God's Country

Below is some of my favourite short quotes on the topic of migratory workers and life on the road...

All you're doin' here's eatin'... You can git that anywhere. A stray cat gits that. Besides, you're learnin' somethin' on the road. What the devil kin you learn here?

- A one-eyed youth on his way through, from California. As quoted in Kenneth Allsopp's 'Hard Travellin'; A History of the Hobo', 1967. Original source to be clarified.

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We learned that God's Country isn't in the country. It is in the mind. As we looked back we knew all the time we was hunting for God's Country we had it. We worked hard. We was loyal. Honest. We was happy. For forty-eight years we lived together in God's country.

- Unknown pioneer migratory worker. Early 19th Century, Oklahoma. As retold and published by Martha L. Smith in 'Going to God's Country', 1941 (pages 184/186) and Kenneth Allsopp in 'Hard Travellin'; A History of the Hobo', 1967 (page 82)

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The lack of conviction among working men that they constituted a separate class. Whether skilled craftsman, Nebraska farm boy, or European peasant, the industrial worker believed his job to be only a temporary makeshift, a stepping stone to better things.

- 'The Great Experiment: An Introduction to the History of the American People', 1955, Prof. Frank Thistlethwaite, (page number to come)

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A deep inner need to escape from a known condition into an unknown condition, to remove the old and discover the new, to break restraining hands and find freedom, to renounce the too obvious 'real' for the more glitteringly 'unreal'. Stability in life has always meant sacrifice.

-My notes say 'Dr. Robert G. Van Riggle, psychiatrist, Florida Transient Service, 1935.' Unsure of quote accuracy and true origin.

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A small proportion inevitably will join the ranks of the permanent wanderers because of low mentality, lack of education and training, and unfortunate backgrounds. The majority however were those who are ready for the world, but find the world has no place for them.

- From a survey of transients in shelters, Chicago, 1932, A. W. McMillen, Chicago University. Unable to find clear origin of publication.

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All you're doin' here's eatin'... You can git that anywhere. A stray cat gits that. Besides, you're learnin' somethin' on the road. What the devil kin you learn here?

- A one-eyed youth on his way through, from California. As quoted in Kenneth Allsopp's 'Hard Travellin'; A History of the Hobo', 1967. Original source to be clarified.

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Tramping wild and windy places, without money, food or shelter was better for me than supinely bowing to any conventional decree of fate. The road gave me one jewel beyond price, the leisure to read and dream... voices calling in the night from far away places.

- 'Beggars of Life', 1924, Jim Tully

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Oh my heart is just achin', for a little bit of bacon,

a hunk of bread, a little mug of brew

I'm tired of seein' scenery

just lead me to a beanery

where there's something more than only air to chew.

- 'Bread' from 'Songs of the Outlands: Ballads of The Hobos and Other Verse", Henry Herbert Knibbs, 1914.