I cant say if there are more or less actual cars these days. But modern trains have mostly eschewed the classic box car for these flatbeds designed to haul (often stacked) sealed standard shipping containers, Not a lot of places for a hobo to ride in relative comfort.
I’ll reply rather than ETA - having now read the link you provided, it hadn’t occurred to me that you might be referring to Irish Travelers in the USA, something that I’m entirely ignorant of. So: apologies, I was referring to Irish Travelers in the UK.
j
Back at my computer, the film I referred to is based on a book called “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century.” Wikipedia describes it as “a 2017 nonfiction book by American journalist Jessica Bruder about the phenomenon of older Americans who, following the Great Recession from 2007 to 2009, adopted transient lifestyles traveling around the United States in search of seasonal work (vandwelling).”
That sounds to me like a modern-day tramp lifestyle.
Tramps and hobos are commonly lumped together, but in their own sight they are sharply differentiated. A hobo or bo is simply a migratory laborer; he may take some longish holidays, but soon or late he returns to work. A tramp never works if it can be avoided; he simply travels. Lower than either is the bum, who neither works nor travels, save when impelled to motion by the police.
Gordon Lightfoot answered this question 60 years ago.
This old airport’s got me down
It’s no earthly good to me
And I’m stuck here on the ground
As cold and drunk as I can be
You can’t jump a jet plane
Like you can a freight train
But can’t ladies still be tramps?
And Roger Miller about the same time. (This is not the whole song.)
Trailers for sale or rent
Rooms to let, 50 cents
No phone, no pool, no pets
I ain’t got no cigarettesAh, but, two hours of pushin’ broom
Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room
I’m a man of means by no means
King of the roadThird boxcar, midnight train
Destination Bangor, Maine
Old, worn out suit and shoes
I don’t pay no union duesI smoke old stogies I have found
Short, but not too big around
I’m a man of means by no means
King of the road
…
Or a big rock candy mountain.
They were called “drifters” then too. I remember a time when a kinder word than “tramp” was used to describe one who was living on the road. We knew them as “hobos.” It’s a lot friendlier than “tramp,” a word that my mother used. “Don’t go down to the swamp! There are tramps down there!” I haven’t heard the word “hobo” in many, many years. When I think of a hobo, I picture Red Skelton as “Freddy the Freeloader.”
I heard my father one time describe someone as a “tramp” in a completely different connotation. The person was Monica Lewinsky. He was in his 80s then, and often spoke his mind, but I was surprised to hear him say that, and reminded him that Bill Clinton had a lot to do with the scandal too.
I think this point needs to be emphasised. I’m sure being a tramp could be OK when the weather was amenable, and the season was right for a reasonable amount of casual work and you were relatively young and healthy and didn’t get sick or injured. But overall I suspect it was a dangerous, hard, uncomfortable life that has been much romanticised as an “escape dream“ by journalists and authors entirely out of line with reality.
Bear in mind that “Big Rock Candy Mountain“ is an anti-documentary, from which you can work out how hard the tramp lifestyle actually was. They did not have food. They did not have alcohol or cigarettes. The weather was not amenable. Law enforcement and jails were not toothless or pleasant. There was a lot of worth with picks and shovels.
I got you covered. He also knew:
… every engineer, on every train
All of the children and all of their names
And every handout in every town
And every lock that ain’t locked when no one’s around
The standards for “just getting enough money to stay alive” have changed.
A hundred years ago people would tramp because everything local was on reputation and based on family. If you lived in a town where everyone was a farmer or a professional who owned a home, the barrier to housing for a single man with no connections to anyone was enormous. If the locals didn’t tolerate you building a shanty out of wood planks and cardboard (and cops at that time had MUCH more authority than now to abuse and drive off “vagrants” without charging them with a specific crime) then you had to keep moving.
Now we have not just more benefits programs but also a pretty easy bar to clear if you just need “a roof over your head” and nothing more. The day laborers you see at Home Depot probably share a two-bedroom apartment in a bad neighborhood paid in cash under the table. Nine guys, hot-bunking cots and futons in shifts, maybe paying $150 a month each. It’s not comfortable but it’s a lot better than being on the street, and it’s certainly a lot better than fighting with railroad police for a spot in an unheated train car. A lot of them will eventually move into better conditions. There’s just no reason anymore to travel if your goal is to work odd jobs for enough money to survive.
The movie “Emperor of the North Pole” with Lee Marvin and Keith Carradine, highlighted how dangerous and brutal the Depression-era hobo life was:
“Ninety days on the rocks ain’t horns.” (i.e., they’re currently stuck in a cattle car; three months on a chain gang if they call for help is better than risking getting gored to death)
“It ain’t the rocks, kid- not in this part of the country. And it’s not 90 days either. You’re paroled to the bottom of a pit… while the sheriff pockets the two dollars that he’s paid every day for your keep. And that’s no ghost story.”
Loved that movie! But those are two very different things.
Some “tramps” also hitchhiked, which is frowned upon nowadays, just like riding the rails.
This is really big. Hiring a homeless person wasn’t optimal for Ed Smart.
Jack Kerouac tried picking fruit in California, and after each day of back-breaking labour he had earned enough to stave off starvation for one more day. Maybe things have improved somewhat since the 1950’s, but it is not clear that one would be satisfied with the lifestyle any more than he was.
On the other hand, I do know some young people who have a job which pays at least adequately, if not extremely highly, but the key is that you can work remotely (from where the company is based) and group meetings can be held online, so you can keep travelling, or live almost anywhere you want. You would not know absent any statistics how common that is.
Right hitchhiking isn’t really an option today, which is why the Nomadland equivalent is living out of a crappy RV that you keep moving from place to place. I really think it’s the modern-day equivalent.
I once talked with a woman who lived in a SUV (minus the back car seats, add a cot and a sort-of improvised kitchen) while working pretty much full time at an Amazon warehouse. She said she knew at least a dozen other people who had similar lifestyles.
I’m not saying it’s a great life, but having your own enclosed “house” that you could move to new areas to suit where casual work was available seems like an updated and somewhat improved version of the hobo lifestyle … and one that is possible for women as well as men.
Did you mean to add something here?
I agree with you (and also the you that you quoted 
).
I didn’t read the book, but I watched the Nomadland movie, and yes, kitting out a van or something similar and traveling the country doing occasional work at an Amazon facility or having a remote job does seem like the 21st century equivalent of the tramp lifestyle.
I have a remote job, and I’ve fallen down a YouTube rabbit hole of ‘RV Life’ videos a time or two. There is something very attractive about the notion, and it’s amazing what sorts of clever innovations people have come up with to make living in a tiny space easier and more comfortable. My wife’s not really into the idea though, and even if she was, I think the reality of it would wear thin for both of us after not too long. But maybe when we retire… 