In the evolutionary hierarchy, as Herbert Spencer has sketched it for us, the animal series occupied a higher position than that of the plants. But in spite of all the progress represented in the long march from the amoeba to man, it is still true that the human creature is a good deal of a vegetable. This is evident in the invincible attachment of mankind to localities and places; in man’s, and particularly woman’s, inveterate and irrational ambition to have a home—some cave or hut or tenement—in which to live and vegetate; some secure hole or corner from which to come forth in the morning and return to at night.

As long as man is thus attached to the earth and to places on the earth, as long as nostalgia and plain homesickness hold him and draw him inevitably back to the haunts and places he knows best, he will never fully realize that other characteristic ambition of mankind, namely, to move freely and untrammeled over the surface of mundane things, and to live, like pure spirit, in his mind and in his imagination alone.

I mention these things merely to emphasize a single point, namely, mind is an incident of locomotion. The first and most convincing indication of mind is not motion merely, but, as I have said, locomotion. The plants don’t locomote, don’t move through space; they respond more or less to stimulation, even though they have no nerves, but they do not move through space, certainly not of their own motion. And when they do move, they have no goal, no destination, and that is because they have no imagination.

Now it is characteristic of animals that they can and do change their spots. The ability to do this implies that they are able not merely to wag a tail or move a limb, but that they are able to co-ordinate and mobilize the whole organism in the execution of a single act. Mind, as we ordinarily understand it, is an organ of control. It does not so much initiate new movements as co-ordinate impulses, and so mobilize the organism for action; for mind, in its substantive aspect, is just our disposition to act; our instincts and attitudes, in other words.

Mental activity begins on the periphery, with stimuli which are antecedent to, but ultimately discharged in, actions. But mind in the transitive, verbal aspect is a process by which, as we say, we “make up our minds” or change them; that is to say, it is a process by which we define the direction in which we are going to move, and locate in imagination the goal that we intend to seek.

Plants carry on, apparently, all the processes of metabolism which are characteristic of animals—these are, in fact, what we mean by the vegetative processes—but they do not go anywhere. If the plants have minds, as some people assume they do, they must be of that brooding, vegetative sort characteristic of those mystics who, quite forgetful of the active world, are absorbed in the contemplation of their own inner processes. But the characteristic of the animal, and of the higher types of animal—everything above the oyster, in fact—is that they are made for locomotion and for action. Furthermore, it is in the processes of locomotion—involving, as they do, change of scene and change of location—that mankind is enabled to develop just those mental aptitudes most characteristic of man, namely, the aptitude and habit of abstract thought.

It is in locomotion, also, that the peculiar type of organization that we call “social” develops. The characteristic of a social organism—if we may call it an organism—is the fact that it is made up of individuals capable of independent locomotion. If society were, as some individuals have sought to conceive it, an organism in the biological sense—if it were made up of little cells all neatly and safely inclosed in an outer integument, or skin, in which all cells were so controlled and protected that no single cell could by any chance have any adventures or new experience of its own—there would be no need for men in society to have minds, for it is not because men are alike that they are social, but because they are different. They are moved to act by individual purposes, but in doing so they realize a common end. Their impulses are private, but actions are public.

In view of all this we may well ask ourselves what, if anything, is the matter with the hobo’s mind. Why is it that with all the variety of his experiences he still has so many dull days? Why, with so much leisure, has he so little philosophy? Why, with so wide an acquaintance with regions, with men, and with cities, with life in the open road and in the slums, has he been able to contribute so little to our actual knowledge of life?

We need not even pause for a reply. The trouble with the hobo mind is not lack of experience, but lack of a vocation. The hobo is, to be sure, always on the move, but he has no destination, and naturally he never arrives. Wanderlust, which is the most elementary expression of the romantic temperament and the romantic interest in life, has assumed for him, as for so many others, the character of a vice. He has gained his freedom, but he has lost his direction. Locomotion and change of scene have had for him no ulterior significance. It is locomotion for its own sake. Restlessness and the impulse to escape from the routine of ordinary life, which in the case of others frequently marks the beginning of some new enterprise, spends itself for him in movements that are expressive merely. The hobo seeks change solely for the sake of change; it is a habit, and, like the drug habit, moves in a vicious circle. The more he wanders, the more he must. It is merely putting the matter in an another way to say that the trouble with the hobo, as Nels Anderson has pointed out in his recent volume, The Hobo, is that he is an individualist. He has sacrificed the human need of association and organization to a romantic passion for individual freedom. Society is, to be sure, made up of independent, locomoting individuals. It is this fact of locomotion, as I have said, that defines the very nature of society. But in order that there may be permanence and progress in society the individuals who compose it must be located; they must be located, for one thing, in order to maintain communication, for it is only through communication that the moving equilibrium which we call society can be maintained.

All forms of association among human beings rest finally upon locality and local association. The extraordinary means of communication that characterize modern society—the newspaper, the radio, and the telephone—are merely devices for preserving this permanence of location and of function in the social group, in connection with the greatest possible mobility and freedom of its members.

The hobo, who begins his career by breaking the local ties that bound him to his family and his neighborhood, has ended by breaking all other associations. He is not only a “homeless man,” but a man without a cause and without a country; and this emphasizes the significance, however, futile of the efforts of men like James Eads How to establish hobo colleges in different parts of the country, places where hobos can meet to exchange experiences, to discuss their problems, and all of the problems of society; places, also, where they can maintain some sort of corporate existence and meet and exchange views with the rest of the world on a basis of something like equality and with some hope of understanding.

The same thing may be said of the Industrial Workers of the World, the only labor organization that has persistently sought and to some extent succeeded in organizing the unorganizable element among laboring men, namely, the seasonal and casual laborers. The tendency of their efforts to organize the hobo in his own interest has been, so far as they have been successful, to give him what he needed most, namely, a group-consciousness, a cause, and a recognized position in society.

If they have failed, it is due in part to the fact that so large a part of modern industry is organized in a way which tends inevitably to the casualization of labor. It is due, in part, to the fact that the hobo, in so far as he is a congenital type, finds in casual and seasonal labor a kind of occupation congenial to his temperament, for the hobo is the bohemian in the ranks of common labor. He has the artistic temperament. Aside from the indispensable labor of his hands, the only important contribution which he has made to the permanent common fund of our experience which we call our culture has been his poetry. It is an interesting fact, however, that some of the best of this poetry has been produced in jail. During these periods of enforced quietude, when he could no longer move, the hobo has vented his habitual restlessness in songs, songs of protest, the hymns of the rebellious I.W.W., tragic little ballads describing some of the hardships and tragedies of life on the long, gray road.

There have been many hobo poets. The most eminent of them, Walt Whitman, reflected the restlessness and rebelliousness and individualism of the hobo mind not only in the content but in the very formlessness of his verse.

What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk free and own no superior?

Nothing could better express the spirit of the old frontier which, more than any other feature in American life, has served to characterize American institutions and American mores. The hobo is, in fact, merely a belated frontiersman, a frontiersman at a time and in a place when the frontier is passing or no longer exists.