By the election of 1932, many had lost hope that President Hoover could help the country.
He ran for reelection against Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt promised a “new deal for the American people.” He won by a landslide.
Roosevelt took office in 1933. By then, a quarter of U.S. workers were unemployed. That was 15 million people! Hourly wages were less than half of what they had been in 1929. Right away, Roosevelt came up with a program of relief, recovery, and reform called the New Deal. He believed it was better to try something and fail than not to try at all.