of the country’s banks had collapsed. House prices had gone down by 30 percent, leaving almost half of all mortgages in default. With the contraction in credit, mines and factories across the country had to shut down. Steel mills operated at less than 12 percent of their full capacity. Automobile plants, which had once churned out twenty thousand cars a day, were now producing less than two thousand. Industrial output had fallen in half, prices had tumbled 30 percent, and national income had contracted from over $100 billion to $55 billion. A quarter of the workforce—13 million men in all—were
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