From New Deal to New Hard Times, Eleanor Endures

(NYTimes) Early spring, in the Depression year of 1935. A poor girl from coal-mine country, a dark-haired girl of 4, rocks beside her mother and two sisters in a car moving through the rain-swept night. Soon they will join her father, a Great War veteran who pads his shoes with cardboard. He has been working for months on some distant government relief project. When the car finally stops, the sleepy girl can see only a blur of mud and midnight. Continued

Photo: Red House, West Virginia. Ben Shahn (FSA/OWI/Library of Congress).