Half Complete
...c works, construction and building lost their jobs, been due to no money being left to fund these projects. Therefore demand for goods reduced in other industries and by 1930, nearly 20 percent of workers in Australia were unemployed, and it didn't seem to be improving. Those who were left without a job had to rely on charities to get by. Children were provided with food at their schools consisting of watered down soup and bread, never enough to give them the nourishment they needed. Wives were forced to have to keep vegetable patches in inhospitable ground, keep hens, mend clothes to the point that they were falling apart and improvise with a disgraceful lack of food, living off vegetables and bread with dripping. Husbands were up at four in the morning to join long cues of other unemployed men outside factories in the hopes of one days wage. The dole was provided, but not with money, only for food coupons, never anything to help with rent or clothing. Those who never had enough money were evicted. Up to 400 000 (from a census taken in 1933) people were living in 'shanty towns', having been evicted from their homes due to being unable to pay rent. Shanty towns consisted of 'houses' or shacks made from discarded wood, metal, cloth from flourbags and canvas situated on waste ground. People who had been evicted wandered the streets in hopes of finding work, some scavenging for food while children collapsed in school from inadequate nourishment. A sense of helplessness overtook the jobless and evicted, seeing no way out of where they were. Men felt worthless in been unable to provide for their families and many were forced onto the road to search for work. There was an estimate of thirty thousand people being on the road during the depression looking for work, either there to gain money to send to families, or having abandoned their families in the sense of hopelessness that had overtaken the society. They would have to report to police stations to gain rations of food while searching for jobs, which most never found. The upper-class had no understanding of what was happening to the lower class, being mainly unaffected by the Depression. Their lives went on as they had before the Depression, and many scorned what the working class were going through. Many sent letters to newspapers of the time such as "...it's beautiful foreshores defiled by the presence of camps for unemployed people...it's to be hoped that these hideous canvas humpies will be cleared away...