ABSTRACT
Thus only one and a half million people, out of a population of approximately 120 million and of between 29 and 30 million families, had an active association of any sort with the stock market. Probably only 600,000 engaged in margin trading. In any case, politics was a conventional necessity in contrast to the entrancing urgencies of making a living or getting rich. The newspapers and magazines made sensation of the Gastonia strike, but, except in the words of a humane reporter like Mary Heaton Vorse, failed to state the underlying causes. Walter Lippmann brilliantly analyzed the practical weakness of Herbert Hoover. The Literary Digest completely ignored the crash in its issue of November 2. Everything that Herbert Hoover had done before the crash, everything that he attempted after the crash, was called into question and fell short of expectation. The extravagant expectations surrounding Hoovers in office coincided with a season of easy money-at least for a few.
