In order to understand fully why Partch adopted the hobo persona, we must first explore the hobo as construed by artists, writers, filmmakers, and the news media. Decades of use by various crusaders, intellectuals, and politicians created a multilayered image of the hobo by the 1930s and 1940s, which Partch accessed as a way to define himself. Most Americans of the time fell roughly into two camps in their attitudes toward the hobo. One side viewed the hobo as a rugged American individualist, flouting the law to live as he liked and reveling in the absolute freedom to control his destiny. This hobo lured many artist-intellectuals with the promise of experiencing America, including writers from Carl Sandburg to W. H. Davies, Vachel Lindsay, Harvey Kemp, Jack Kerouac, Robert Service, and Jim Tully. The other side viewed the hobo as a pitiful figure, victim of the rising industrial order. As manual labor on and around the railroad subsided, crusaders held up the unemployed hobo as the dismal future of American society. Homeless legions would overrun cities, these reformers argued, unless society took action. Although they were historically contradictory, these two representations persisted through the early twentieth-century's silent screen, with images such as Charlie Chaplin as the Little Tramp being bested by life, only to gain victory through humor, perseverance, and the freedom to be himself.