Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) wrote about all American people, in particular the working class, their concerns, struggles, and dreams.  He wrote of their strength to overcome hardship and oppression. Sandburg believed that the working class was critical to America’s role as a leading industrial nation.

Sandburg, the oldest son of immigrant parents, was born in the prairie town of Galesburg, Illinois.  His explorations of Galesburg and the Midwest through adolescence and early adulthood would forever shape the man he became.  Through these explorations he would also meet three people who greatly influenced his life, Phillip Green Wright, and Lilian and Edward Steichen.
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Prairie Town Boy
Hobo Journey

Prairie Town Boy
“I was born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women gave me a song and a slogan…” (Prairie, 1918)

Carl August Sandburg was born on January 6, 1878, in a three-room cottage in Galesburg, Illinois, a railroad town southwest of Chicago. He was the oldest son of Swedish immigrants, August and Clara Sandburg. August worked six days a week, ten hours a day at the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy (CB&Q) railroad as a blacksmith’s helper, where his sledge hit anvil year-round with no vacation.


Clara, known as “mama”, had an infectious smile shining with affection for her seven children. She raised them with encouraging words that urged them to “make something of themselves.

Galesburg had a large impact on Carl Sandburg’s view of America. Many years later, in his autobiography Sandburg asked the question, “Did I know America, the United States, because of what I knew about Galesburg?” He believed there must be something important about a country to have attracted so many different types of people, but who all called themselves American.

Carl Sandburg’s first words were Swedish.  English came later, as well as a love of words and language.  This child of immigrant parents was determined to be an American.  At seven, he changed his name from the Swedish-sounding Carl to the American-sounding Charles. Sandburg also developed a strong work ethic as a young boy helping his father with household chores and working odd jobs throughout his childhood. He graduated from the 8th grade and did not attend high school. An economic down-turn in the 1890s caused the CB&Q to cut his father’s wages.  Charles had to supplement the family income. He was now, more than ever before, a child laborer working a variety of jobs that ranged from barber shop porter to milk deliverer.

“Throughout his childhood, Charlie slept to the pulsing rhythms of the trains coming and going through the prairie night. He sometimes amused himself at the depot watching trains bound to and from far places. He idled with hoboes and tramps who traveled furtively on the rods or the treacherous tops of freights and passenger cars…To Charlie, the railroad meant adventure, mystery, and possibility.” (Niven, p. 7)

Hobo Journey
Restless and eager for adventure, he embarked on a hobo journey in June, 1897. Sandburg traveled west by rail and worked from June to October in Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, and Nebraska. He threshed wheat, harvested hay, washed dishes, worked on a railroad gang, and chopped wood. He was a seeker and an observer, stating in his autobiography, “What had the trip done to me? I couldn’t say. It had changed me… Away deep in my heart now I had hope as never before. Struggles lay ahead, I was sure, but whatever they were I would not be afraid of them.”

The Road and the End
I shall foot it
Down the roadway in the dusk,
Where the shapes of hunger wander
And the fugitives of pain go by…

…Regret shall be the gravel under foot…

The dust of the traveled road
Shall touch my hands and face.
Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems, 1916

Summoning his new courage, he enlisted on April 26, 1898 in Company C, Sixth Infantry Regiment of Illinois Volunteers to fight for his country in the Spanish-American War. According to Sandburg… “the war in Porto Rico, while not bloody, was a dirty and lousy affair while it lasted.” The biggest challenges were the tropical climate of Puerto Rico, the mosquitoes that carried malaria, and the woolen Civil War era uniforms.

Sandburg returned home in September, 1898 and enrolled in Lombard College of Galesburg. Here he met Professor Phillip Green Wright, one of the three people he would later call one of the greatest influences of his life.  He began to write seriously, and was elected editor-in-chief of the college newspaper.  He also became editor of the Lombard Review, and was one of the editors of the school yearbook, The Cannibal.  After four years of college however, he had dabbled in so many areas of study that he did not have enough credits in any one area to graduate with a degree.  He left college in the spring semester of his senior year. The passions he had nurtured while in college, studying people and events, researching and writing, were further nurtured by the life experiences ahead of him.