"Ican remember the first week of the CWA [Civil Works Administration] checks. It was on a Friday. That night everybody had gotten his check. The first check a lot of them had in three years. Everybody was celebrating.… I never saw such a change of attitude. Instead of walking around feeling dreary and looking sorrowful, everybody was joyous. They had money in their pockets for the first time. If Roosevelt had run for President the next day, he'd have gone in by a hundred percent." Hank Oettinger, who was laid off in 1931 and remained unemployed for two years, in Studs Terkel's 1986 book, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression.

The Great Depression (1929–41) was a time of crisis and change for the American worker. The number of unemployed workers rose to a level never before seen in the United States...