Life in the United States changed dramatically on October 29, 1929. On that day, the stock market crashed. This marked the end of the Jazz Age and the beginning of the Great Depression. The 1920s had been an unprecedented age of prosperity in the United States. The stock market had captured the interest of the general public for the first time in the 1920s. People from all walks of life played the stock market.

In the summer of 1929, this interest turned into a craze. Warning signs of an impending crash were ignored: people traded more, creating an endless backlog of paperwork. After October 29 (called Black Tuesday), 1929, the American economy quickly slipped into a depression. President Herbert Hoover was not reelected in 1932 because of his perceived mishandling of the crisis. Life quickly grew grim in the United States. Unemployment increased exponentially. Banks failed (13,000 in 1930 alone), taking the savings of...