Everyday life of destitute Americans during the Great Depression

Children of migrant fruit worker in Berrien County, Michigan

Squatters camping on a highway near Bakersfield, California, in 1935

 A California fruit 'tramp' was photographed with his family in a migrant camp in Marysville in 1935

 Children sitting on the steps of a dilapidated house in Michigan in June of 1937

 Many farmers who lost their land in the crisis were forced to become sharecroppers to eke out a meager living

 The photographs were taken by the Farm Security Administration that was combating rural poverty

Department of Agriculture officials testing meats at Beltsville, Maryland, in 1935

Dust bowl refugees photographed along a highway near Bakersfield, California, in 1935

In 1932, the unemployment rate was at 24.9 per cent, and millions of people were homeless and living in shantytowns

Mother and father and several children of a family of nine living in open field in rough board covering built on old Ford chassis on U.S. Route 70, between Bruceton and Camden, Tennessee

 A family of eight living in a four-bedroom home in El Monte, California, paying $16.20 rent a month

 At the height of the Great Depression, as many as 15 million Americans were unemployed

 Migrant family in Kern County, California, in 1936

Houses of African-Americans in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1936