We Americans are, to quote the historian David Potter, "people of plenty." That phrase could refer to our excessive consumption of cheese products (although really, we could eat more), but in this case, he was talking about our love affair with money.

The U.S. is chock-full of natural resources, and thanks to our convenient capitalist system, a tendency to expand over whatever territory we might need (regardless of who's already living there), and a technological edge over other folks, we've been more or less rolling in dough since the early days. For most Americans, at most times in our history, the economy has provided opportunities for individuals to succeed. Like, at least half of the time. For some people. Who were mostly white, male, Protestant, and from a good family.

At least we were trying.

But what would you do if the economy suddenly stopped providing that opportunity? What if it no longer seemed to matter how hard you worked, how smart you were, or how responsible you were with your money? What would you do if there were absolutely nothing you could do to avoid soul-crushing poverty? 

In 1929, the stock market crashed in the worst economic collapse in American history. It was even worse than that time the NYSE tripped and did a face plant in the middle of Wall Street. To be fair, it really should have looked to see where it was going. It was an epic laissez-faire fail. 

Imagine if your college savings fund was suddenly worthless. For over a decade after the crash, jobs were scarce, pocket money was scarcer, and thousands of Americans sank into complete and total poverty. It was called the Great Depression, not because everybody needed a Prozac, but because the economy was depressed, as in, "pressed down." Blame Latin if that's confusing.

Throughout the 1930s, neither the free market nor the federal government was able to get the country working again. The American people endured a full decade of almost unbelievable economic misery.

While a much-feared revolution—of either communist or fascist persuasion—thankfully never materialized, Americans flirted with a number of radical alternatives to the status quo. Some of those radical alternatives, plus Hoover's panicked hand-waving, faded into memory, while others were incorporated—in watered-down fashion—into the New Deal, where a few remain with us even today.

Our country's blessed with a wealth of natural resources, and our democratic capitalist system has delivered us a level of material affluence unprecedented in human history. 

For most Americans, at most times in American history, the economy has provided real opportunity for real individual success.

But what would you do if the economy suddenly stopped providing that opportunity? If it no longer seemed to matter how hard you worked, how smart you were, or how responsibly you took care of your money? If the system just stopped working, seemingly dooming you to a life of poverty through no fault of your own?

Would you blame yourself? Would you work harder, striving to prosper, against all odds, within the failing system? Or would you try to change the system itself? And if so, what would you try to change it into?

These are the questions that faced every American through the long, lean years of the Great Depression, which stretched mercilessly through the 1930s. Their answers might surprise you.