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THIS DAY IN HISTORY: 

Christmas Island Discovered by Captain James Cook (1777)
Though Captain James Cook was certainly not the first person to set foot on Christmas Island—the atoll had been visited by native Pacific Islanders in the past—it was uninhabited when he found it. Both the UK and US later laid claim to the atoll, and they vied for power there for the next 100 years or so, until it gained independence as part of the 33-island Republic of Kiribati and was renamed Kiritimati. Before it gained independence, the US and UK used the atoll as a testing ground

I would guess the state superintendent of schools would have recognized the depression

This clip, IMHO, is worth watching to the end:
https://youtube.com/shorts/eFxo8Glro90?si=HU_PcehCn5w3BcwM

The narrator was in Patton's Third Army and was involved in the Battle of the Bulge which was raging 81 years ago right now.  He talks about being shelled and having an artillery shell land so close that he could hear it sizzling.  Then he says that he survived because that shell was a dud.  He ends it by saying that he said a prayer to that slave that made that defective fuse for the next 65 years.  

One of my favorite Authors of WWII history said that he had interviewed thousands of veterans and that it was not uncommon for British, American, and Soviet vets to credit their survival to duds.  He also said that he had interviewed thousands of German veterans and NEVER heard one credit his survival to a dud.  

Rosie the Riveter is sometimes under-appreciated.  I knew two of them.  My dad's aunt worked for Goodyear* and helped build Corsairs in Akron, that is one of the reasons that the Corsair has always been my favorite WWII aircraft.  The other Rosie the Riveter that I knew lived in my hometown of Medina and I actually know more about her.  She and her (then) boyfriend both graduated from Medina HS in 1944.  Her kid brother graduated in 1945.  Her boyfriend joined the Army immediately upon graduation and was a replacement who ended up joining a unit at the outskirts of the Battle of the Bulge.  Germany surrendered before her brother finished HS so when he graduated he joined the Navy because he figured they were the ones doing most of the fighting against Japan and he wanted to get involved.  

Here is the thing.  Most of those Rosie the Riveters were like the one I just described.  They had boyfriends and brothers in the field.  There was a possibility that the lives of their loved-ones would depend upon the effective performance of the item that they manufactured.  I'll concede that the chances of the specific bomber wheel castings that she made being responsible for the life of her brother or boyfriend is highly unlikely but on a more macro level, the effective performance of stuff built by Rosie the Riveters all across America was absolutely responsible for the lives of her boyfriend and brother every day.  Nearly every Rosie had a father or a son or a brother or a boyfriend or an uncle or a nephew in that situation so the effective performance of the items they built was immensely important to them.  

It would be impossible to quantify but I believe that the anecdotal evidence of such a large number of interviews is telling.  Fuses are simply more likely to work when their builders know that their loved-ones might literally die if the fuse fails than they are when their builders would actually prefer that the fuse failed.  

*Goodyear Corsairs:
The Corsair was a Vought design but Vought didn't have sufficient production capacity to keep up with the Navy's insatiable demand for the plane so Goodyear produced them under license.

I would guess the state superintendent of schools would have recognized the depression

I'm sure he did, but my Dad said he didn't.  My Dad might exaggerate, but his point was they were too poor to notice (much).  He was 12 when the Depression started, so he really didn't know a lot different before that.  I know he tried several jobs when he turned 16 or so, then enlisted when the late fracas with Japan broke out.  He was an "old man" by then, the oldest in his crew.

I do know they were poor, but didn't really notice because nearly everyone around was poor.