Free Hard Times by Studs Terkel

didn’t have no mothers or sisters, they didn’t have no home, they were dirty, they had overalls on, they didn’t have no food, they didn’t have anything.
    Sometimes we sent one hobo to walk, to see if there were any jobs open. He’d come back and say: Detroit, no jobs. He’d say: they’re hirin’ in New York City. So we went to New York City. Sometimes ten or fifteen of us would be on the train. And I’d hear one of ’em holler. He’d fall off, he’d get killed. He was tryin’ to get off the train, he thought he was gettin’ home there. He heard a sound. (Imitates train whistle, a low, long, mournful sound.)
    And then I saw a railroad police, a white police. They call him Texas Slim. He shoots you off all trains. We come out of Lima, Ohio … Lima Slim, he would kill you if he catch you on any train. Sheep train or any kind of merchandise train. He would shoot you off, he wouldn’t ask you to get off.
    I was in chain gangs and been in jail all over the country. I was in a chain gang in Georgia. I had to pick cotton for four months, for just
hoboin’ on a train. Just for vag. They gave me thirty-five cents and a pair of overalls when I got out. Just took me off the train, the guard. 1930, during the Depression, in the summertime. Yes, sir, thirty-five cents, that’s what they gave me.
    I knocked on people’s doors. They’d say, “What do you want? I’ll call the police.” And they’d put you in jail for vag. They’d make you milk cows, thirty or ninety days. Up in Wisconsin, they’d do the same thing. Alabama, they’d do the same thing. California, anywhere you’d go. Always in jail, and I never did nothin’.
    A man had to be on the road. Had to leave his wife, had to leave his mother, leave his family just to try to get money to live on. But he think: my dear mother, tryin’ to send her money, worryin’ how she’s starvin’.
    The shame I was feeling. I walked out because I didn’t have a job. I said, “I’m goin’ out in the world and get me a job.” And God help me, I couldn’t get anything. I wouldn’t let them see me dirty and ragged and I hadn’t shaved. I wouldn’t send ’em no picture.
    I’d write: “Dear Mother, I’m doin’ wonderful and wish you’re all fine.” That was in Los Angeles and I was sleeping under some steps and there was some paper over me. This is the slum part, Negroes lived down there. And my ma, she’d say, “Oh, my son is in Los Angeles, he’s doin’ pretty fair.”
    And I was with a bunch of hoboes, drinkin’ canned heat. I wouldn’t eat two or three days, ’cause I was too sick to eat. It’s a wonder I didn’t die. But I believe in God.
    I went to the hospital there in Los Angeles. They said, “Where do you live?” I’d say, “Travelers Aid, please send me home.” Police says, “O.K., put him in jail.” I’d get ninety days for vag. When I was hoboing I was in jail two-thirds of the time. Instead of sayin’ five or ten days, they’d say sixty or ninety days. ’Cause that’s free labor. Pick the fruit or pick the cotton, then they’d turn you loose.
    I had fifteen or twenty jobs. Each job I would have it would be so hard. From six o‘clock in the morning till seven o’clock at night. I was fixin’ the meat, cookin’, washin’ dishes and cleaning up. Just like you throwed the ball at one end and run down and catch it on the other. You’re jack of all trade, you’re doin’ it all. White chefs were gettin’ $40 a week, but I was gettin’ $21 for doin’ what they were doin’ and everything else. The poor people had it rough. The rich people was livin’ off the poor.
    ‘Cause I picked cotton down in Arkansas when I was a little bitty boy and I saw my dad, he was workin’ all day long. $2 is what one day the poor man would make. A piece of salt pork and a barrel of flour for us and that was McGehee, Arkansas.
    God knows, when he’d get that sack he would pick up maybe two, three hundred pounds of cotton a day,