In Bud, Not Buddy Bud and Bugs find a Hooverville and spend the night there before preparing to ride the rails. Depression-era shantytowns, “Hoovervilles” were named after President Hoover in order to disparage the man whom millions believed had not done enough—or anything—to help them (famously, Hoover wrote this response to a cry for federal relief, though he did not send all of it: “This nation did not grow great from feeding upon the malignant pessimist or calamity mongers or weeping men, and prosperity for all our people will not be restored by the voluble wailings of word-sobbers nor by any legislative legerdemain proposed by theorists;” he also said in his 1930 State of the Union that “Prosperity cannot be restored by raids upon the public Treasury”). Hoovervilles cropped up outside most major American cities and were visible reminders of the daily suffering and despair that characterized the Depression.
The Depression, which began in 1929 but resulted from years of financial recklessness, was a disastrous time for most Americans. When people lost their jobs (the unemployment rate reached 25%) they could no longer pay their mortgages and had to seek alternate living situations. While some were able to stay with family members, many had to congregate in the quickly proliferating shantytowns. Charles Michelson, the Publicity Chief of the Democratic National Committee, coined the term “Hooverville” and used it in The New York Times 1930 to refer to a location outside of Chicago.
The structures consisted of scraps such as cardboard, tarpaper, metal, tin, etc. They were flimsy and an eyesore but nonetheless were all people had. Most cities left the Hoovervilles alone but other times authorities sent in law enforcement to clean them out or even burn them down. Seattle’s was burned down several times but was always rebuilt, and ended up lasting the whole decade. Chicago’s settlement near Grant Park even had a “mayor,” Mike Johnson, who told a reporter, “Building construction may be at a standstill elsewhere, but down here everything is booming. Ours is a sort of communistic government. We pool our interests and when the commissary shows signs of depletion, we appoint a committee to see what leavings the hotels have.” Jesse Jackson, Seattle’s “mayor,” called his Hooverville the “abode of the forgotten man” and commented “If President Hoover could walk through the little shanty addition to Seattle bearing his name, he would find that it is not inhabited by a bunch of ne’er do wells, but by one thousand men who are bending every effort to beat back and regain the place in our social system that once was theirs.”
President Roosevelt was elected in 1932, and took a much different approach to the Depression than Hoover. He stated that aid “must be extended by Government, not as a matter of charity, but as a matter of social duty; the State accepts the task cheerfully because it believes that it will help restore that close relationship with its people which is necessary to preserve our democratic form of government.” His New Deal included the Federal Transient Service (FTS), which sought to provide shelter, education, food, clothing, and medical care; however, it was phased out and the Works Progress Administration was supposed to take over the problem of homelessness.
The Hoovervilles were eventually targeted for systematic eradication, but by the time this began in the first years of the 1940s, America’s growing involvement in the Second World War had generated more jobs, higher wages, and better, permanent living conditions.
