We hit for the edge of town and hid our car from our friends. Then we went out to the jungle, where the three Negroes and the two white men were located. I had to go by and get a couple of dollar bills changed into nickels and dimes so I could make a good pretence of being a panhandler. It wa then about eight-thirty or nine o'clock, and pitch dark.

Our friends were all there, and we had been so frightened by the "Star of Hope" incident that we hadn't gotten anything to eat. However, I informed my brethren that I had been able to chisel one dollar and forty-five cents, and that we would have enough money for breakfast. They all assured me that they had had a hard day, and that no one had any money, and the thing we ought to do was to go out and buy some supper.

I was very much disappointed because I wanted to have the experience of eating jungle chow. But they had been so used to living on jungle chow that they insisted on using my dollar and forty-five for us to go to a restaurant, and we could eat breakfast in camp in the morning. So we went to a cheap chink joint where we sat, separately, the colored men on one side, and the white on the other, eating hamburgers, plenty of onions, pickles, mustard, and coffee.

Undernourishment and malnutrition suffered by the transient population, unemployment and their children, will be indicated in bad health, insanity, and tuberculosis, for generations. It will be like the aftermath of a war, for only a small per cent of the disabled suffer from battle wounds. The depression has marred the race.

Later that night we returned to our dugout. Since I was a neophyte, they made me sleep on the ground. I did not do much sleeping. I do not know whether the Bayou rose or whether it went down, but all night long I trouble-slept with a tough dream every five minutes. The "stove" was made of a huge garbage can, and was in the middle of the dugout. Holes were punched in the side for air so the fire would burn. Hunks of coal picked up on the tracks, and pieces of wood and brush were thrown into it. Everyone else was soon snoring. The fire burned rather furtively, I thought.

I got up and sat close to the garbage can. For a long time I sat there. I kept looking at the embers through the holes in the can.

I dozed.

Suddenly the great god Baal rose screaming in the fire. Yea verily, sayeth the Lord, it is the abomination of Moab. . . . I looked closely at Baal, and he was no longer the bad devil I had seen in my Sunday School books; he was a great monster of steel . . . wheels grinding and roaring . . . and I will set my face against man, and yea verily, I will cut him off from his people; because he hath given his seed unto Moloch, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name. . . . Moloch! That was it, civilization burning like the children of Israel in the fires of Moloch . . . rot . . . war . . . and the king commanded that the vessels of Baal be brought forth, and he burned them . . . and he brake down the house of the Sodomites . . . and yea, he brake down the images. . . . Now listen, Baal, you have on your head some dollar marks, too. . . . He clanged a great bell like a train, and blew a whistle. . . . So much like a train. . . . I am Machinery, I am Power unregulated, I am Money uncontrolled, I am War . . . I am Death. Stop! Stop! I yell. . . .

A train in the yards was screeching and clanging.

"Say, whasa matter wid you all? Go to bade. Is you crazy? You all is dreamin'. Go to bade."

I looked at the can, now full awake. I thought, awake.

Yes, the Fires of Moloch. Baal. Power. Machinery. Concentrated finance. Gold. Unemployment. Labor saving devices? Yes, for the banker and industrialist. They save the labor, man goes hungry. Heavy Industry.

War.

So I pulled my blanket closer, and lay down. I dozed again. I woke from my trouble-sleep, the ground was hard. Oh yes, when I was a soldier, I dug a little hole for my hip. Well, that is what I'll do. I fell into jitter-sleep again.

Devils rose from the Bayou, but I dismissed them. General Sam Houston, who had commanded the Armies of Texas—some six or seven hundred men, rose from the sea, and from the field of battle. "I'll tell you," he said, "this is hell. . . . Why. . . ." He spoke more but I could not hear him, a great sea was rising, and civilization was washing away. Red Fascists and Black Communists, white people, black people, all, were washing away. Noah's Ark came by with a smiling Rotarian at the wheel . . . a preacher and a false priest stood arguing, but afraid to preach the truth about conditions. . . . There was a Kiwanian, singing, almost braying a song, happy as he could be. . . . He had eyes, but he did not even know there was a flood. . . . The water lashed at his feet. . . .

Another whistle blew on the tracks, bells clanged.

The next morning I woke up, not liking my new adventure, and with no romantic or happy feeling. I had a real first-class headache. I wanted to go home to my wife and children.

I did not then, nor at any other time, endure any of the real hardships of the transient traveling hundreds of miles without food, sick without doctor's care, shivering in the cold, burning in the heat, begging, being cursed and beaten and kicked by the police. Even at that, it was tough. I came to realize it was not an "interesting" experience in the usual sense. What sickens me is that some men who rode the rods and have gotten jobs are now as reactionary as Du Ponts.

