An Interview with Dr. Owen Clayton Uncovers How Homeless Workers Helped Build America and How We Still Profit from Their Precarity
Have you ever wondered what urban American cityscapes would look like in the present day if homeless transient workers from the past weren’t part of the picture? We recently delved deep into that discussion with Senior Lecturer Dr. Owen Clayton of the University of Lincoln in the UK. What we learned might surprise you.
Hopping a New Train of Thought: Urban Landscapes As We Know Them Could Not Have Existed without Homeless Transient Employees
Fans of classic movies will immediately recognize this scene. A tall, lean man with a cocky grin enters the night, breaking the monotony of the gray-scale backdrop that depicts him. His presence brings with it an air of danger that matches the billowing smoke in the background, a subtle hint that nearby factories are functioning. An oblong bag with a few belongings is slung over his shoulder as he hops a freight train to anywhere.
The stage is set to the tune of a whistling railroad. The implication is that he is a rebel, disregarding social norms and playing by his own rules.
In the 20th century, people matching this description were sometimes referred to as hobos, vagabonds, or tramps. But the reality of their existence is a far cry from what vintage films have shown you.
In truth, the hands of homeless transient workers built many of the structures and amenities we currently enjoy. These were the folks who toiled through laborious and unstable employment opportunities, whose very hands worked mills and cornfields, and even laid down the tracks that carried those freight trains they were seen hopping on across America, one rattling steel slate at a time.
How much of an impact did homeless people of the past have on the shape of cities across the world? Were transient workers necessary to create the stretching city skylines, towering high-rises, and underground subway systems we’ve come to rely on? These are the questions we asked Dr. Owen Clayton in earnest.
Dr. Clayton is the author of a book called “Vagabonds, Tramps, and Hobos: The Literature and Culture of US Transiency”, which primarily focuses on the first half of the 20th century in the US and illustrates the cultural productions, literature, and art created by people designated as tramps and hobos. He reflected on decades of research and reached an affirmative conclusion.
“I think it’s fair to say that transient workers built the United States, really,” said Dr. Clayton, after a brief pause, “particularly in the first half of the 20th century, once the frontier was closed in effect, and after the genocide of the Native Americans commenced. Once that horrific process ended, the West didn’t organically build itself up. The new economy needed workers to do that. It required people to lay railroad tracks, work in the mines and the mills, and cut down lumber, for example.”
“All that kind of work was being done by people who were othered and despised as transients, vagabonds, hobos, etc,” he continued. “Those workers would often talk about how when there was a need for a job, an advert would go out and they might be in Chicago and they might see that there’s work available in California that they needed to go and do. So then, they would hop a freight train, which was illegal, but it was the only way they could get there.”
While Hollywood studios implied that hobos were hopping trains to nowhere, the truth, far be it from viewers to know, is that they were hopping those trains to potential employment opportunities. Had these transient positions remained unfilled, cityscapes would be barren, barely functional spaces in the modern era, void of many positive attributes. Homeless hands played a pivotal role in producing:
- Food
- Cotton
- Steel
- Iron
- Textiles
- Building materials
- Automobiles
- Electrical equipment
- Railroad tracks, and the list goes on
Anytime you walk the streets of a major metropolitan city, you’re seeing the handiwork of homeless hands, both past and present, as today’s gig economy bears an uncanny resemblance to the transient economy that existed during the Great Recession.
Underlying Message in Urban Architecture to Homeless Transient Workers: Your Job is Done Here. Now, Get Out!
“These so-called vagabonds would travel far and wide to do that advertised work,” explained Dr. Clayton. “Then, as soon as the work was finished, they would be kicked out of California or whatever place they had traveled to, and told that if they came back, they’d be arrested for vagrancy.”
The more things change, the more they’ve stayed the same.
Hostile architecture haunts the streets of modern landscapes. Those transit systems built by “hobos” are currently adorned in steel spikes that make it impossible for homeless people to sit or lie down in public. Those towering high rises built by “tramps” are now fenced in communities, quick to enforce anti-camping policies that target unsheltered individuals, feeding them into the prison system and then spitting them back out onto the streets.
The bittersweet irony of a cityscape that remains hostile to the very same people who built it is of note. Meanwhile, the modern gig economy increasingly harkens back to the time when transient work was all that was available. Dr. Clayton connects the dots between transient work and gig work, peeling back the layers like a flat-bottom rail.
“It’s intriguing because the era when capitalism did what it was supposed to do, i.e., providing people with good, secure jobs, only really lasted about 30 years,” Dr. Clayton explained. “During that time after the Second World War, rich people got richer, but poor people got richer too.”
“However, since the late ‘70s, that’s just not happened,” he continued. “The unions tried to represent working people, but they have really struggled with protecting transient workers. The current gig economy has an awful lot of similarities to the kinds of transient jobs that were happening in the early 20th century in the US.”
Dr. Clayton elaborated, “a lot of the kind of jobs that the tramps, or as they sometimes referred to themselves, hobos, were doing, were more mobile. These people would work for a few months, maybe in a harvest field, then they might go and work in a mill, then they might go and lay some railroad track, and then do a bit of lumberjacking work. There was a bit of a cycle to it.”
“But the kind of work that people do now, maybe they move around for jobs a little less, but they’re still going around from job to job, because a lot of these jobs are not stable or offering a living wage, so people don’t stay in them very long,” he said.
“When people are not staying in jobs very long, it’s difficult for workers to organize, so they can try to increase the wages and improve the working conditions. This is ideal for the business class, frankly, because they have a transient population that comes in and out of those jobs,” Dr. Clayton continued. “In the early 20th century, the union that managed to organize transient workers, the Industrial Workers of the World, or the IWW or the Wobblies, as they’re also known, did a good job because the mainstream unions basically ignored that population.”
“Today, I think it’s fair to say that the mainstream unions have struggled as well. Although I will note that in the last couple of years, it does feel like maybe something’s changed. We’ve had Starbucks workers getting unionized and things like that. Unionizing gig work is a really positive thing, and I hope that continues,” he concluded.
Transient Nature: Modern Gig Workers Face Higher Risks of Homelessness
Today’s gig economy is a byproduct of irresponsible decisions made by people in positions of power, namely, the decision to criminalize homelessness and reward corporate greed. In exchange for refusing to pay higher wages, business owners are gifted a powerless workforce that is unable to unionize. In exchange for juggling multiple part-time employment positions, the gig workers who deliver your food, tutor your children, clean your houses, and drive you from one place to another are punished with an elevated risk of homelessness and a statistically higher likelihood of being arrested if they can’t afford their rent.
From railroad work to Uber Eats, from ride shares to harvest fields, the only thing changing is the landscape. Homeless people continue building and supporting cities that are increasingly hostile to their very existence because they have no choice.
Remind Your Local Legislators that Housing Does Solve Homelessness
The vast majority of homeless people are employed but not making enough money to live. In a world where flying cars can bring a gourmet meal to someone’s doorstep, nobody should be living without a home. Remind your local legislators that homelessness is a solvable crisis in America, and one that requires swift, non-punitive solutions.