I found some interesting articles in the pages of my hometown paper of 100 years ago. One of them carried this headline: Boes Pilfer Oswald Ihme Farm Residence - The residence of Oswald Ihme on the banks of the Sheyenne River six miles south of Sheldon was entered by hoboes some time Thursday and a quantity of provisions stolen...Their invasion was chiefly to procure the necessities of life that satisfy the wants of the inner man, and everything was untouched with the exception of several quarts of canned fruit. Upon leaving the house they adjourned to the outer buildings where they confiscated several eggs, milked the cows, and dug potatoes from the garden. They carried their plunder to their camp under the railroad bridge and prepared a good meal. The banks of the Sheyenne have been a rendezvous for this class of bums for the past month. ... Another one stated Again Saturday night some hoboes, presumably the same bunch, attempted to purloin some of Roy Helsel's feathery tribe, they were unsuccessful as Mr. Helsel heard the squawking of the chickens and immediately ran out of the house with his gun and fired several shots at the men as they retreated through the bushes. ... And one more said Thieves entered the chicken coop of J. H. Burke about one o'clock last Sunday evening and made a futile attempt to carry off some of the judge's prized cockerels. The judge took an inventory of the flock Sunday morning and found one missing, a bunch of feathers pulled out of one of the old biddies, and an infant chick killed by being stepped on. In the meantime the boes were enjoying a Sunday dinner of chicken at Mr. Burke's expense. Times were tough for unemployed people back then. If they were going to eat they resorted to the tactics reported on in the paper. Of course, and by right, they were called thieves and would have been thought of as the low class. This line from an article in the New York Times today has little to do with chicken stealing, but here it is anyway, "I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of my chickens."
I guess talking about hoboes and their hard times can be spoken of in the same light as speaking about unemployed people of today. News reports often feature highly capable people looking for work, but there just isn't anywork out there for them. The one thing above all that gripes me in the recent settlement of the debt ceiling question is that the richest of the rich went untouched in getting taxed. The argument, weak as it is, is that the rich are the engines of the economy. I have never bought that argument since they have proven that they take their money to other countries where they can find low priced labor. Furthermore, the argument goes that government should be smaller, but with that will go many of the social programs that support the unfortunate and keep us from having an army of hoboes going about stealing for their living.
