Harry McClintock and the Hobo Ethos

The texts of McClintock’s three songs, “The Bum Song,” “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum,“ and “The Big Rock Candy Mountain” are appended in the form in which he sang them in 1928. I have added as well The Little Red Songbook lyrics of “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum,” the words of Al Jolson’s version of the same song, and a field transcription of “The Apple-Knocker’s Lament” (a variant of “The Big Rock Candy Mountain”).


     Hobos are, I suppose, very nearly obsolete nowadays, though the newspapers still sometimes refer to a crime suspect by the sinister name of “drifter,” glad perhaps to make it clear that he is not a local resident. The closest equivalent in America today is the homeless person, an apparition from whom many middle-class people shrink, as though misfortune might be contagious. Yet in the earlier twentieth century America’s cultural attitude toward hobos was more friendly, even at times admiring, and this sympathy was recorded in songs and stories.
     People had been ranging across the country in search of work ever since the construction of the railroads made free if hazardous travel an option. The population of internal migrants seeking work intensified after the demobilizations at the end of the Civil War. Estimates of the number of Americans forced on the road by poverty during the Great Depression range from one to two million, a good share of them children. During the thirties everyone was familiar with vagrants and beggars; their jungles were often large and well-established shantytowns. Enough people were traveling about to generate a culture of their own with laws, songs, and customary practices. Indeed, under the ironic name Tourist Union #63, hobos are reported to have held national conventions as early as 1889. [1]
     Perhaps the most dramatic sign of society’s sometime sympathy for hobos is the Chaplin tramp character which the comedian first assumed in Mabel’s Strange Predicament (1914). Chaplin rapidly became the biggest star in Hollywood, celebrated around the world. Constantly struggling against bosses and police, Chaplin’s character clearly had a subversive edge to which audiences (and the government) responded. [2] Emmett Kelly conceived the idea of the hobo circus clown years before he realized the character in performance in the late thirties. [3] Apart from his work with Ringling Brothers, Kelly also appeared at the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Ebbets Field as mascot of the “Bums.” [4]
     In general sympathetic attention to the poor takes the form of pity and indignation. But the ethos culturally constructed about the figure of the hobo was often positive. Hobos were seen as the embodiment of such American values as freedom and individualism, their lifestyle a matter of choice, not a cruel necessity of an unjust system. Thus, the first of the rules in the suspect document purporting to be the Hobo Ethical Code passed by the Tourist Union #63 in 1889 is sometimes printed as “Decide your own life; don’t let another person run or rule you.” [5]
     This attitude on the part of transients or of their admirers suggests at the same time a critique of accepted social values. The happy hobo, looking after himself alone, casts into question the stability and responsibility of the family man. The hobo’s willful refusal to pursue a career flouts the importance of the work ethic and the definition of success by income. More radically, it criticizes the relation of owner and worker under capitalism. The hobo has not “sold out,” and thus remains free of control by those with money.
     These themes are all present in the seminal works of the hobo ethos, a group of three songs recorded in 1928 by Harry McClintock. [6] McClintock, also known as “Haywire Mac” and “Radio Mac,” claimed to be the author as well as the performer of “The Bum Song,” “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum” and “The Big Rock Candy Mountain.” McClintock had earned his bona fides as a bum with years of migrant labor as well as activism in the I.W.W., the only left group that sought to organize the homeless proletariat. In the late 1920s he recorded a number of tunes, a mixture of his own compositions, folk, and popular songs including three that were instrumental in shaping the hobo ethos: “The Bum Song,” “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum, and “The Big Rock Candy Mountain.”
     “The Bum Song” was popular enough in 1928 that, following McClintock’s release, it was covered that same year by at least six other artists. [7] The song accurately reflects its author’s heroic range. He is truly an epitome of America both geographically and in terms of work experience. “I beat my way from Frisco Bay to the rockbound coast of Maine/ To Canada and Mexico, then wandered back again.” He describes run-ins with police and railroad bulls and rejection by housewives, yet his spirit is irrepressible. His “troubles pale” when he “hit[s] the trail.” Turning down jobs that do not appeal to him, he enjoys a grand camaraderie with others on the road. “For we are three bums, three jolly old bums, we live like royal Turks/ We have good luck in bummin' our chuck and we never bother to work.” The type of hobo as happy wanderer, here on the grandest of scales, coast to coast, surviving risky encounters and making his way by his wits, is here clearly established.
     While the persona of the “Bum Song” lists a range of employment that reflects McClintock’s own, in a hint of the revolutionary potential of the hobo ethos, it also includes one incident of his refusing work when offered inadequate wages. The element of social protest is far from incidental for McClintock. He was a lifelong member of the revolutionary anarcho-syndicalist union the I.W.W. and edited their Little Red Songbook (1909) which included an agit-prop version of “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum” blaming “the boss” for poverty and envisioning a time when “I get all the money I earn,/ The boss will be broke, and to work he must turn.” Yet the notion of a hobo by choice, happily embracing a free lifestyle, persists in the very title and chorus as well as in the verse “when springtime it comes, oh, won't we have fun;/ We'll throw off our jobs, and go on the bum.”
     In the version of “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum” McClintock recorded in 1928 the radical content has become comparatively inconspicuous. What had been the opening challenge “How the hell can I work when there's no work to do?” has slipped down to the sixth verse and the vision of a better future is absent altogether. Instead of criticizing capitalism for the misery it produces, the hobo here delights in his chosen lifestyle. “Rejoice and be glad for the Springtime has come/ We can throw down our shovels and go on the bum.” While the lines protesting low wages remain “Why don't you save all the money you earn/ If I didn't eat, I'd have money to burn,” the recorded song concludes by blaming the hobo himself for his poverty: “I don't like work and work don't like me/ And that is the reason I am so hungry.”
     Again, the song was so popular that other versions appeared by at least seven artists followed a few years later by a movie of the same name. [8] Each of these emphasized the joy and independence of the hobo life, yet retained a remnant of social critique in the simple rebellion against the routine of work and the lure of that vestige of the American frontier, the open road.
     McClintock’s third contribution to the hobo ethos, “The Big Rock Candy Mountain,” is at once the most famous of his tunes and in a sense the least understood. The song was recorded many times and topped the Billboard country chart for a time in 1939 in a yodeling rendition by Robert “Tex” Morton. Generally (as in versions by Bing Crosby, Pete Seeger, Burl Ives, or the New Christy Minstrels) the song is a high-spirited wish-fulfilment, its comedy heightened in the semi-authentic renderings by the combination of infantile raw appetite with tastes that run to cigarettes and whiskey. The point is further highlighted by the attractions of not only blind railroad bulls, but also open-door jails, and -- best of all -- you never have to change your socks. The linkage of the desires of an eight-year-old with those of an adult is an entertaining twist on the theme of transient as free man.
     This combination is notably more sinister in light of what McClintock claimed to be the original narrative in which the song is a dramatic moment. When he sued to establish his ownership of the song’s copyright, as part of his evidence McClintock quoted lyrics that he had not recorded.


