TWO THOUSAND STIFFS by JACK LONDON
1001 Classic Short Stories & Tales
Jon Hagadorn
4.5 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 7 August 2022
⏱️ 31 minutes
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Summary
Jack London tells us what it what like to join "Kelly's Army" , also called "Kellys Industrial Army" as one of two thousand unemployed men riding the rails and rivers on their way to Washington DC to protest for support for the unemployed in 1894. . This is one chapter from his book "The Road", of which we have already done three chapters- "Pictures", "Hoboes That Pass In the Night", and "Bulls". London's stories vividly portray the hobo life and provide us with a true picture of hard times and the beginnings of the labor movement in the US..
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode is brought to you by the E. E. game store. |
| 0:04.0 | They've got all the games and all the gear you want. |
| 0:07.0 | PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, MetaQuest VR, handheld consoles, you name it. |
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| 0:15.6 | It's open to every player on any network. They've got exclusive console bundles to get you |
| 0:20.6 | gaming for less and you can even spread the costs. |
| 0:23.0 | Plus they'll let you trade in your old console for cash. |
| 0:26.0 | Just search E.E. Game Store to find out more. And the The Welcome back everyone to 1001 classic short stories and tales. This is your |
| 1:04.2 | host John Hagadorn today 2000 Stiffs by Jack London. |
| 1:10.5 | 2,000 Stiffs is one of the the stories included in Jack London's 1907 book, The Road, which is a very vivid account of his Hobo days. |
| 1:18.0 | He spent more than a year roaming throughout the US and Canada on free trains and wrote most of it in the |
| 1:24.5 | Hobo jargon. In the story in the story the 2000 Stiffs a stiff is basically a |
| 1:30.0 | hobo and the story describes what it was like to be a member of Kelly's Army, one of thousands |
| 1:35.2 | of unemployed men and youths who marched from all over the country on Washington during the |
| 1:39.4 | Great Depression year of 1894. A lot of times we think the depression is being in the 1930s and it was |
| 1:45.9 | but it was also a very serious depression in the 1870s and in the 1890s in |
| 1:50.9 | 1994. Classic short stories like these do give us a lot of history. |
| 1:57.0 | And now our story. A stiff is a tramp. It was once my fortune to travel a few weeks with a push that number 2,000. |
| 2:06.4 | This was known as Kelly's Army. Across the wild and Willie West, clear from California, |
| 2:12.4 | General Kelly and his heroes had captured drains, but they fell down when they crossed the Missouri and went up against the Efette East. |
| 2:20.0 | The East had the slightest intention of giving free transportation to 2,000 hobos. |
| 2:25.0 | Kelly's Army lay helplessly for some time at Council Bluffs. |
... |
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