WORK at the Research Council with Andrew Nelson, special hobo assignments to investigate female municipal lodging houses, transient camps, relief stations, co-operative colonies, the Hobo College, seemed to fill my life, but I was not completely satisfied.
Then came that awful day when a wire arrived from Ena telling me that mother’s house had burned down and that mother herself was so badly burned in the fire that she died a few hours later in a hospital. As a result of this, my baby was being sent on to me. Through the pain which I felt at the realization of mother’s death surged a sense of confusion at the thought of living with my own daughter again. I kept wondering what was wrong with me. I felt that I should be glad about that part of it, overjoyed at the thought of being re-united with her again. But I was only vaguely uneasy about it. When I tried to tell myself how glad I was, tried to repeat the things a mother is supposed to say to herself under such circumstances, I knew that I was playing a part, knew that, somehow or other, I had never really achieved motherhood in the full sense of the word.
Nevertheless, it was pleasant when she arrived in charge of a friend from the colony, to see what a sturdy, happy child she was. She seemed glad to see me, but had no special recognition of me as her mother. I was just another woman who was being friendly to her as all of the women at Home Colony had been.
We had a nice little apartment together and, out of the salary I got from my job, I was able to have a colored maid who took care of the apartment and of baby while I was away during the day.
Twelve years before I had promised Lowell Schroeder that I would spend my thirtieth birthday with him. And so, when Andrew Nelson gave me a special assignment which would take me westward again, I welcomed it.
“You’re getting to be a typical relief worker, Bertha,” Nelson said. “Every time you go out on a hobo trip, your expense account is as large as those who go by first-class train. I’m flying a great deal these days, and I don’t spend as much money as you do. Now, Chicago is the most interesting female hobo center in America, and I want you to go there without a cent and see how they treat you. I want you to try and see if they’ll give you some clothes.”
That night, penniless and ragged, I caught a fast freight for Chicago. Baby was left with the Negro maid, and, far from feeling hesitant about leaving her, I found a secret joy filling my heart as I faced again the freedom of the road.
On that trip I saw a great many men boes, but only four female. Hitch-hiking was becoming easier, apparently!
Blondie had told me that Chicago had a lot of new wrinkles in relief for women and I wanted to see for myself. I got off at the Illinois Central yards without being caught. On Michigan Avenue I stopped the first cop I saw, told him I was broke and had no place to stay, and he directed me to the federal transient bureau at 7 East Harrison Street, where the Broadway car turns.
Such a crowd there was! The intake room is on the second floor there. It was filled to overflowing with men and women. All the chairs were full and they were sitting on window sills and on suitcases. At least half of those waiting were Negroes. I waited four hours before I was called. I gave another name, told them I had hitch-hiked in from Kansas City to meet an uncle from Denver who had written he would take me home with him, but that I couldn’t find him. The girl taking the record on a blue card was just out of college. I could see in her eyes that she thought it would be a good case to work on. She gave me an appointment for an interview with a case worker, and after another two hours’ wait I was taken into a booth to see her.
She was a nice little Irish girl. I was really hungry by the time I saw her, so that my story was convincing. When she saw I was interested in the way the place worked, she told me all I wanted to know.
Chicago has now only this one federal center for transients, which is a part of the Cook County Bureau of Public Welfare, and which works closely with its other branches of relief. They have given up the Mary Dawes home, and no longer have a shelter for women. The women and families are all dealt with there on Harrison Street, and the men and boys are sent to 363 West Randolph Street, where there is a dormitory for them, and when the cases become “legitimately transient,” they are sent to camps; whites to the one near Danville, and Negroes to the one near Cairo.
The women are all given what they call “outdoor relief.” That is, they pay for a woman’s lodging at a rate not exceeding ten dollars a month (including cooking facilities) and give her ten dollars and thirty-six cents a month for food, exactly the same amount given any single person taken care of by other branches of Cook County Bureau of Public Welfare. When outdoor relief cannot be arranged quickly enough, temporary shelter is provided for a woman at Sarah Hackett Home, or with the Salvation Army, or at the Y. W. C. A.
I was sent to the latter for the night. When the interviewer was finishing my record and showing me how to fill out the single person’s affidavit now required, she noticed my clothes were in pretty bad shape and she gave me a card which admitted me to the sewing rooms at 4929 Indiana Avenue where, she said, I could make myself underwear and maybe a dress if I would put in a little time turning out some other garments.
