1. Americans face hard times
The Great Depression

2. Despair in America’s cities
Searching for a job & a meal
24.9 unemployment rate
Wages & hours cut
Bread lines people lined up for handouts from charities

3. Despair in America’s cities
Poverty
Unemployed  Unemployable
Hunger & homelessness

4. Despair in America’s cities
Looking for a place to live
Sold furniture & jewelry
Moved to cheaper homes
Hoovervilles: makeshift shanty towns of tents & shacks built on vacant lots

5. Poverty in Rural America
New debts + Old debts + Drought = Struggle to survive

6. Poverty in Rural America
Farmers lose their farms
 One million farmers lost their farms when they couldn’t pay their mortgages
Tenant farmers

7. Poverty in Rural America
The Dust Bowl
Caused by drought in the Great Plains
New farming conditions made conditions worse
Drought, loose soil, & high winds

8. Poverty in Rural America
Migration
No choice but to leave the region
Okies
Toward CA or WA

9. Hoover’s Response to the Great Depression

10. Cautious Response Volunteerism
Needed volunteers to work toward a common goal
More $ businesses & individuals
Volunteerism FAILED.
Relied TOO MUCH on voluntary cooperation
Businesses acted in their own interests

11. Activist Policies Hoover was associated with suffering
Reconstruction Finance Corporation
Loans to RRs & large businesses
Trickle-down economics
Money lent to banks & businesses will trickle down to consumers

12. Protests Radical change Reject capitalism Bonus Army
WWI veterans seeking bonuses from Congress