75 years ago today, the New York Stock Exchange essentially bottomed out, causing thousands of investors to lose billions of dollars. History would record this day as the beginning of the Great Depression.
The post-World War boom years of the 1920's saw stock speculation explode in this country. While only a small percentage of the population actually owned stock (compared to over half of Americans today), the stock market reached values thought unattainable even a decade before. There was talk that the boom was inexhaustible, and there was evidence that this was true: industries were increasing production exponentially, unemployment was low and the world was, for the most part, at peace.
By the summer of 1929, there were signs of a slowdown. Unemployment was up and the nation as a whole had racked up more debt than ever before (back then, you could buy stock with very little money up front; you could pay for the rest of it with the divedends). As a result, much of the market was overvalued, some sectors dangerously so. But the band played on.
The stock market did not actually crash in one day. The slide began in September and continued into October. What makes the 29th important is the volume of trades which occured on that day. After that Tuesday, stocks actually gained a little, since they no place to go but up. But the damage had been done. Investment houses went broke, nearly half the banks in the country went under because they were sitting on defaulted loans which could not be liquidated, and unemployment began to soar. By 1933, 30 percent of the American workforce was unemployed.
If you talk to people who lived through those times, their memories are generally of sacrifice and deprivation, but also of unity. My grandmother (my mother's mother) told me once that they always had Sunday dinner with the entire extended family because it was easier and cheaper to feed everyone if the pool of people who brought food was bigger. My father, born in 1933, said that he remembers always having guests in the house for dinner. Sometimes, it was a friend of the family who was going through tough times. Occasionally, it was someone that his father had picked up on the side of the road (imagine doing that today). They always had an uncle and aunt or cousins living with them.
From and economist's standpoint, the depression did not end until America entered World War Two at the end of 1941. The boys and girls who came of age during the 30's became the men and women who fought and won that war. Most of them had only known sacrifice and hard work in their daily lives. My dad, talking about being a young man during the war, once told me, "Rationing was no big deal to us. We didn't have anything before the war." I have always thought that the hardship endured by those young people prepared them to be the greatest force for freedom the world had ever known.
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