The Great Crash of 1929 A Catalyst for the Great Depression.docx

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The Great Crash of 1929: A Catalyst for the Great Depression
The 1920s was a decade of unprecedented decadence and economic growth in the United
States. Consumption increased sharply, and a euphoric zeitgeist of opportunity and promise
soared like the Hindenburg over the cultural landscape. Instant gratification was the trend,
advertising, corporate interests, automobiles, and celebrity culture gripped the public
imagination. It was in this frenzy of consumption, manipulation and illusion that the American
Dream was born.
Up until that moment in time, the stock market, headquartered on Wall Street at the New
York Stock Exchange, had been an elite club for only the shrewdest of investors. Propelled by
the same insatiable drive to expand, it opened its doors to an optimistic, and unfortunately quite
naïve, public. The market skyrocketed, as bull markets tend to do, and even the shoe shine boy
was eligible for a loan to buy his share. By 1929, millions of Americans, and many businesses,
lured by glittering rumors of fortunes made overnight, were committed to what was essentially
gambling; a game rigged by an experienced few, a house that always won.
The bankers and financiers at the pinnacle of the structure, Wall Street’s inner circle, had
no regard for the livelihoods or futures of the newcomers beneath them. They held a powerful
influence over the government’s financial policies and did not hesitate to keep regulations to a
minimum, to maintain their control of the market. In the words of John Kenneth Galbraith, “The
sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It
is nearly nil” (Galbraith 37). It was this sub-culture, characterized by a flagrant disregard for the
interests of the larger community, that served as a tipping point for the Great Crash of 1929, and
consequently the Great Depression, a twelve-year period of deprivation that would spell the
financial ruin of countless businesses and individuals across the nation, and alter the cultural
landscape irrevocably.

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On December 4, 1928, then president of the United States, Calvin Coolidge, delivered an
ebullient State of the Union address, noting that America had never “met with a more pleasing
prospect than that which appears at the present time” (Suddath). Indeed, it was a glorious hour,