Crossing Class Boundaries: Tramp Ethnographers and Narratives of Class in Progressive Era America

Abstract

On a late winter day in the early years of this century, Alice Solenberger met an unemployed male laborer on a Chicago street. Solenberger worked for the city’s Bureau of Charities, and she recognized the “Irishman” as one of the many seasonal workers who had applied there for work during the past winter. Although the man had worked steadily from April to October on railroads and in the harvest, Solenberger recounted, he was “unusually extravagant” this particular winter and found himself broke by December. Not the type to beg, the Irishman had applied for work at the Bureau of Charities and finally found employment in the ice harvest. Surprised to see him back in the city only a few weeks later, Solenberger asked why he was not working in the ice fields. When the man replied that he did not need to work there, Solenberger assumed that he had another job and inquired about that. To this question the laborer replied, “No, I mean I’vegot money. I don’t need to work any more” (here and two subsequent paragraphs—Solenberger 1911: 141–45).