ABSTRACT
On October 24, 1929, the towering structure of American prosperity cracked wide open. The whole credit structure of the American economy had been shaken more severely than anybody then dared guess. Everybody assured everybody else that nothing really important had happened, and during the spring of 1930 there was actually a Little Bull Market of considerable proportions. Yet there are several things about the Great Depression that must be borne in mind if one is to understand the subsequent fortunes of the American people. The Great Depression brought the abdication of Wall Street from the commanding position which it had achieved in the late nineteenth century, had consolidated under the personal leadership of Pierpont Morgan, and had institutionalized since his death in 1913. Finally, the New Deal tried to do a job of managing the national economy as a whole.
