The Great Depression

            The decade of the 1930s can be defined in two parts: The Great Depression, and the restoration of the American economy. America was shaken by Stock Market Crash of 1929. Franklin Delano Roosevelt stepped in with his New Deal in hopes of bringing the US into more prosperous times. He promised to fix the American economy, provide jobs, and help the needy. As America was restored, culture grew quickly. Dance clubs, new music styles, glamour girls, movies and sports were all popular forms of entertainment in the 1930s. American was in a process of healing its economic wounds. .
             The stock market panic preceded an economic depression that not only spread over the United States but in the early 1930s became worldwide. In.
             the United States, despite the optimistic statements of President Herbert Hoover and his secretary of the treasury, Andrew W. Mellon, that business was sound and that a new era of prosperity was just about to begin but by 1932 hundreds of banks had failed, hundreds of mills and factories had closed, mortgages on farms and houses were being foreclosed in large numbers, and more than 10 million workers were unemployed1. .
             The presidential campaign of that year, in which the Democratic candidate was Franklin D. Roosevelt, was waged on the issues of Prohibition and the economic crisis. The Democratic platform called for outright repeal of the 18th Amendment and promised a "new deal" in economic and social matters to bring about recovery from the depression. The Republicans did not call for outright repeal of the amendment. In regard to the depression, they warned against the danger to business and the national finances if the social and economic philosophies of the Democrats were substituted for the sound and conservative ideas of the Hoover administration. The Democrats won an overwhelming success in the election, carrying all but six states2. .
             With the election of Roosevelt came the New Deal.