The punk rolled up his big blue eyes
And said to the jocker, "Sandy,
I've hiked and hiked and wandered too,
But I ain't seen any candy.
I've hiked and hiked till my feet are sore
And I'll be damned if I hike any more
To be buggered sore like a hobo's whore
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains."


The beguiling picture of a land of plenty is then in reality part of a campaign by an older tramp (the jocker) to seduce a young man (the punk). [9] The validity of this view of the song is attested not only by its author but also by other versions including similar sexual language which have been collected by folklorists, both as “The Big Rick Candy Mountain” and as “The Apple-Knocker’s Lament.” In addition, there is ample testimony concerning such predatory relationships from others who spent time on the road beginning with Josiah Flynt, similar to those reported. The song, then, was an in-joke, a hobo’s satiric picture of one type among their number, making his pitch as what some have called a situational homosexual, such as those sometimes found in prisons and on shipboard.
     This treatment of the joys of hobo life not as the choice of a free spirit but rather as a cynical fraud designed to take advantage of naïve youth is a salutary reminder of the actual rigors of homelessness. In fact, make-do sexual arrangements, sometimes involving coercion, while ugly, were hardly more so than the filth, disease, hunger, and danger tramps faced daily.
     For the citizen to whom the hobo is totally Other, he must be either the object of social work and charity or the outcast semi-criminal, yet, at a time when many people felt themselves little above the status of transient workers, these identities played little role in popular culture’s view of such men. The hobo ethos in America has instead two somewhat contradictory elements. On the one hand, the hobo is an emblem of the free man, unattached to job or family, glorying in his autonomy and philosophically scornful of worldly goods. As such he approaches other bohemian ideals, appealing to the romantic impulses of those with more constraining responsibilities, yet attracting as well some who actually lived rough. On the other, he is the victim of selfish capitalists who keep for themselves far more than they can enjoy while others, such as the hobo, must do without. He must suffer hunger, uncertainty, cold, and legal jeopardy while he wishes only for a job that pays a living wage. Here the hobo is the vanguard of the working class whose life clarifies the system that dominates his steady-working brother as well. Somewhere behind both the popular images of the celebrating hobo and the protesting hobo one may seek the nitty-gritty real hobo enduring privations and ignominy, indeed, often risking his freedom and his very life in a struggle for survival that had to be renewed daily.



