and they were always coming from the jungle to do that. so good for a handout, pretty good for this one here. i want to share with you one that is relatively might be familiar, more familiar to you. where is it? here they are. this is one that you may have seen. this is actually kind of popular

among popular culture now. and this is kind hearted lady. so might have been another symbol that was near my grandma's boardinghouse and now you see that in some of the magazines that you send away for as a kitchen decoration and such. so if you think you're mom or your grand ma is a kind hearted lady, it is a cat with two feet in the front and a tail in the back and big ears. so kind hearted lady. this was something that you would look for. and then this meant that the person was wealthy. so if you were going to do some work for this guy, kanss are you're going to be paid in money, not food or a place to stay or a place so sleep. so this was an important thing to look out for as well. so that is the hobo code. and there were hundreds of symbols, each area of the country had even its own dialect as to what the codes might mean. generally speaking hobos were

looking for work, you found them a lot down in the south part of the country and the western part of the country. because the weather was better there and so you're going to find yourself without a place to live, you want to be in the warmer climate. who were some notable hobos. well i have a little list of some folks. jack dempsey was a hobo. woody guthrie spent some time as a hobo. jack cara wack, spent time as a hobo. the one that surprised me the most, was none other than art linkletter spent this time as a hobo during the great depression. so that show that he had, kids say the darnest things might have been hobos say the darnest things. but those were some folks who, again, looking for work and getting back on their feet and then off they go and there you are. so that is a little bit about the hobo culture.

fascinating time in american history. fascinating group of people. and there are still some of them out there, if you ever get an opportunity to talk with someone who was a hobo, you're going to learn a lot of interesting things about how to survive on the road, how to think on your feet and how to be very, very resourceful. the second part of our talk is about whoevervilles. and a hooverville was basically a shanti town. and hoover was the president when the great depression sort of struck and he happened to be the wrong guy in the wrong time and wrong place as all of the sources joined together to create the great depression and hoover was president and caught off guard. and even though he did the kinds of things that he did. he tried to have some programs and things to alleviate the suffering during the great depression, most of these things were too little and too late. so hoover historically has

gotten the blame for the great depression. and the term hooverville was actually coined by charles mitchellson who was the publicity chief for the democratic national committee in chicago and it first appeared in "the new york times" in 1930 to describe a little town of shacks that had developed just outside of chicago. and there is always been homelessness. there is still is today. but these hoovervilles were, again, the result of the great depression and very, i don't want to say popular, but certainly prominent during that time. as people lost their homes, they couldn't afford to pay mortgages and so in cities all across the country these shanty towns would spring up. and i want to share a couple of

pictures. here is a picture of a hobo family. now here is a mom and a dad and the two kids. pom looks a little embarrassed there, she doesn't want her face shown. but here is a family that is riding the rails and you could see over here, this is the bed roll i was talking about with the rope and over the shoulder it would go. so sometimes entire families would go searching for work as hobos. but in terms of hoovervilles, they would look something like this. not especially happy looking places. places with shacks, you know, shelters, built out of cardboard or tin or scrap plywood, tarps, canvas, anything that would get you out of the elements. you would find in these hoovervilles. and of course sometimes people look down at people who lived in loofrvilles. it wasn't their fault. they lost her homes. what were they going to do. they had to do something and to show the dignity of the of the folks in these towns, these

hoovervilles, i want to show you this. this is a shack, this is part of a hooverville, and you have four or five people here and this is christmastime in new york. 1938. so this is a hooverville that was in new york and it is christmastime and look at what they actually have outside of their shack so they didn't pass by the holiday season, they had a christmas tree there as well. so these were people who still had feelings, still had emotions and a tie to some sense of normalcy, they just had no place to live. now, there was a hooverville in central park that consisted of dozens of shacks. and that was right there in central park. and there was also a place over by the east river which was called lucksville which was a hooverville. that was a particularly large one consisting at one point of

over 80 shacks. so 80 folks had come to live there. there was a hooverville outside of seattle that lasted for ten years, from 1931 to 1941. and had maybe as many as 1200 residents at the peak of its occupancy. now, in may of 1933, in a result -- a response, i should say, to these multiple hoovervilles, the new deal created a program, the federal transient service and they tarted to provide shelters for people, provide food and clothing and some very simple medical care. and some training and education so they could get out of the shacks and into at least some kind of standardized housing and begin to work their way back into proper working society as the jobs were becoming more available. hoovervilles had their own governance. theres with often a mayor of

hooverville who was elected by the residents. they had their own little hooverville council, if they were going to pass laws or pass rules of living in the hooverville, these councils would go ahead and do that. they were located as i said primarily in the warmer weather areas. the south and out in the west. and in fact, california had such a problem with hoovervilles that they actually -- los angeles had a thing that they called it was came to be called the bum blockade. and the idea of this was that the l.a. police chief, a guy by the named of james-two gun-davis, with the support of congress and the public officials and the railroad officials and some state agencies, set up road blocks at 16 major points of entry into southern california for people who had no visible means of

