The+Great+Depression+BS

**__Struggling to Get By__**

People without jobs often went hungry. Whenever possible they stood in bread lines, which would sometimes be blocks long. People would line up outside soup kitchens, which private organizations set up to give the poor meals. Families or individuals who could not pay their rent or mortgage lost their homes. Some of them, paralyzed by fear and humiliation over their sudden misfortune, simply would not or could not move. Officers known as bailiffs then ejected the nonpaying tenants, piling their belongings in the street. Throughout the country, newly homeless people put up shacks on unused or public lands, forming communities called shantytowns. Blaming the president for their plight, people referred to such places as Hoovervilles. In search of work or a better, life many homeless and unemployed Americans began to wander around the country- walking, hitchhiking, or, most often, "riding the rails."