Answer: Students prefer salty snacks over sweet because the percentage of sweet snacks were lower than the percentage of salty snacks
The short story was set in Maryland during the Depression or the Dirty Thirties ahd is told from the perspective of the oppressed black people in particular a girl. Where it says "The depression that gripped the nation was no new thing to us" this tells us when it was and "the black workers of rural Maryland had always been depressed" and her identification with them and her brown toes show that she is one of them.