All of the next day we walked around Houston. There were a few cheap joints that we could enter (if we would spend a few nickels), but there were practically none that were low-down enough for hoboes to enter. We were not welcome anywhere. Somewhat horrifying was the fact that in practically no place could a hobo use the toilet. Even isolated gas stations would not let us use their toilets. Let somebody try going without toothbrush, toilet, razor, water or towel for a few days. It is terrible.

That night I turned the Ford over to Harry, telling him to meet us in Hearn, Texas. Pat and I mounted a freight train for the same destination. We arrived at Hearn in the early morning. The town watchman told us with the fake charitable air used by the "law" in addressing tramps that we could sleep at a place on a certain corner. After we got there I had a good mind to resign instantly and go back home to work.

All during the previous night, when I slept on the cold ground next to the Bayou, I had rolled and pitched and had slept only long enough to snatch those ugly dreams. Ahead of us now was the place that meant shelter from the bitter, freezing night. Out of the door as we opened it came a great stench of unclean human bodies. Inside the building were some forty-five fellow tramps, snorting and gasping and choking on the floor.

Some grumbled in their sleep. There were two gas stoves to heat the place, and it was airless and hot. Some one swore at us to shut the door. Although this was not my first venture, I was still an amateur hobo. In spite of my three days of steady employment in my new profession before I came to Hearn, I could stand it no longer, so we went away. We found Harry waiting for us at the gas station. He was asleep in the back of the car, all covered with blankets. We lit out for another town.

We finally arrived in Waco, and went to a tourist camp. It was hard to get a room, because by then we looked our parts. But eventually we got a big room, and about six o'clock in the morning we went to sleep. We slept all day and that night I went forth, determined to be a braver and more courageous hobo than I had been before. With this determination, and with my growing skill in the mysterious art, we left our car in a garage. Thenceforth we traveled the route of roads, freight trains, and whatever conveyance we could get. We slept in all kinds of joints which had inspiring names like the "Star of Hope" where Harry nearly got converted.

It was on this trip I began to accumulate certain facts concerning my own State and the South. For instance, I found that a very large proportion of those riding the freight trains were tenant farmers, share-croppers, and agricultural workers. The old-time tramp constituted only a negligible portion, say ten or fifteen per cent of the whole. People just didn't have any place to go. I traveled with one old man who had with him his two young sons. He lost his farm, became a tenant, then lost out completely. I did not have the heart to ask him if he had a wife and daughters.

In Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana the movement of transients was terrific. In cities like Dallas, or Fort Worth, as many as two thousand would pass in a day. New Orleans and Oklahoma City had more, I thought.

About one-fourth of this moving population were women or boys or girls. Some of the women were wholly unattached, and of the prostitute type; some of them very good mothers, whose husbands had left them and who were going back to the farm or to some distant point with their children; some complete families, with husband, wife and children. A large proportion of this one-fourth that I called women and children were unattached boys, who were as young as eleven or twelve years of age. Most of them, however, were from thirteen to twenty-one. At the time I estimated that there were some ten thousand boys on the loose in Texas, and since then I have found from social workers that the amount was probably much greater.

I made a report to the Governor, Ross Sterling of Texas, and in it I said:

"These boys, between eleven and nineteen, are living without parents or friends to guide them, and are spending their formative years in flophouses, jails, jungles, or any available shelter, begging, panhandling, and, incidentally, starving part of the time, living miserably on a wholly improper diet, with no sanitation, no medical attention, and being chased from place to place by the police in the various cities.

"White women and little girls and boys associate with and live on the same plane with large numbers of Negro men, who intermingle freely with the rest of the population."

There was no ill will between the Negroes and the Whites, men or women. They were thrown together by circumstances. People who did not ride the freight trains could not possibly understand this. Undoubtedly the same thing was happening in other Southern states. Could it be that the Scottsboro boys have been framed? The Supreme court seems to think they didn't get a fair trial. Well, the Court is very likely right.

In these groups were also people from every class: business men, salesmen, lawyers, doctors (most of whom hit the dope), and ex-convicts.

I suppose it is really very tragic, but the aristocrats of the road were the Federal ex-convicts. They knew everything, and they could somehow get something to eat through an organization. They would leave the groups and come back with a full stomach, a dollar or two, and maybe a new shirt or other garment. But they couldn't stay long in one place, for the police would put them in jail, charge or no charge.

I saw enough to make anyone sick for a long time. I saw one mother and father sleeping on wet ground, with a baby in between, wrapped in sacks. There was promiscuity, filth, degradation. In some jungles there would be as many as a hundred people in one group. Men and families slept in jails, hot railroad urinals, cellars, dugouts, tumble-down shacks.

Back in San Antonio, after our return home, I organized the transient relief stations, one in a big fine four-story building, which had been operated by Montgomery Ward. We had relief stations at all the freight depots and when anyone came in we gave him a very cheap meal of hot coffee, bread and beans, and sometimes Mulligan stew. I had freight train schedules made up and gave information as to the best travel routes, and the best place to board trains without getting in trouble.