The road had gripped me and would not let me go.

By the time Jack London sat down to write this non-fiction account of his early life as a train-hopping hobo, he had already built a name for himself in the literary world. In fact, other journalists and authors had elsewhere published accounts of his own life (if not in full-length biographies, then at least in sketches), naming this particular period of his life as an intentional sociological experiment. London wrote this book, apparently, to set the record straight: he didn’t become a tramp in order to study human nature, but simply because he wanted to become a tramp.

All together, this book is a collection of true anecdotes of London’s experiences crisscrossing the U.S. and Canada aboard cargo trains and without permission. It’s not at all short on close scrapes.

A good chunk of the first half of the book, for example, details how he was caught outside a town one morning and was convicted (with a trial but without a defense) of vagrancy and booked into prison for 30 days. He explains the conditions of the prison, the treatment of the prisoners, and the methods he and others use to make life manageable. London even built for himself a reputation during that short month imprisoned, and likely would have done quite well if he had been incarcerated long term.

Two other scenes that stand out involve massive crowds of hobos throwing their collective weight around to get what they want. In once scene, 85 hobos are on a train moving through the frozen mountains. They collect enough money to telegraph ahead to a town, demanding a meal for them all: either feed us intentionally or we’ll overtake your town, make you arrest us, and have you feed us anyways. The town decided to feed them, and then convinced the railroad to put them all back on the train when they were done. That’s the way to do it! In another scene, 2,000 tramps on a train who had successfully manipulated the train company for a thousand miles heads into Des Moines in 1894, but this time, their bullying doesn’t work so well. “Oh no. Life on the road is not all beer and skittles.”

What I love about this book and topic is that London pursues this lifestyle within the first few decades of regular train travel. The community of hobos that sprung up alongside the wide-spread use of trains for shipping was relatively fresh, a new breed of humanity. Whether he intended the sociological study or not, this book becomes an historical snapshot of a time and a people now lost, and as such should remain a classic of Americana. He’s like an old-school Sebastian Junger (I’m thinking of both Fire and War) or Mike Rowe.

London also mentions how life on the road helped him improve his writing craft. A hobo must be an artist, he writes, noting how every confrontation with a constable required an epic yet believable story that stirred the heart and maybe allowed the hobo to walk free. The yarns he spun out there in hobo-land became the fabric with which he created some of his greatest literary works (ostensibly), and that’s just as romantic as all get out.

London’s thirst for adventure and courage to pursue it is inspiring. Becoming a hobo and seeing the world was one great way to have such adventures, even with the risk of arrest and losing some fingers or toes to frostbite. One might ask why he chose this of all “occupations” to get his kicks, and he implies the answer late in the book, mentioning in passing that his own father had been a constable who picked up hobos and tramps and got paid by the head!

I really enjoyed this book. It sits up there with Louis L’Amour’s The Education of Wandering Man in my book. It’s definitely worth a read.

©2021 E.T.

Read More from Jack London:

• The Call of the Wild (1903)
• The Game (1905)
• Before Adam (1906)
• The Road (1907)
• When God Laughs (1911)
• The Human Drift (1917)
• Love of Life and Other Stories (1907)
• The Red One (1918)
• Stories of the North (1965)

Check Out These Other American Travelogues:

• Down the Great River by Captain Willard G. Glazier (1887)
• The Road by Jack London (1907)
• America and Americans by John Steinbeck (1966)
• A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins (1979)
• The Walk West by Peter Jenkins (1981)
• The Road Unseen by Peter and Barbara Jenkins (1985)
• The Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L’Amour (1989)
• A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson (1998)