1. The story is that men with union cards were sometimes treated more decently than others by law enforcement officers who might consider them more likely honest working men. I have found varying facts and little documentary evidence for the hobo organization during the nineteenth century. After the affiliation with the town of Britt, Iowa, which continues to host hobo conventions today, the record is clearer.

2. Chaplin had applauded the Russian Revolution and later wrote admiring accounts of Soviet society. He had been a fellow traveler, closely observed by the F.B.I., for many years before he was blacklisted as a Communist in 1948.

3. Among the most familiar hobo clown performers since are Don Burda’s Homer and Red Skelton's "Freddy the Freeloader." A sort of epigone of the genre is Jackie Gleason’s role in Gigot, directed by Gene Kelly, a sentimental and pretentious fable considered by its star (who had conceived the project) to be great art.

4. The bum nickname originated with a cartoon by Willard Mullin of the New York World Telegram in 1939. The romance of the road was already subject to ironic treatment by 1941 when Preston Sturges made Sullivan’s Travels. Among the belated cultural vestiges of the heroic hobo is Chaplin’s Limelight (1952) in which he plays a tramp comedian. In 1965 Roger Miller had a hit with his “King of the Road.” Even later John Prine’s “The Hobo” (1978), later covered by Johnny Cash, asks where have the hobos gone, lamenting their disappearance as a loss of freedom. Tom Waites and Bob Dylan have both cultivated a hobo history.

5. There are varying texts, usually claiming that the rules were passed in 1889 in St. Louis. I have not seen any documentary evidence supporting these details. The popularity of the rules and their proliferation online makes the investigator suspicious. The existence of hobo courts to which the code makes reference is confirmed by some testimony, irregular and even exceptional as such proceedings may have been. I suspect that the elaborate system of hieroglyphic signs by which hobos are said to have communicated with each other, while it may contain a seed of truth, is largely journalistic invention.

6. in an extraordinary career, McClintock, called “Haywire Mac,” exemplified the itinerant worker. He not only recorded a number of classic American roots songs; he also worked as a miner, on the railroad, as a cowboy, in a circus, as a sailor and in China and the Philippines during wartime. There is some doubt about the extent of McClintock’s originality in these songs, portions of which may have been circulating orally before his versions.

7. Frank Luther, “Lazy" Larry (Frank Marvin), Vernon Dalhart (Marion Try Slaughter), Eddie Kirk (Ed Kirkeby), Jack Kaufman, and "Hobo" Jack Turner (Ernest Hare).

8. Vernon Dalhart, Al Jolson, Jack Kaufman, Frank Luther, Hobo Jack Turner, and Pete Wiggins 1928. In 1933 Lewis Milestone made a film called Hallelujah, I’m a Bum written by Ben Hecht and S. N. Behrman with Al Jolson in which the star sang the song. Doubtless due to the movie, the song enjoyed a revival and a number of recordings by various artists that year. The Al Jolson revision includes topical references to John D. Rockefeller and to Chevrolet and the simile “the moon’s your chandelier” clearly originating in Tin Pan Alley.

9. References in fact predate Flynt’s full discussion in his 1899 volume Tramping with Tramps. Nels Anderson, the leading early sociologist studying hobos says flatly “all studies indicate that homosexual practices among homeless men are widespread.” (The Hobo: the Sociology of the Homeless Man, 1923). Most writers who actually rode the rails, including Hemingway and London, reported scenes of pedophilia and sexual aggression. Finally, rule 13 of the Hobo Code of Conduct reads “Do not allow other hobos to molest children; expose all molesters to authorities…they are the worst garbage to infest any society.”




