At the beginning of the 1930s, more than 15 million Americansfully one-

quarter of all wage-earning workerswere unemployed. President Herbert

Hoover did not do much to alleviate the crisis: Patience and self-reliance,
he argued, were all Americans needed to get them through this passing
incident in our national lives. But in 1932, Americans elected a new
president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who pledged to use the power of the
federal government to make Americans lives better. Over the next nine
years, Roosevelts New Deal created a new role for government in
American life. Though the New Deal alone did not end the Depression, it
did provide an unprecedented safety net to millions of suffering Americans.
During the Depression, most people did not have much money to spare.
However, most people did have radiosand listening to the radio was free.
The most popular broadcasts were those that distracted listeners from their
everyday struggles: comedy programs like Amos n Andy, soap operas and
sporting events. Swing music encouraged people to cast aside their
troubles and dance. Bandleaders like Benny Goodman and Fletcher
Henderson drew crowds of young people to ballrooms and dance halls
around the country. And even though money was tight, people kept on
going to the movies. Musicals, screwball comedies and hard-boiled
gangster pictures likewise offered audiences an escape from the grim
realities of life in the 1930s.