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thing to look up when I get the chance: how shitty was public sentiment about Hoovervilles in the Great Depression? like I'm sure they didn't love having shantytowns but how much did people see it as "nobody wants to work these days!" vs. recognizing they were effects and not causes of a national crisis?

it seems like people were somewhat more sympathetic than they are to tent cities these days but that may just be the pop history narrative. if I have any energy when I get home I'm going to look for primary source editorials about those darn Centennials who live in shacks because they spent all their money on tin-pot coffee and bean toast


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in reply to @pervocracy's post:

I have no evidence here, but I think the fact that people called them Hoovervilles speaks to at least some awareness that the government was to blame rather than jobless individuals. It also seems to me that the speed of the crash, where many people went from relative comfort to perilous unemployment in the span of less than a year, might have made those forces harder to ignore. As opposed to the slow decline of our own times, which gives us more room to build alternative narratives.