On 28 October 1931, unemployed men queued to enter Emergency Unemployment Relief registration offices in New York. Getty Images’ dated caption identifies the place, date and purpose of the line. They were not waiting for a meal itself but for entry into the administrative system that registered claims for relief. The image record does not establish the number present, their waiting time, the outcome of registration or individual names, and those details cannot be supplied. Its value is more precise: unemployment during the Great Depression appears not as a percentage but as bodies admitted to an office one by one. Before assistance could be assessed, applicants first had to wait for access to the desk.