Facts Behind The Great Depress

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on margin for their clients approximately 300 million shares of stock. By October 1929 the feverish wave of buying had exhausted itself and gave way to an equally feverish wave of selling. Prices dropped precipitously, and thousands of people lost all they had invested. This collapse frequently meant complete financial ruin. On October 29 the New York Stock Exchange, the largest in the world, had its worst day of panic selling. By the end of the year declines in stock values reached $15 billion.
The Great Depression
The stock market panic preceded an economic depression that not only spread over the United States but in the early 1930s became worldwide. In the United States, despite the optimistic statements of President Hoover and his secretary of the treasury, Andrew W. Mellon, that business was �fundamentally sound� and that a new era of prosperity was just about to begin, many factories closed, unemployment steadily increased, banks failed in growing numbers, and the ...

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