By the time Hoover stepped down, 13 million Americans were unemployed and many of them hungry. Millions of others lost all of their savings in banks that went bankrupt. Hundreds of thousands of people who were made homeless lived in shanty towns called "Hoovervilles." Because of the significant number of bank closures, the coin shortage was so bad that storekeepers accepted postage stamps instead of pennies.
As Roosevelt told the huge crowd attending his inauguration, "This nation asks for action, and action now... We must act, and act quickly." It was a call as urgent as an SOS on a stormy sea and, fortunately, both the new president and the United States Congress were ready to launch a major rescue operation.
The 51-year-old Roosevelt was well equipped for the monumental task. His patrician background and political success as the governor of the State of New York had given him the self-confidence he needed for leadership. On a personal level, his dogged, long-standing fight against polio—which deprived him of the use of his legs when he was 39 years old—steeled him for the struggle with setbacks and for sudden calamities, such as was the outbreak of the Second World War.

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