September 1929 felt the first shock waves of the earthquake that was to topple and destroy the great bull market of the Twenties.
Unheeding, still cheering each other on with the clichs of the new prosperity, the speculators plunged in again on the premise, true so often in the past, that every dip heralded a rise to an even higher plateau.
This time they were wrong. The market danced erratically for a while, but over-all it was losing ground, losing momentum, failing to show the resilience on which the nation so desperately depended. By the third week of October, the Crash was in being.
Even today the events of the week culminating in the terrible Tuesday that was October 29 make sad and distressful reading. The only way to suggest them is in terms of the great natural disasters: the avalanche, the tidal wave, the volcanic eruption. And the human response was equally fundamental: terror, panic, despair, and here and there courage.
When it came, the Crash utterly reversed the pattern of the times. Up became down, high became low, rich became poor, success became failure, prosperity became depression. It happened, too, with bewildering speed, and...