What were the reasons that teens left home during the Depression?
At the height of the Great Depression, 250,000 teenagers were roaming America. Some left home because they felt they were a burden to their families; some fled homes shattered by the shame of unemployment and poverty; some left because it seemed a great adventure.
What are three of the reasons teenagers left home to ride the rails?
Terms in this set (18)
- Gave them food.
- Gave them money.
- Some treated them like bombs.
Why did Jim leave home?
Jim Mitchell, left Wisconsin home in 1933 at age 16: Being on the road was a humiliating experience. James San Jule, left Oklahoma home in 1930 at age 17: There wasn’t much camaraderie on the road that I remember. Everybody had his or her own problem and they seemed to be all inward.
What was life like for Teenage Hobos in the Great Depression?
During the Great Depression (1929-1939) many teenagers (16-25) decided to leave their families and hitchhike to California in search of a better life. Most left in search of money, food, or work but some left in search of an escape or adventure in place of their boring or sometimes abused lives.
What is a female hobo called?
bo-ette – a female hobo.
What did teenagers go through during the Great Depression?
During the height of the Depression, 250,000 teenagers were roaming around America by freight trains. Some people admired these teenagers for their spirit while others feared them as potentially dangerous. About eighty-five percent of these teenagers were in search of employment.
Who was most affected by the Great Depression?
The Depression hit hardest those nations that were most deeply indebted to the United States , i.e., Germany and Great Britain . In Germany , unemployment rose sharply beginning in late 1929 and by early 1932 it had reached 6 million workers, or 25 percent of the work force.
What did families do to survive the Great Depression?
Many families strived for self-sufficiency by keeping small kitchen gardens with vegetables and herbs. Some towns and cities allowed for the conversion of vacant lots to community “thrift gardens” where residents could grow food.
What were the homeless called in the Great Depression?
“Hooverville” became a common term for shacktowns and homeless encampments during the Great Depression. There were dozens in the state of Washington, hundreds throughout the country, each testifying to the housing crisis that accompanied the employment crisis of the early 1930s.
How did the homeless live during the Great Depression?
As the Depression worsened and millions of urban and rural families lost their jobs and depleted their savings, they also lost their homes. Desperate for shelter, homeless citizens built shantytowns in and around cities across the nation. These camps came to be called Hoovervilles, after the president.
Who was the hardest hit during the Great Depression?
The poor were hit the hardest. By 1932, Harlem had an unemployment rate of 50 percent and property owned or managed by blacks fell from 30 percent to 5 percent in 1935. Farmers in the Midwest were doubly hit by economic downturns and the Dust Bowl.
Why was 1933 the worst year of the Depression?
Over the next several years, consumer spending and investment dropped, causing steep declines in industrial output and employment as failing companies laid off workers. By 1933, when the Great Depression reached its lowest point, some 15 million Americans were unemployed and nearly half the country’s banks had failed.
Why did the depression last so long?
A depression is a longer-lasting and more severe form of a recession. The unemployment rate in 1940 was still at a depression level of about 15 percent. By contrast, liberal economists today often claim that the reason the recovery struggled so long was that the government did not go far enough.