Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Great Depression Began Today in 1929

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The Massachusetts Foundation for the Huamnities reminds us that the Great Depression began on this day in 1929.

It happened in a relative instant. Everything seemed to be going so well. Then, suddenly, collapse.

“Stock markets in Boston, New York, and other major American cities tumbled so dramatically that the day was named Black Tuesday. Capping five days of frenzied panic selling, Black Tuesday marked the beginning of the nation’s — and the state’s — slide into the Great Depression. By 1934 Massachusetts cities that had once been prosperous centers of textile, shoe, and garment manufacturing were places of desperation. Unemployed workers wandered barefoot outside of shoe factories that had failed. Soup kitchens and bread lines offered food to the starving, but at a high cost to their self-esteem. A Washington relief worker wrote to her boss that ‘the picture is so grim that whatever words I use will seem hysterical and exaggerated.'” Read more.

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    • or grandparents – were there. We have, perhaps, learned from them how to be frugal. Perhaps not.
      I hope many BMG readers will read and consider what they would do in similar circumstances.
      Today I talked to a friend, a farmer, who cannot get into his fields to harvest. They are too wet. The food waiting there may rot before it can be harvested. Global warming may put us into worse circumstances. And I am worried about whether we, today, have the fortitude and skills to survive.

    • or grandparents – were there. We have, perhaps, learned from them how to be frugal. Perhaps not.

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      The government reported last week that consumers last year spent all they earned and then some, pushing the personal savings rate into negative territory at minus 0.5 percent.

      The savings rate has only been negative for a full year twice before, in 1932 and 1933, when Americans were struggling with huge job layoffs during the Great Depression.

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