Hoboes: Bindlestiffs, Fruit Tramps, and the Harvesting of the West

by Mark Wyman

When the railroad stretched its steel rails across the American West in the 1870s, it opened up a vast expanse of territory with very few people but enormous agricultural a second Western frontier, the garden West. Agriculture quickly followed the railroads, making way for Kansas wheat and Colorado sugar beets and Washington apples. With this new agriculture came an unavoidable need for harvest workers—for hands to pick the apples, cotton, oranges, and hops; to pull and top the sugar beets; to fill the trays with raisin grapes and apricots; to stack the wheat bundles in shocks to be pitched into the maw of the threshing machine. These were not the year-round hired hands but transients who would show up to harvest the crop and then leave when the work was finished. Variously called bindlestiffs, fruit tramps, hoboes, and bums, these men—and women and children—were vital to the creation of the West and its economy. Amazingly, it is an aspect of Western history that has never been told. In Bindlestiffs, Fruit Tramps, and the Harvesting of the West , the award-winning historian Mark Wyman beautifully captures the lives of these workers. Exhaustively researched and highly original, this narrative history is a detailed, deeply sympathetic portrait of the lives of these hoboes, as well as a fresh look at the settling and development of the American West.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History

368 pages, Hardcover

First published April 22, 2010

Reviews

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title of this book should be Railroads, Irrigation, Agriculture and the People Who Were Exploited in Developing the West. I have to admit I was expecting something more about the culture of the hobo when I picked up this book. What it turned out to be is a study of why and how agriculture was developed west of the Mississippi and how various groups of people met the needs for large numbers of seasonal agricultural workers. It's an interesting history but reads like a history book, just touching the surface of the human aspects of the farmers and the seasonal workers. It's clear that migrating workers were subject to negative stereotypes wherever they went, but their stories are so much more than that; a topic for a different book, I suppose.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first thing that needs to be cleared up about this book is that it's not really about Hoboes, Bindlestiffs and Fruit Tramps. It's about how farming transformed the West. The book could have been a decent history of trains, agriculture, diasporas of Japanese and Chinese immigrants, culturla history of the Northwest, Cultural history of California, sociology of temporary laborers, and settlements of towns along the West Coast, if the author had focused one one of the subject. After the initial disappointment that the title is a lie, I read the book because there were some interesting aspects about Japanese and Native American laborers in the early part of the 20th Century. The writing was okay, never too academic, but it could have used some strong editorial direction to focus the book. Several of the themes that are introduced in the book are never resolved but just seem to fade away.

[Bethany Carlson · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a descendent of early immigrants to the West - and a huge fan of Steinbeck, London, Flagg, and Disney's The Journey of Natty Gann - Hoboes was a truly inspiring window into the lives of migrant workers during the building of the American Railroad. Some of the best non-fiction I have ever read.

[Krista · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED. got a little slowed down at parts but i learned so much that sticks with me still. amazing.

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is quite informative because it is jam-packed with facts and references. Because it is "dense," it was a slow read for me. The influence of war, the advent of the railroad, irrigation, and technological advances all played a role in finding workers to harvest The West. The storyline is pretty much the same across the timeline covered (mid- late-1800's to 1930's). In essence, white workers are too few, so Chinese, Japanese, Greeks, Germans, and ultimately Mexicans enter the country (at different times) to labor in various crop harvests (apples to asparagus to wheat, etc.). Growers need to keep costs down, so workers are paid as little as possible while expected to live in substandard conditions.

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although Wyman's book can be a little slow going here and there, it's a truly fantastic and overall very readable book on the history of migrant labor in the United States. There is so, so, so much untold and unknown history here that anyone interested in the American West can't afford to miss out on.

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has too many facts and figures to allow it to be in the page-turner category, but it was, nonetheless, fascinating. The disheartening thing, for me, was to realize--again--how long-lived the immigrant paranoia of this country has been and how poorly recent immigrants, even those who are in the country solely because they are desperately needed, were and are treated. Aside from that depressing bit of info, though, I learned a ton about how the railroad affected the development of agriculture, settlement, and labor; I found the chapter on the IWW in Calif very interesting; and I now need to do a lot of research on the sugar beet industry, which is far more crucial for this country than I had ever realized. I'd definitely recommend the book (provided you don't mind wading through all the substantiating facts :D).

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's really not so much about hoboes as it is about the shifts in agriculture that came in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Sure there was a lot to learn about hoboes, but I learned about migrant labor and imported labor and felt a lot smarter for having read it.

[Dennis Willingham · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book on the history of migrant farm labor in the west. the same problems, attitudes, debates, etc we see today were occuring as long ago as the late 1800's. Seems like on over a century we could have figured it out.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book felt very repetitive and was more focused on the labor markets of the developing west rather than the hoboes who were laborers themselves. Kind of a disappointment based on the size of font used for the word "Hoboes" on the cover.

[Jennifer]

This book seems only tangentially about hoboes, and is more about the rise of big agriculture. Too many details, which overwhelmed the basic storyline. Maybe I'll pick it up again, but right now it's just not that appealing.

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

This books was brutal to get through. The amount of quoted statistics overwhelmed the content.

[J · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dry, repetitive, no consistent timeline