Part 3 of our New Deal series begins with the 1929 stock market crash and the government decisions that helped turn an economic downturn into the Great Depression. From the Federal Reserve’s tight-money response and the Smoot-Hawley tariffs to Herbert Hoover’s spending cuts and the collapse of thousands of banks, Judge Stephen Sfekas explains how deflation, unemployment and financial panic devastated Americans who had no deposit insurance, unemployment benefits or national relief system.

Bing Crosby’s 1932 recording of “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” captures the desperation of the era through the voice of a man who worked, served his country and helped build America, only to find himself unemployed and waiting for bread.

Then the focus shifts to the Supreme Court of 1933: Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, the liberal “Three Musket ...