President-elect Herbert Hoover glowingly declared the United States was “nearer the final triumph over poverty than in the history of any land.”   In office in 1931, he gave Congress what he called a “Corporation” to aid business.  Things got brutally worse.  And Hoover was soundly defeated by Franklin Roosevelt. 

October 31, the Washington Post began a series of emotionally crushing photographs, “Portrait  of Child Laborers in the Great Depression.”

“Today you have to get deep into the countryside, get out of your car and walk awhile before you can find a real Mexican Dia de los Muertos celebration,” 72-year-old Palomon Jurado Vazquez complains, spitting in the mud of a pueblo street.

The Great Depression meant dislocation – along with brutal job and food shortages – not only for Americans but also for thousands of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans living in the United States. 

In many cases, the depression’s indelible ID – chaos, the condition of badly-needing but-not-having an income or a home – was what tore families apart. 

During the early 1930s much of America believed recovery had arrived. But the bubble of change was a dizzying deception.  Many rancher farmers made down payments on new machinery.