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| (colorized image of a photo published in The World's Work in 1920) |
They called them Hoovervilles, and the name
stuck. Not funny. Not clever. Just mean and dead-on. The country was broke,
jobs gone, banks shuttered, and people were out there hammering together shacks
from junk like it might hold the world together one more night.
They spread like a bad rumor on riverbanks, rail
yards, and empty lots on the edge of town. No water. No heat. Breadlines
curling around the block like a slow funeral. People standing there with hollow
eyes, waiting for a handout that might run out three bodies ahead of them.
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| A typical Hooverville settlement during the Great Depression |
Still, nobody rolled over. They patched roofs with junk, shared scraps, and kept watch at night. Some camps picked leaders just to keep things from going sideways. It wasn’t a life anybody wanted, but it beat the alternative, which was nothing at all.
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