In 1908, another sign of spring: ‘army of tramps’

“Throw out the life line

Pull in the clothes line

For the hoboes are coming to town”

AN ARMY OF TRAMPS, proclaimed a headline in the Bangor Daily Commercial on April 28, 1908. The little ditty at the top of this column introduced the story. The tramps were back as sure as dandelions. They followed the tracks of the Maine Central and the Bangor & Aroostook right to the Queen City.

“Never were there so many of them. … The haunts of the hoboes are crowded to suffocation and still they come, halting in Bangor until they have been the rounds of the hospitable homes and worn out their welcome, when they move on into the country to pester farmers with their petitions for food and frighten the farmers’ wives half to death when they appear suddenly at the backdoor,” wrote the reporter. “They are coming in on almost every train and very few of them are going out.”

Tramps could be found where the tracks ran along the Penobscot between the Water Works and upper Hancock Street, where they could get water and start a cook fire, or jump a train.

Foley Shore near the Eastern Maine General Hospital was a particularly popular spot. “Go up there any time of day and one will see the hoboes lying on the grass, playing cards, making way with bags of lunch contributed by hospitable housewives, washing socks in the river and leaving them on the rocks to dry,” said the newspaper.

Who were these men? “In this army of wanderers, there are many honest and able men,” claimed the reporter. “There are lots of people who can’t see how a man who is honest and wants to work can be out of a job long, but many of the tramps now in this city will tell you with all honesty and a manner to convince that they have tried to get work every place they have stopped and have been unable.”

These tramps didn’t appear to be “professional hoboes.” It was too early in the year, too cold for that species of bum. Most of them had been “thrown out of work,” speculated the reporter.

Many men had lost their jobs – railroad men, mill hands and a host of others – after the Panic of 1907. Undoubtedly, some had come to Maine last fall looking for logging jobs. The logging season was over and many had returned to Bangor spending all their money on liquor and other amenities until they were broke again.

Some would take jobs when the sawmills started up or when farmers were looking for help, the reporter speculated. Working on the log drives that were just getting under way was doubtful for many of them, however. They were city-bred, accustomed only to indoor work. They wouldn’t last a week. Logging contractors had complained that many of their employees last winter were foreigners and other city dwellers who were inexperienced and physically unfit for the rigorous labor of cutting down trees.

The police said this crop of tramps did not pose much of a problem to the community’s security because “they don’t do much beyond begging.” There were not many Bangoreans who would refuse a man something to eat, opined the reporter. Still, the newspaper advised, “It is a good plan to keep the back doors locked and keep the men outside, giving them the food in a paper and letting them take it away with them.” You never knew who might be a spy for a gang of thieves.

A whole mythology surrounded hoboes back then. They were scary. They might be criminals or bomb-throwing anarchists. They might set your barn on fire or break into your house at night if you didn’t give them a handout.

But there were also good tramps. There was a romantic aura surrounding them that attracted more than one frustrated store clerk or bored millworker to life on the open road. Writers as famous as Jack London tried out that life and wrote about it with an anti-capitalist bent.

Out of this fantasy world one day that spring clomped a “mysterious gigantic tramp” next to the Kennebec River at Clinton, north of Waterville, said the Commercial on April 30. Five boys ranging in age from 10 to 17 were paddling on the river above the Shawmut Dam in a small boat when it sprang a leak and swamped. The two oldest boys jumped overboard, but they made little headway steering the boat to shore. The water was cold and the river was at high pitch.

“They cried for help, but no one appeared in sight except a big tramp who was walking on the railroad track. He threw off his coat and vest and struck out for the boat, swimming with powerful strokes. Reaching the boat he yelled for the boys to pass him the painter which happened to be long and strong. Then figuring on the force of the current to a nicety, he tied the painter around his chest and struck out for the Clinton shore, working the current with such skill that he was able to make good progress,” reported the newspaper. He was a veritable “human tugboat.”

The boys were rescued and the tramp was thanked tearfully by parents and boys alike. He was rewarded with a hearty meal and a new coat, vest and hat. When asked who he was, oddly enough, he responded, “I am Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States – the world is my home.”

Then this mysterious stranger of “magnificent physique, tremendous strength and great skill,” was on his way again, possibly for Bangor, a sort of Paul Bunyan of tramps perhaps looking for a job on the drives.

wreilly@bangordailynews.net