How Did Thi Soup Kitchens Survive The Great Depression?

714 Words3 Pages

The Great Depression changed everyone’s lives forever, making them use the limited resources they had to survive in any way they could. Hoovervilles were places where homeless people went to find food and shelter. Homeless people made the hoovervilles so they could stay alive. They were made of tar, paper, glass, cardboard, lumber, tin, and any other materials the people could find (“Hoovervilles”). Homeless people couldn’t buy any materials so they had to use what they found to build their shanties. Hoovervilles held from a hundred to thousands of people so people were constantly making them larger. Although most people who took refuge in Hoovervilles didn’t have jobs, some took backbreaking jobs to earn a little money for food and materials. …show more content…

The worse the depression got, the more soup kitchens there were. “When soup kitchens first appeared, they were run by churches or private charities… Volunteers of America also was important in setting up soup kitchens all over America. By the mid-1930s, state and federal governments also were operating them” (“Depression-era Soup Kitchens”). Everyone who wasn’t harmed as badly by the Great Depression helped the ones who had in the form of soup kitchens as well as other charitable deeds. Soup kitchens helped the homeless survive the Great Depression without having to face the challenge of constant hunger. Along with soup kitchens, breadlines were another way for people to receive food and drink for free. Most of the time bread was served at soup kitchens as the food to the soups broth. The long lines that formed outside of the kitchen were called breadlines. Homeless and jobless people would stand in bread lines to get free food. It was very embarrassing for men to stand in bread lines, unable to provide for their families. There were so many people that churches and other programs began trying to feed them (“Bread Lines During the Great

Open Document