During the Dust Bowl, students were sent home from school to prevent “dust pneumonia”. Sometimes, students were even kept over night because it was too dangerous to walk home in the dust storms.

the dust bowl was caused partially by the great depression, due to the depression, farmers were trying to make maximum profit, so they cut down trees to get more land, planted too much, and let cattle graze too much, and that took out all the roots holding the soil together, causing the soil to loosen into dust and …

1936

Radio was an important source of news and entertainment during the Great Depression. Over the decade, the number of American households with radios grew from roughly 40 to 83 percent.

Desperate for shelter, homeless citizens built shantytowns in and around cities across the nation. These camps came to be called Hoovervilles, after the president. Hooverville shanties were constructed of cardboard, tar paper, glass, lumber, tin and whatever other materials people could salvage.

Finding food was a constant problem, and hobos often begged at farmhouses. If the farmer was generous, the hobo would mark the lane so other hobos would know it was a good place to beg. A cross — “angel food” (food served to hobos after a sermon).

bo-ette – a female hobo.

Many lost their legs or their lives. As the train was reaching its destination, the hoboes had to jump off before a new set of bulls to arrest them or beat them up. Walter Ballard was one young man who became a hobo. He remembers the Depression getting so bad that his family didn’t have enough to eat.

“I tell people the best way to enjoy traveling is always the safe way,” says Connecticut Shorty, a former hobo “queen,” as crowned at the National Hobo Convention that takes place the second week of August, every year since 1900, in Britt, Iowa. “Hopping freights is illegal and dangerous.”

The great depression of the 1930s held hardships for most American families. Distraught young and older men were forced to leave home in search of a job or something to eat. Often they rode the trains, jumping on and off (from the coal or cattle cars) wherever life might be better.

Be careful when you call a vagrant or homeless person a hobo — although this is exactly what the word means, it is a somewhat offensive term. The end of the nineteenth century brought the start of the word hobo in the Western United States.

traveling worker

By itself, “hobo” is not a negative word if it is used objectively. Someone can choose to be a hobo, an itinerant without certain means of livelihood. So, using “hobo” as a description may be just factual. However, it certain can be used pejoratively to describe someone as worthless or undesirable.

Yes it’s rude. I wouldn’t quite say vulgar as vulgar makes it sound like it’s a swear word but it’s not a nice term to call someone. Not all homeless people are visibly so in the stereotypical way. A tramp suggests someone who looks more dishevelled and literally “tramps” about so could well be offensive yes.