I was jubilant as I heard of this and started out to see it for myself. It was part of the Hobo College for women plan, already bearing fruit!
There were fifty-one women sewing in a dilapidated light warehouse room there on Indiana Avenue. They were making men’s shorts, men’s shirts, panties for children. They were making clothing for themselves. Several unmarried women, noticeably pregnant, were sewing on layettes. They told me that if they made one layette for someone else they could make one for themselves and also get the materials to make their own hospital gowns and robes. They were all on the same basis as I, on rent and food relief, and they were given a dollar a week for twenty-four hours’ sewing and allowed to fit out their own wardrobes.
I made myself underwear and a cotton dress, and got started on men’s shirts under the direction of a fine old tailor.
Then one day the case worker called me in and glowered at me, as she shook me by the arm.
“Why did you lie to us?” she said. “The information you gave me was just one pack of lies. When we have helped you, and given you board, lodging and clothes—why did you do it?”
Somehow or other they had found out who I was, and so I was off again. I didn’t mind, for it was time for me to leave anyway, in order to keep my engagement with Schroeder.
By hitch-hiking I made St. Louis for my birthday. By a little maneuvering Lowell Schroeder had arranged for his wife (recently acquired) to be out of town, and I had him all to myself. He was greyer and broader than when I last knew him, but of the same gracious manner and authoritative way of speaking.
I told him about my job, about Jordan, the baby, and Big Otto and the Globe. He sat in the big chair in the living room, his fine old face gleaming with understanding and interest.
“Besides my job, I’m secretary—or janitor—for the Unemployed Women’s Education Association. I get a small salary out of that, and do about a dozen other things. My chief interest just now is the Women’s Hobo College. All of the expenses, about five hundred dollars a month, are paid by the chief. He doesn’t want his name known.”
“What’s he like?” Schroeder asked.
“He robbed the rich; he knows it. Legally, lawfully, legitimately, with the aid and the encouragement of the government. He’s interested in saving his soul, and he’s got one. And so he pays our Female Hobo College expenses and has left us fifty thousand dollars in his will.”
“Bertha,” he asked seriously, “how do you explain your polygamous or varietaristic nature? You’ve had more sweethearts than I’ve had, and you seem loyal and devoted to all of them. And, although I know you have plenty of men, I am sure they do not fill your life. Do they? Does your child satisfy your nature?”
“No, men don’t satisfy me any more than my baby does. I’m afraid of Baby. I don’t know why, but just recently I made up my mind to settle down in New York and become a real mother, but I just couldn’t do it. Why am I afraid of my child? Why do I want more than one man? I am truly married to the box cars. There’s something constantly itching in my soul that only the road and the box cars can satisfy. Jobs, lovers, a child—don’t seem to be able to curb my wanderlust.”
“I’m in the same boat,” he confessed. “The more I learn about unemployment, the more unemployed. The more I contribute to anti-war causes, the more wars. The more college graduates and professors, the more uncertainty. The more we know of the inconsistencies and injustices of capitalism, the more powerful it becomes. You know I’ve made a lot of money in the last few years—a half a million dollars on one land deal. But it doesn’t satisfy me any more than the things you have done satisfy you. As for you, in spite of your agnostic parents, you inherited a deep religious nature. You’re a religious mystic, a Christian anarchist riding in a box car to find God. Whenever you go out tramping, on freights or hitch-hiking, you’re running away from something, and looking for something at the same time.”
“Where can I find it, Lowell?” I asked.
“Go back to New York,” he said seriously. “Settle down and let your daughter bring you up.”
For a long time we sat in silence. Then I took his hand and held it tightly.
“There’s something I want you to do, Lowell,” I said. “Something for me and for the thousands like me. You have money. Put our Hobo Colleges and my other schemes in your will.”
“And so you’ve turned gold-digger, have you?” he smiled.
“Yes, if you want to put it that way. I thought I wanted to be a missionary to the hoboes. I see now that outside of feeding and clothing them, nothing can be done worthwhile without changing our economic system. And now the great dear public wants the capitalistic system. I hope it won’t always be so. Then I wanted to help the social workers and the social scientists. But the more I investigate, the more convinced I am that they are but cheap, unenlightened tools in the hands of a powerful system.”
I stopped, but he put his arm about me, encouraging me.
“Go on, Bertha,” he said.
