During the 1930s, the country endured a severe depression of both the economy and the spirit, as unemployment and poverty spread across the land after the prosperous 1920s and many middle class people lost their incomes, savings, and homes. President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Work Projects Administration to provide jobs that maintained social services and improved community conditions, and its accomplishments remained visible in many buildings still in use. In 1936, the WPA began a project to improve sanitary conditions and eliminate typhoid fever by developing designs for an outhouse with a concrete pit. Carpenters and laborers built thousands of these small privies, which became common behind town lots, farm homesteads, and one-room schools, where two were often placed behind the school, one for boys and one for girls. Three WPA outhouses are located in the village.