“The Bum Song” Harry McClintock

Come all you jolly jokers and listen while I hum
A story I'll relate to you of the great American bum
>From the east to west, the north to south, like a swarm of bees they come
They sleep in the dirt and wear a shirt that's dirty and full of crumbs

Oh, it's early in the morning and the dew is off the ground
The bum arises from his nest and gazes all around
>From the boxcar and the haystack he gazes ev'rywhere
He never turns back upon his tracks until he gets a square

I beat my way from Frisco Bay to the rockbound coast of Maine
To Canada and Mexico, then wandered back again
I've met town clowns and harnessed bulls as tough as a cop could be
And I've been in ev'ry calaboose in this land of liberty

I've topped the spruce and worked the sluice and taken a turn at the plough
I've searched for gold in the rain and cold and worked on a river scow
I've dug the clam and built the dam and packed the elusive prune
But my troubles pale when I hit the trail a-packin' my old balloon

Oh, standin' in the railroad yards awaitin' for a train
Waitin' for a westbound freight, but think it's all in vain
Goin' east they're loaded, goin' west sealed tight
I think we'll have to get aboard the fast express tonight

Oh, lady, would you be kind enough to give me something to eat
A piece of bread and butter and a ten foot slice of meat
A piece of pie or custard to tickle me appetite
But really I'm so hungry, I don't know where to sleep tonight

SPOKEN:
BUM: Good morning, mum
LADY: Good morning, bum
BUM: I just got in
LADY: Yes, well you can just get out again
BUM: But lady, I'm trav'lin'
LADY: Well, keep right on travellin', who's keepin' ya?
BUM: Honest, mum, I don't know where me next meal is comin'
LADY: And did ya think this was an information bureau?
BUM: Lady, haven't you a bite to eat in the house?
LADY: I have that, and a six foot Irishman comin' home at five o'clock to eat it. On your way now.
BUM: All right. Goodbye, mum.
LADY: Goodbye, bum.

Oh, sleeping against the station, tra-la-la-la-la-lation
That's our recommendation, hurrah-herree-harrum
For we are three bums, three jolly old bums, we live like royal Turks
We have good luck in bummin' our chuck and we never bother to work

I met a man the other day I never had met before
He asked me if I wanted a job shovellin' iron ore
I asked him what the wages were and he said, "Ten cents a ton"
I said, "Old fellah, go chase yourself, I'd rather be on the bum"

Oh, sleeping in the pokies, oggie-oggie-oggies
Smokin' snipes and stogies, hurrah-herree-herrum
For we are three bums, three jolly old bums, we live like royal Turks
We have good luck in bummin' our chuck, God bless the man that works



“Hallelujah, I’m a Bum” Harry McClintock 1909 Little Red Songbook version

Why don't you work like other folks do?
How the hell can I work when there's no work to do?
Refrain
Hallelujah, I'm a bum,
Hallelujah, bum again,
Hallelujah, give us a handout
To revive us again.
Oh, why don't you save all the money you earn?
If I didn't eat, I'd have money to burn.
Whenever I get all the money I earn,
The boss will be broke, and to work he must turn.
Oh, I like my boss, he's a good friend of mine,
That's why I am starving out on the bread line.
When springtime it comes, oh, won't we have fun;
We'll throw off our jobs, and go on the bum.



“Hallelujah, I’m a Bum” Harry McClintock recorded version

Rejoice and be glad for the Springtime has come
We can throw down our shovels and go on the bum
Hallelujah, I'm a bum, Hallelujah, bum again
Hallelujah, give us a handout to revive us again

The Springtime has come and I'm just out of jail
Without any money, without any bail
Hallelujah, I'm a bum, Hallelujah, bum again
Hallelujah, give us a handout to revive us again

I went to a house and I rapped on the door
And the lady says, "Bum, bum, you've been here before"
Hallelujah, I'm a bum, Hallelujah, bum again
Hallelujah, give us a handout to revive us again

I like Jim Hill, he's a good friend of mine
That is why I am hiking down Jim Hill's main line
Hallelujah, I'm a bum, Hallelujah, bum again
Hallelujah, give us a handout to revive us again

I went to a house and I asked for some bread
And the lady says, "Bum, bum, the baker is dead"
Hallelujah, I'm a bum, Hallelujah, bum again
Hallelujah, give us a handout to revive us again

Why don't you work like other men do
Now, how can I work when there's no work to do
Hallelujah, I'm a bum, Hallelujah, bum again
Hallelujah, give us a handout to revive us again

