The Great Depression had started; including an immense bank crisis. Franklin Roosevelt's mandate as a first-term President was clear and challenging: rescue the United States from the throes of its worst depression in history. Economic conditions had deteriorated in the four months between Franklin Roosevelt's election and his inauguration. Unemployment grew to over twenty-five percent of the nation's workforce, with more than twelve million Americans out of work. A new wave of bank failures hit in February 1933. Upon accepting the Democratic nomination, Franklin Roosevelt had promised a "New Deal" to help America out of the Depression, though the meaning of that program was far from clear.
