The devastating slide into the Great Depression in 1929 not only caused personal financial losses to citizens across America, it fractured the social contract between business, government, and the public. That compact, in which government regulation coupled with voluntary social welfare programs from business would protect citizens from business misdeeds and assure their overall wellbeing, had been formed by the previous fifty years of experience. By the time the Depression ended in the 1940s, the old social compact was in tatters. But business, as the representative of private sector capitalism, had the most to lose from the calamity of the 1930s. While the failure of government to deal adequately with the crisis in its early years resulted in a political realignment, the private sector came close to losing legitimacy entirely. Democratic leadership under Franklin Roosevelt restored public faith in government, and indeed built up a substantial account of trust that would greatly increase the place of government in the economy. Private firms, on the other hand, lost substantial public faith, and they had to work hard to recover it in the face of serious challenges from those offering alternatives to capitalism. Although they eventually would do so, businesses emerged into a new political economy, with government taking substantial responsibility for assuring the public's economic security and ordering the private market. The widespread dire straights created by the economic collapse invited government intervention on an unprecedented scale.