ABSTRACT
Miniature golf–or, as it was variously called, “Tom Thumb golf,” “half-pint golf” and “pigmy golf”–was the first major fad of the Great Depression, a period well known for its wealth of obsessions. By early fall 1930, some twenty million Americans were playing the game (four million on any given night) on 25,000 miniature links. A Department of Commerce report noted the following economic implications:
increased trade for the golf club manufacturers, the cotton growers, the railroads, and the electric power companies;
decreased attendance for the movies.
