Children in Poverty.

The Depression brought extreme poverty to families who were already poor or in low-paid jobs. Children went hungry and contracted disease. Malnutrition was reported to be over 90 percent in the coalmining regions of Illinois, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. Investigators found Kentucky children so hungry they had begun to chew their own hands. One-fifth of the children in New York City were malnourished. A teacher reportedly told a hungry child to go home and eat, and the child replied, "I can't. This is my sister's day to eat." In some communities children could not go to school because schools closed for lack of funds. Poor children contracted pellagra and rickets, diseases that indicated malnourishment. According to a 1937 Children's Bureau report, many children found themselves, "going for days at a time without taking off their clothes to sleep at...