The Day the Bubble Burst Quotes

“In the five hours the market had gone mad on October 29, it was later estimated that almost as much money in capital value vanished into thin air as the United States had spent on World War I. The loss was around ten times the budget of the Union in the entire Civil War.”
― Gordon Thomas, The Day the Bubble Burst: A Social History of the Wall Street Crash of 1929

“Those millions of sales represented a loss in share value on the New York Exchange alone of some $10 billion. That was twice the amount of currency in circulation in the entire country at the time. Eventually, the total lost in the financial pandemic would be put at a staggering $50 billion—all stemming from a virus that proved fatal on October 29, 1929: the day the bubble burst.”
― Gordon Thomas, The Day the Bubble Burst: A Social History of the Wall Street Crash of 1929

“America, the richest nation in the world, indeed the richest in all history—its 125 million people possessed more real wealth and real income, per person and in total, than the people of any other country—was now paying the price for accepting too many get-rich-quick schemes, the damaging duels fought between bulls and bears, pool operations and manipulations, buying on overly slim margins securities of low and even fraudulent quality. The indecisive and sometimes misleading leadership from the business and political world had contributed to the nationwide stampede to unload.”
― Gordon Thomas, The Day the Bubble Burst: A Social History of the Wall Street Crash of 1929

“One of them, in 1925 the newly elected Finance Minister, Anatole de Monzie, when making his inaugural speech forthrightly declared: “Gentlemen, the treasury is empty.” It was a mistake. De Monzie survived this spark of lucidity by only a few hours; that afternoon he found himself removed from office.”
― Gordon Thomas, The Day the Bubble Burst: A Social History of the Wall Street Crash of 1929

“Mother’s Day was born. Combining the talents of the card makers, the candy manufacturers, and the florists, Mother’s Day became the perfect rip-off. Florists had always been in the van of advertising; they had also mounted a successful campaign to remove the unhappy phrase from newspaper death notices: “No flowers by request.” It had been replaced by the far more positive—and profitable—slogan: “Say Farewell with Flowers.” In a mother-orientated nation, no son, however cynical, could refuse to send flowers on that special day; the many florists in and around Wall Street—established originally to provide the carnation boutonnieres favored by fashion-conscious brokers—did a record business during the week before the bogus anniversary. As the day drew closer, the price of blooms soared—a practice perfectly understood in the countinghouses; it was known as pushing the price as high as the market would bear. In fact, candy manufacturers saw the price of their shares rise as a result of Mother’s Day.”
― Gordon Thomas, The Day the Bubble Burst: A Social History of the Wall Street Crash of 1929

“The circle between Madison Avenue and Wall Street was complete; they were inexorably linked, in a relationship developed in ten short years, during which the ad men had created an ambience invaluable to the continuing popularity of stock speculation. The limitless, desirable, and expensive goods coming onto the market—often products of companies quoted on the Stock Exchange—could only be sold by determined advertising campaigns. If those campaigns failed, the market would slump. To maintain his place in consumer society, a man was told he needed a car, radio, icebox, and refrigerator; his wife required a washing machine, automatic furnace, and one of the modish pastel-hued toilets. To complete their domestic bliss they would have the latest in bathrooms: a shrine of stunning magnificence, containing, among other items, “a dental lavatory of vitreous china, twice fired.” To buy it would cost the average American six months’ salary. But paying was no problem; there were the installment plans. It was also part of the advertising philosophy that it was no longer enough to buy a car, radio, or refrigerator. People must have the latest model—junking the old one, even though it was still useful. Failure to do so would cause factories to close from the Atlantic to the Pacific, ending what some newspapers called “the golden era.” To protect it, they told their readers, was the patriotic duty of every American; one way to express that was, “to buy until it hurts.”
― Gordon Thomas, The Day the Bubble Burst: A Social History of the Wall Street Crash of 1929

“Richard Whitney wrote his own requiem for the Crash. “A thing compounded of both wisdom and folly, of both heroism and fright, of stubborn persistence and impatient irresolution, of tragically shattered hopes and ambitions and of incongruous and unique episodes not without at times a certain humorous aspect.”
― Gordon Thomas, The Day the Bubble Burst: A Social History of the Wall Street Crash of 1929