support. so if you were coming looking for work and you had no visible means of support, and you didn't have a cousin or an uncle or somebody there that could vouch for you that they were going to give you a job, you were turned away and of course this led to a great number of hoovervilles being built just outside of these stopping points. eventually there began to be some public sympathy for these folks because they were joust down on their luck. just folks looking for work. and as that began to happen, the public tenner began to change and this idea of the bum blockade was lost support and was overturned and these hoovervilles were distributed and the folks entered into the federal transient service for help. hoovervilles also spawned their own type of languages. and their own words for things. so if you were sleeping under a

hoover blanket, a hoover blanket was nothing more than a newspaper. and you used this to keep warm, these were readily available and you could find them anyplace and that would give you more warmth. it is not as cozy as a nice blanket would be but it was better than sleeping out in the elements. so hoover blankets. you might repair your house with some hoover siding which was nothing more than cardboard. and cardboard would keep the wind out and would repel the rain. and if you had a hole in your shoe, you might repair the hole with hoover leather. nothing more than cardboard. readily available. you could find this in boxes and things and this could at least give you some protection between your foot and the actual ground. if you saw a horse and cart being pulled along, that was called a hoover wagon. because people couldn't afford cars any more.

they couldn't afford the gas. so you might hook up an old horse, an ox or something like that, to a cart and be able to move along there in your hoover wagon. and at the end of the day, whereas as the hob hobos go bac the mull van, the folks of hooverville would go back to hooverville for hoover stew. and that was nothing more than a water downed soup or watered down stew. and so you might put a small piece of ham, plenty of water, maybe some cabbage or whatever else you're able to get on, get your hands on and that would become your dinner for that night, hoover stew. so what we try to do today is to give you a little bit of a taste of what some people were going through during the great depression in the micro communities whether it was a hooverville, a hoover village,

or as hobos. hobos have become sort of rowe montic over time. the idea of riding the rails and being your own boss but it was a hard, hard life. and these were two reactions to the difficult conditions that the country found themselves in during the great depression. and of course roosevelt's main objective was to create jobs for people, that would give them, a., a paycheck and help them with stability in their life and b., it gave them a sense of purpose. so that people had a purpose to get up in the morning, a place to go, something to do. and these were hard times for folks in the 1930s. and the great depression lasted for a good long time. and these hobo culture continued on into the 1940s and 50s. in the 1960s it was kind of replaced by sort of the hitchhiker culture, sort of the same idea, some of that was based a little bit less on

economic necessity but por on the sense of adventure and get away from the authority of your parents and get out there on the open road. but those free spirits, those folks that found themselves hitchhiking to different places in the 60s can trace their roots back to the hobos of the 1930s. if you would like to learn more about the 1930s and the 1940s and the conditions that people lived in and the things that were going on at that time and the programs that the roosevelt administration brought about to help the suffering of folks in that time, please visit us on our website here at the roosevelt presidential library, or when we open again, which hopefully won't be too much longer, come and visit us here at the library. there is a great number of things to learn about and to see and to experience here either virtually as we're doing today, or by actually coming on site. and we look forward to seeing you either online or in person very, very soon. thanks, take care.

you're watching american history tv. every weekend on c-span3, explore our nation's past, american history tv on c-span3, created by america's cable television companies and today we're brought to you by these television companies who provide american history tv to viewers as a public service. weeknight this is month we're featuring american history tv programs as a preview of what is available every weekend on c-span3. congress passed the occupational safety and health act in 1970. and president nixon signed the bill into law. tonight, on "reel america," we mark the 50th anniversary with three osha films released in 1980 by the carter administration. which were later recalled by the reagan administration in 1981. we begin with occupational safety and health consultant mark catlan who helped preserve the films and make them available to the public. watch tonight, beginning at 8:00

p.m. eastern. and enjoy american history tv every weekend on c-span3. every saturday, at 8:00 p.m. earn, on american history tv on c-span3, go inside a different college classroom and hear about topics ranging from the american revolution, civil rights, and u.s. presidents to 9/11. >> thanks for your patience and for logging into class. >> with most college campuses closed due to the impact of the coronavirus. watch professors transfer teaching to a virtual setting engage with their students. >> gorbachov did most of the work to change the soviet union but reagan met him half way and supported him. >> freedom of the press, madison called it the freedom of the use of the press and it is freedom to print and publish things and not what we refer to as the press. lectures in history on

american history tv on c-span3, every saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern. lectures in history is also available as a podcast. find it where you listen to podcasts. up next on american history tv, the director of the of the herbesh hoover and franklin roosevelt talk about the 1932 campaign and the tense transition that followed. the roosevelt presidential library provided this video. >> welcome to home of the roosevelts. i'm paul sparrow, the director of the presidential library and museum and i'm joining today by director of the herber hoover presidential library museum. >> i'm tom swartz, i'm the director of the herbert hoover museum in west branch iowa. >> we're hear to talk about the most remark am transitions in american history, the presidential election of 1932 and hoover and