The Bum on the Rods and the Bum on the Plush

One rides on the rods beneath the car
And one on a cushioned chair. 
The one is clad in poverty’s rags,
The other doth broadcloth wear. 
One eats a back-door charity lunch,
For lack of the price to pay, 
The other is served by a waiter skilled
In an up-to-date cafe.

The one sneaks into a concert dive
For an hour’s cheap fun and laughter, 
The other a box at the opera has,
With wine and women after; 
One sleeps in the hay, or as best one may
Who has no place to dwell, 
The other has a suite of rooms
In the city’s best hotel.

The bum on the rods is hunted down
As an enemy of mankind, 
The other is driven around to the club
And feted and wined and dined. 
And those who curse the bum on the rods
As the essence of all that’s bad, 
Meet the bum on the plush with a sycophant’s smile,
And extend the hand so glad.

The bum on the rods is a social flea
That gets an occasional bite, 
The bum on the plush is a social leech,
Blood-sucking by day and night; 
The bum on the rods is a load so light
That his weight we scarcely feel, 
But it takes the labor of dozens of men
To furnish the other a meal.

So long as you sanction the bum on the plush,
The other will always be there;
But rid yourself of the bum on the plush,
And the other will disappear. 
Then make an intelligent, organized kick,
And throw off the weights that crush; 
Don’t worry about the bum on the rods –
Get rid of the bum on the plush.

By W. E. Jones. The Coming Nation, May 03, 1913
https://kansashistoricalopencontent.newspapers.com/image-view/487679277/ 

The poem was reprinted in the Miner’s magazine (Western Federation of Miners) in May 1913 and The Alaska Socialist in 1914. After that it seems to have gone on the road itself and passed into oral tradition. When it does appear in print it’s anonymous and the first two explanatory verses have been dropped. In 1923 Nels Anderson quoted it for stating ‘the case of labor against capital in the language and accents of the hobo’.[1] In 1930, it was retitled ‘the Two Bums’.[2] Joyce Kornbluh’s Rebel Voices says that ‘Titled “Society’s Bums,” the poem appeared in the Industrial Worker (July 25, 1955), signed by “Denver Din” Crowley.’[3] Rickety Stan of the IWW recited it in the Bowery, giving the title as ‘The Bum on the Plush and the Bum on the Rods’ as recorded by Sara Harris.[4] Another Wobbly, Utah Phillips, recorded it on his album 1983 We Have Fed You All for a Thousand Years. In Utah’s ‘Two Bums’ the meal for the ‘bum on the plush’ relies on ‘the labor of dozens of folks’, not just men. Such is the oral tradition: things change. There’s one final twist. The poem appears, in full, with the original title and credited to W.E. Jones in Iain McIntyre’s collection On the fly!: hobo literature and songs, 1879-1941.[5]

Notes

1, The hobo; the sociology of the homeless man p.202.

2, The hobo’s hornbook : a repertory for a gutter jongleur by George Milburn (1930) p.120-121. 

3, Rebel Voices, an I.W.W. anthology (1972) p.77.

4, in Skid Row USA (1956) p.183-184. 

5, p.245-246. Published by PM Press in 2018. 

Image: Thanks to Richard Warren.