The document summarizes the onset of the Great Depression in the United States beginning with the stock market crash of 1929. It describes the struggling economy of the late 1920s due to falling farm prices and consumer spending. The stock market crash signaled the beginning of the Great Depression, causing widespread bank failures and plummeting GDP. Unemployment skyrocketed to 25% by 1933. President Hoover initially believed the economy would recover on its own but as conditions deteriorated he took more action, though it was too little too late to save the economy or his chances of re-election in 1932.