In the early years of the Great Depression of the 1930s, large swathes of the American public were left virtually destitute. The economic collapse began in 1929, when the U.S. stock market crashed and billions of dollars in investments were lost. In the months that followed, people were trapped by unemployment and debt, in large part through a cycle of bank failures. In the first ten months of 1930, more than 700 banks failed. In 1932, the year of this cartoon by John T. McCutcheon, more than 1,400 banks failed, and the number rose to 4,000 in 1933. In all, some 9,000 banks failed during the decade. At the same time, unemployment was rampant; at the height of the depression, 25 percent of the workforce was unemployed, and those who had jobs often found their wages and hours cut, leaving them with little income to buy the bare necessities, let alone pay off debt—which in turn added to the insolvency of banks, which in turn created more poverty in what seemed at the time like an endless cycle. Thus, as this cartoon suggests, the savings and investment returns people had "squirreled" away during the Roaring Twenties were gone.