page_title: Refusal of work
section_title: "Hobos", "tramps", and "bums"
hierarchical_section_title: Refusal of work / Refusal of work in practice / Vagrancy / "Hobos", "tramps", and "bums"
caption_attribution_description: English: Two hobos walking along railroad tracks, after being put off a train. One carries a bindle.
context_page_description: Refusal of work is behavior in which a person refuses regular employment.
  As actual behavior, with or without a political or philosophical program, it has been practiced by various subcultures and individuals. Radical political positions have openly advocated refusal of work. From within Marxism it has been advocated by Paul Lafargue and the Italian workerist/autonomists, the French ultra-left; and within anarchism.
context_section_description: A hobo is a migratory worker or homeless vagabond, often penniless.  The term originated in the western—probably northwestern—United States during the last decade of the 19th century. Unlike tramps, who worked only when they were forced to, and bums, who did not work at all, hobos were workers who wandered.
  In British English and traditional American English usage, a tramp is a long term homeless person who travels from place to place as an itinerant vagrant, traditionally walking or hiking all year round.
  While some tramps may do odd jobs from time to time, unlike other temporarily homeless people they do not seek out regular work and support themselves by other means such as begging or scavenging. This is in contrast to:
  bum, a stationary homeless person who does not work, and who begs or steals for a living in one place.
  hobo, a homeless person who travels from place to place looking for work, often by "freighthopping", illegally catching rides on freight trains
  Schnorrer, a Yiddish term for a person who travels from city to city begging.
  Both terms, "tramp" and "hobo" (and the distinction between them), were in common use between the 1880s and the 1940s. Their populations and the usage of the terms increased during the Great Depression.
  Like "hobo" and "bum," the word "tramp" is considered vulgar in American English usage, having been subsumed in more polite contexts by words such as "homeless person" or "vagrant." In colloquial American English, the word "tramp" can also mean a sexually promiscuous female or even prostitute.
  Tramps used to be known euphemistically in England and Wales as "gentlemen of the road."
  Tramp is derived from the Middle English as a verb meaning to "walk with heavy footsteps", and to go hiking. Bart Kennedy, a self-described tramp of 1900 US, once said "I listen to the tramp, tramp of my feet, and wonder where I was going, and why I was going."
caption: Two hobos walking along railroad tracks, after being put off a train. One is carrying a bindle.
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "1100", "Image ImageLength": "1536", "Image BitsPerSample": "8", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "1", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "1", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2009:03:15 14:02:29", "Image Artist": "Library of Congress", "Image ExifOffset": "2298", "Image XPAuthor": "Library of Congress", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2009:03:15 10:31:49", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:03:15 10:31:49", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "00", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1043", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1492", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}