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 united states, history in, history, united and/or states:
“In the United States there’s a Puritan ethic and a mythology of success. He who is successful is good. In Latin countries, in Catholic countries, a successful person is a sinner.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“The history is always the same the product is always different and the history interests more than the product. More, that is, more. Yes. But if the product was not different the history which is the same would not be more interesting.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“Toil and pleasure, dissimilar in nature, are nevertheless united by a certain natural bond.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)
“I would rather be known as an advocate of equal suffrage than to speak every night on the best-paying platforms in the United States and ignore it.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)