Riding the Rails Teenage Hobos during the Great Depression

Many people forced off the farm heard about work hundreds of miles away ... or even half a continent away. Often the only way they could get there was by hopping on freight trains, illegally. More than two million men and perhaps 8,000 women became hoboes. At least 6,500 hoboes were killed in one year either in accidents or by railroad "bulls," brutal guards hired by the railroads to make sure the trains carried only paying customers. Finding food was a constant problem. Hoboes often begged for food at a local farmhouse. If the farmer was generous, the hobo would mark the lane so that later hoboes would know this was a good place to beg. Millie Opitz remembers hoboes coming to her neighborhood.

The list of people who rode the rails includes many later became famous –

• Novelist Louis L'Amour
• TV host Art Linkletter
• Oil billionaire H. L. Hunt
• Journalist Eric Sevareid
• Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

All, at one time, had been hoboes, looking for work.

Riding the rails was dangerous. The bulls were hired to keep hoboes off trains, so you couldn't just go to a railroad yard and climb on. Most hoboes would hide along the tracks outside the yard. They'd run along the train as it gained speed, grab hold and jump into open boxcars. Sometimes, they missed. Many lost their legs or their lives. As the train was reaching its destination, the hoboes had to jump off before a new set of bulls to arrest them or beat them up.

But no amount of clubbing or shooting could keep all of the hoboes off the trains. In many cases, the hoboes had no other choice but to hop a freight and look for work.