History in The United States
Hitchhiking became a common method of traveling during the Great Depression, when many people sought work and had little money, much less their own automobile. Hitchhiking was given tacit acceptance by the Federal government during those years, when the Federal Transient Bureau dealt with the large number of unemployed persons who were migrating to among areas of the country to find employment. Transients were promised a room and a hot meal at camps set up by the bureau around the country as long as they could get to them. The bureau operated such camps until it closed its doors in 1936. During those years, thumbing rides around the country was an accepted fact of life.
Problems arose as a result of random hitchhikers obtaining rides from random drivers. Warnings of the potential dangers of picking up hitchhikers were publicized to drivers, who were advised that some hitchhikers would rob the driver who picked them up, and in some cases murder them. Other warnings were publicized to the hitchhikers themselves, alerting them to the same types of crimes being carried out by drivers. By 1937, fourteen states had passed laws giving a “thumbs down” to hitchhiking, and more than half the states had done so by 1950. Nonetheless, hitchhiking was part of the American psyche and many people continued to stick out their thumbs, even in states where the practice had been outlawed.
Read more about this topic: Hitchhiking
Famous quotes containing the words history in the, united states, history, united and/or states:
“You that would judge me do not judge alone
This book or that, come to this hallowed place
Where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon;
Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace;
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Printer, philosopher, scientist, author and patriot, impeccable husband and citizen, why isn’t he an archetype? Pioneers, Oh Pioneers! Benjamin was one of the greatest pioneers of the United States. Yet we just can’t do with him. What’s wrong with him then? Or what’s wrong with us?”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I feel most at home in the United States, not because it is intrinsically a more interesting country, but because no one really belongs there any more than I do. We are all there together in its wholly excellent vacuum.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“The line that I am urging as today’s conventional wisdom is not a denial of consciousness. It is often called, with more reason, a repudiation of mind. It is indeed a repudiation of mind as a second substance, over and above body. It can be described less harshly as an identification of mind with some of the faculties, states, and activities of the body. Mental states and events are a special subclass of the states and events of the human or animal body.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)