When the Great Depression hit America, many people blamed President Herbert Hoover for the declining economy. As people lost their money in the stock market crash and many others lost their jobs and homes, random towns started to form around soup kitchens and near larger cities that offered free food. Those towns consisted of small homes built out of cardboard, crates, and wood. Since everyone blamed what was happening on President Hoover, they called these random poor towns built around sources of free food “Hoovervilles.”
The people of Hoovervilles
The population of the Hoovervilles consisted of people who lost everything they had after the banking system and the stock market both fell. Many families were kicked out of their homes and had to live in small shacks that were very poorly built. They were also joined by farmers who tried to escape the drought that hit the Midwest at the beginning of 1930. Those farmers left their plantations and lands, after the soil had turned into dust. They went to the big cities trying to find jobs and decent lives, only to be met with even more suffering and poverty.
What was it like in the Hoovervilles?
The material of these shacks did not help much during the freezing cold winter nights or the heat of the summer. The tiny poor homes would often become useless during rainy days as the rain fell inside just like outside. People who had to live there did not have running water, bathrooms, or even clean water to drink.
Hoovervilles formed anywhere a chance of food for the homeless existed. The number of people living there varied from a few hundred to a few thousand. Naturally, the biggest Hoovervilles were near the biggest cities like New York City, St. Louis, and Seattle. Those cities had some jobs during the Great Depression and they had multiple soup kitchens.
Charity soup kitchens meant everything to the people of the Hoovervilles. After the Great Depression began and thousands of people became homeless, the government had to open its own soup kitchens to help feed the growing number of homeless and unemployed people.
The homeless outside the Hoovervilles
People who became homeless because of the Great Depression and refused to live in the awful circumstances of the Hoovervilles were named “hobos.” They tried to make their situation a little better by traveling through the states looking for work to do anywhere they would go. Of course, they did not have any money to take traditional transportation means, so they would have to jump on and off trains to steal a free ride. This was a great risk as there was a possibility that one of them would jump at the wrong time and lose his or her life.
The end of the Great Depression and Hoovervilles
When the United States Joined the Allied Powers in World War II, the factories started working again to make tanks, planes, automobiles, and weapons. This helped the economy grow faster than it ever did in the previous 10 years and, as a result, the Great Depression was effectively over. People were able to afford homes again and the Hoovervilles were no longer needed. In 1941, the government created programs to remove the shacks and get rid of Hoovervilles.
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