"Moving Day"

Professor (and animator, director, board artist, writer) Tom Sito points out one animated short that actually touches on economic hardships taking place during the time in which it was made:

[Moving Day is] a rare Disney cartoon addressing a real social problem during the Great Depression, that of banks foreclosing on people's mortgages and rents. ...

Moving Day was released on June 20th, 1936, using the talents of story writer/artist Otto Englander, director Ben Sharpsteen, and (among others) animators Wolfgang "Woolie" Reitherman, Art Babbitt, and Al Eugster.

(All the Moving Day staffers moved into features when Walt Disney started creating long-form cartoons. Eugster, originally an east coast animator and a "Duck specialist", soon moved on to the Fleischer studio in Miami; Art Babbitt left WDP after leading a successful strike to organize the animation department; the others remained at the studio for decades.)

This Donald-Mickey-Goofy short, beyond the storyline reflecting national realities, reflected the steady evolution of Disney characters. The last black-and-white Mickey had been released in the Spring of 1935. Since then, the Technicolor iterations of the characters had become more sophisticated, subtle, refined. MD was considered the cartoon where the modern, "mature" version of Donald Duck materialized, and Babbitt's handling of the character in Moving Day pushed Goofy in the direction that Reitherman later took him after Babbitt departed.

Disney short-form animation reached its apex during the mid-thirties, when the studio's best artists were working on the Mouse cartoons and Silly Symphony shorts. After that, the studio's A-list talent was focused on features and Walt Disney paid far less attention to the program-fillers the company had made from its beginnings in a backyard garage. By the late forties, Disney visited his shorts unit every month or two, gave a few suggestions, and focused his energies on other things.