Below: Burchell with his assistants, circa In the United States,. Unsettling as these images were, Americans remained more worried about the Depression; their struggles to feed and care for their families were far more immediate and life-threatening. The agency had steadily secured jobs and subsistence wages for millions of the unskilled unemployed—primarily men, but some women and youth—largely through federally financed national public building programs. Whatever the looming global threats to peace, the danger still seemed an ocean away, kept at bay by the prevailing winds of isolationism.