Why don't you save all the money you earn
If I didn't eat, I'd have money to burn
Hallelujah, I'm a bum, Hallelujah, bum again
Hallelujah, give us a handout to revive us again

I don't like work and work don't like me
And that is the reason I am so hungry
Hallelujah, I'm a bum, Hallelujah, bum again
Hallelujah, give us a handout to revive us again



Hallelujah, I’m a Bum” Al Jolson version

Rockefeller's busy giving dough away;
Chevrolet is busy making cars;
Hobo, you keep busy when they throw away
Slightly used cigars.
Hobo, you've no time to shirk.
You're busy keeping far away from work.
The weather' s getting fine.
The coffee tastes like wine.
You happy hobo, sing,
"Hallelujah, I'm a bum again!"
Why work away for wealth
When you can travel for your health?
It' s spring, you hobo, sing,
"Hallelujah, I'm a bum again!"
Your home is always near.
The moon's your chandelier;
Your ceiling is the sky,
Way up high.
The road is your estate,
The earth your little dinner plate;
It's spring, you hobo, sing,
"Hallelujah, I'm a bum again!"

Why don't you work like other folks do?
How the hell can I work when there's no work to do?
[ALTERNATE LAST LINES: How the hell can I work when the sky is so blue?
OR: How can I get a job when you're holding down two?]
CHORUS:
Hallelujah, I'm a bum,
Hallelujah, bum again,
Hallelujah, give us a handout
To revive us again.
Oh, why don't you save all the money you earn?
If I didn't eat, I'd have money to burn.
Whenever I get all the money I earn,
The boss will be broke, and to work he must turn.
Oh, I like my boss, he's a good friend of mine,
That's why I am starving out on the breadline.
When springtime it comes, oh, won't we have fun;
We'll throw off our jobs, and go on the bum.



The Big Rock Candy Mountain (Harry McClintock

One evening as the sun went down
And the jungle fires were burning,
Down the track came a hobo hiking,
And he said, "Boys, I'm not turning
I'm headed for a land that's far away
Besides the crystal fountains
So come with me, we'll go and see
The Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
There's a land that's fair and bright,
Where the handouts grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night.
Where the boxcars all are empty
And the sun shines every day
And the birds and the bees
And the cigarette trees
The lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
All the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs
The farmers' trees are full of fruit
And the barns are full of hay
Oh I'm bound to go
Where there ain't no snow
Where the rain don't fall
The winds don't blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
You never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol
Come trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats
And the railway bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew
And of whiskey too
You can paddle all around it
In a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
The jails are made of tin.
And you can walk right out again,
As soon as you are in.
There ain't no short-handled shovels,
No axes, saws nor picks,
I'm bound to stay
Where you sleep all day,
Where they hung the jerk
That invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
....
I'll see you all this coming fall
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains



The Big Rock Candy Mountain (3) The Apple-knocker’s Lament

On a very fine day in the month of May
A great big bum (big burly) came hiking
And he seated his pratt (himself) 'neath a big green tree
Which was very much to his liking.

On the very same day in the month of May
A farmer's lad came hiking.
Said the bum to the son, "If you will come,
I'll show you some sights to your liking.

"I'll show you the bees in the cigarette trees,
The big rock candy mountains,
The chocolate heights where they give away kites
And the sody-water fountains.

"The lemonade springs where the bluebird sings,
The marbles made of crystal.
We'll join the band of Dangerous Dan
Who carries a sword and a pistol."

So the bum set out with the lad at his back.
For six long months they travelled,
Then the boy came back on the very same track
And this (sad) tale (he) unravelled.

"There are no bees in the cigarette trees,
No big rock candy mountains,
No chocolate heights where they give away kites,
Or sody-water fountains.

"No lemonade springs where the bluebird sings,
No marble made of crystal.
There is no such man as Dangerous Dan
Who carries a sword and a pistol.

"He made me beg and steal his eggs (sit on his peg)
And he called me his jocker.
When I didn't get pies he blacked my eyes
And called me his apple-knocker.

"No more I'll roam from my very fine home.
I'll save my junkerino.
You can bet your lid that this old kid
Won't be no one else's punkerino."

note: A typescript copy of this is No. 377 in the Robert C. Gordon
Inferno in the Library of Congress, sent to Gordon by Wheaton
H. "Skin" Brewer of Lebanon, Oregon, in 1927 under the title of
"The Appleknocker's Lament."