“You said you cleaned up a half million dollars on that big land deal. The first thing you do is to get a hundred thousand dollars in cash, put it in a big scavenger wagon, go down to the hobo district, the slums, the ghetto, the Negro tenements, and have a couple of men shovel the money from the wagon right out into the crowds of poor and let them scramble for it. And, Lord! I want to be there to see it.
“Give a hundred thousand dollars to the Hobo Colleges, men and women. Give them big buildings where they can be warm and comfortable, where they can write poetry and dream, and wash and mend their clothes, bathe and loaf in comfort; and where they can cook their food.
“Give a hundred thousand dollars to buy scholarships to State Colleges and Universities for prisoners. Every year let them have an examination in the State Penitentiary and get the governor to pardon the prisoners who can pass an entrance examination to the colleges. There are thousands of men in jail who ought to be transferred to colleges. It would be an inspiration to all the prisoners and it would do the respectable college students a lot of good.”
Schroeder broke in with a laugh. “What would you say to transferring some of the students to the penitentiary?”
“Fair exchange,” I said, and went on. “Give your family what you think won’t hurt them, but distribute a hundred thousand dollars among the various propaganda movements, the unemployed, the anarchist, socialist, communist, free love, free speech and prisoners’ aid movements. Your money won’t do them any good, but it will be a fine example. At least you can prove to the world that you weren’t a fourflusher and a liar. When a man leaves money to the church, it proves that Christianity was important to him. And if you leave money to the radical movement, it will prove that the radical movement was important to at least one man with money.”
Long after Lowell had gone to sleep that night I lay awake staring into the dark, thinking. In my heart I knew, of course, that I must do what he had told me to do—settle down and be a mother to my child. He had said that I had been running away from something and suddenly I realized what it was—I had been trying to escape my own natural need to be responsible for someone, to live for someone else, some special individual person who belonged peculiarly to myself. For years I had told myself that I didn’t want to be tied down, that I wanted to keep myself free to help others, to uplift the vast mass of struggling humanity. And I knew now that I had been rationalizing my need to be a mother, dissipating it over the face of the earth when its primary satisfaction lay within reach of my own arms.
Oh, I would go on with my work, with my plans. I would do bigger things and better things for the poor and the homeless than I have ever foreseen, but first I would set my own house in order. First I would satisfy my need to do my own peculiar job. When I finally went to sleep it was with a feeling of eagerness for a new day, which would take me back to my child—and into a new life.
The next morning when Schroeder said good-bye to me, he handed me an envelope. He had drawn up the will according to my plans, and had made Andrew Nelson and me executors.
“What are you going to do, Bertha?” he asked.
“Oh, darling, I’m going home,” I said eagerly. “I’m going home to my baby. It sounds silly, but I feel as though I were going home for the first time in my life!”
“Bless you, dear,” he said, and kissed me.
Schroeder provided me with a first-class ticket and a Pullman. I was so glad to be alone, so much in a hurry to get there, and I didn’t want any interruptions to my thoughts. Crazily I found one of the Home Colony hymns going through my head: “Fm saved, I am. I know I am. I don’t give a damn ‘cause I know I am.”
Mile after mile, hour after hour, I sat almost in a trance. As the thundering rushing wheels carried me nearer to my child, and it seemed to me that they were carrying me not merely from St. Louis to New York, but from an old and worn-out past, to a new and shining future.
I woke from my reverie as the train came into the Pennsylvania Depot in New York. It was all so strange, but it was true. And it was now all so clear. Everything I had ever struggled to learn I found I had already surmised. Before I had ever hoboed a mile I knew what it was like. All of my experiences with the vagrants, criminals, sex variants, radicals and revolutionists merely clarified that which I had always known or felt.
All that I had learned in these fifteen deep, rich years was a little sociology and economics, types, classifications and figures. A college student could learn it all in a semester, or in a textbook. But I had achieved my purpose—everything I had set out in life to do I had accomplished. I had wanted to know how it felt to be a hobo, a radical, a prostitute, a thief, a reformer, a social worker and a revolutionist. Now I knew. I shuddered. Yes, it was all worthwhile to me. There were no tragedies in my life. Yes, my prayers had been answered.
I was radiant as I stepped off the platform into the arms of the chief. He was holding my baby by the hand. I was startled … She was such a large, beautiful, blueeyed, redheaded, happy young lady, and only eight years old.
Andrew Nelson met us at the gate. “Well, Box Car Bertha, what’s new? You look as if you had been riding the cushions over the mountains with a couple of angels.”
“I have,” I answered, “—with a whole flock of them!”