The Great Depression was a watershed in American history. Soon after Herbert Hoover assumed the presidency in 1929, the economy began to decline, and between 1930 and 1933 the contraction assumed catastrophic proportions never experienced before or since in the United States. Disgusted by Hoover's inability to stem the collapse, in 1932 the voters elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt, along with a heavily Democratic Congress, and set in motion the radical restructuring of government's role in the economy known as …showed first 75 words of 762 total…

…showed last 75 words of 762 total…the fact that at some time in the near future, they were likely to be made unemployed once again - after all, there were only so many trees you could plant and lakes in which to stock fish. However, for many Americans in the 1930's, Roosevelt was the president who included in his policies the people who had felt excluded by politics once the Depression had taken its hold. Now the excluded were the included.