The former
president of NYSE, Richard Whitney was arrested for larceny.
Analysts and commentators thought of the stock exchange as decoupled
from the real economy. Only one tenth of the population was invested
- compared to 40 percent today. "The World" wrote, with more than a
bit of Schadenfreude: "The country has not suffered a catastrophe
... The American people ... has been gambling largely with the
surplus of its astonishing prosperity."
"The Daily News" concurred: "The sagging of the stocks has not
destroyed a single factory, wiped out a single farm or city lot or
real estate development, decreased the productive powers of a single
workman or machine in the United States." In Louisville, the "Herald
Post" commented sagely: "While Wall Street was getting rid of its
weak holder to their own most drastic punishment, grain was
stronger. That will go to the credit side of the national prosperity
and help replace that buying power which some fear has been gravely
impaired."
During the Coolidge presidency, according to the Encyclopedia
Britannica, "stock dividends rose by 108 percent, corporate profits
by 76 percent, and wages by 33 percent. In 1929, 4,455,100 passenger
cars were sold by American factories, one for every 27 members of
the population, a record that was not broken until 1950.
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