ON THE EVE of the presidential election of 1932, nearly a third of American workers had no job and no recourse but dwindling savings or charity. When the Soviet Union advertised for six thousand skilled Americans to work in Russia, 100,000 people applied. Over five thousand banks had failed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had plummeted 90 percent from its heady 1929 highs. Families were being thrown out of their homes through bank foreclosures at the rate of one thousand a day.
