SPEAKER_01: 0:00

I'm gonna start the recording. The flag drops, the thing goes off.

SPEAKER_04: 0:08

And I touched that stuff more often.

SPEAKER_01: 0:10

Let me that ain't it. Let's try this. Oh. Oh. Let's try it again. There we go. It took us a few tries, but we finally got it.

SPEAKER_03: 0:40

We did it. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Day's Dumpster Fire, where we celebrate lots of failures and some successes. How are you doing? This is Kara, as ever, and I'm here with Ed. How you doing, Ed?

SPEAKER_01: 0:57

I think I think mostly it's it's failures.

SPEAKER_03: 1:02

I think it's failures and how to get out of failures.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06

Yeah, I I feel like half the time we are trying to like, oh crap, what is going on? How do we start this show? And then like every day it's just a hot mess.

SPEAKER_03: 1:22

That's okay. Makes life exciting.

SPEAKER_01: 1:27

Well, I I would say it makes life more exciting, but less depressing. How do you like that for a transition to pretty good?

SPEAKER_03: 1:42

Pretty good. I'm trying to think of something on the spot, but I'm a I'm a writing person, so I have to like awful. All right, so today we're talking about the Great Depression. Today and uh maybe the next one, and possibly the next one. We'll see how far.

SPEAKER_01: 2:01

Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_03: 2:02

I'm very thorough.

SPEAKER_01: 2:05

Yes, yes. Uh yeah, like we're diving into the Great Depression today. And then hopefully I'm gonna have something a little bit more uplifting. Yes. I like exploding gas wells and and and and whatnot.

SPEAKER_03: 2:25

Who doesn't love exploding gas anything? We just listened to the wrong intro of the exploding whale, which was technically full of exploding gases. So why not? Let's do it.

SPEAKER_01: 2:38

Hey, like yeah, like if you're just joining us, like the last two episodes had to do with explosive mud. And uh yeah, if you've ever had any experience with explosive mud, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 2:54

Yep, it's it's a good time, especially at like 3 a.m. after uh eating crab oil for dinner.

SPEAKER_01: 3:03

We're just rocking back and forth just on the toilet. It's like roll up your sleeves, a double bucket affair, anyway.

SPEAKER_02: 3:16

Yes, we're off the rails.

SPEAKER_01: 3:19

Well, we're talking about the uh the Great Depression. Now, keep in mind, Kara, I grew up with people that grew up in the Great Depression.

SPEAKER_02: 3:32

I know.

SPEAKER_01: 3:33

So I hope I hope to goodness you have your facts straight because a lot of the old farts, granted, they're dead by now, but a lot of these old folks, they're like, Oh, I remember the Great Depression.

SPEAKER_03: 3:49

You're also talking to somebody who obsesses over making sure that my facts are straight.

SPEAKER_01: 3:54

So fair enough. Fair enough.

SPEAKER_03: 3:57

I really mean it when I say I'm very thorough.

SPEAKER_01: 4:00

Yes. Because somebody has to go for their master's degree in history.

SPEAKER_03: 4:06

Ooh, go me.

SPEAKER_01: 4:08

Yeah, so like Kara is gonna be an expert, my wife is gonna be an expert, my children are gonna be an expert. Meanwhile, I'm some hillbilly left in the dust.

SPEAKER_03: 4:22

You're doing great.

SPEAKER_01: 4:24

I'm doing great.

SPEAKER_03: 4:26

We should really get this episode started.

SPEAKER_01: 4:29

Well, I hey look, I I'm trying to just talk about my depression.

SPEAKER_03: 4:35

No, we're that's why you go on type of depression.

SPEAKER_01: 4:39

While you go on about your depression.

SPEAKER_03: 4:42

Well, maybe if we think about these people who went through something like this, and maybe you should start thinking about maybe it's not so bad.

SPEAKER_01: 4:50

Yes, yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, no, you you bring up a good point because it's just like I I I've always lived amongst people where I tried to complain about my problems, and then like one guy is like, Oh, I'm sorry, I survived the Holocaust. Oh, I'm sorry, I survived World War II, or I'm sorry, I survived the Great Depression, and then I'm like, Okay, let me put my complaining rates back in my bag, lock that up and walk out of the way.

SPEAKER_03: 5:30

That's why you never hear me complain.

SPEAKER_01: 5:32

Well, I do, you just complain differently.

SPEAKER_03: 5:38

Okay, I can take that. That's fine. I'm not gonna argue.

SPEAKER_01: 5:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, let's let's dive into the Great Depression because there's not a lot of dumpster fires out there that were as a uh hot as mess as this.

SPEAKER_03: 5:54

It's a pretty hot mess. We're we're following up with Prohibition, which is also a hot mess. So I'm just I'm really going for all the hot messes, and I'm enjoying every second of it. So that's it. Part one. Brother, can you spare a dime? And we're gonna talk about the years 1929 to 1932. And I'm gonna start us off with a quote that I just found ironic. Quote, stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau. Unquote. Economist Irving Fisher, October 16th, 1929. From the New York Times. And this was two weeks.

SPEAKER_01: 6:38

That's what it is. It's just like, oh, stocks are at all-time high.

SPEAKER_03: 6:42

Yeah. Two weeks before the crash happened, he's saying stocks are at a all-time high. We're doing great.

SPEAKER_01: 6:51

Is this right around the same time that the uh stock market like kind of want to shut down?

SPEAKER_03: 6:58

Um because well, no, well, we're gonna talk about all of that because it's complicated, but I want to lay it all out so it's clear and understandable. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 7:11

Because I I I remember back in the day um that the stock market wanted to shut down because like everything that could be invented was invented, and they're like, Yeah, let's just shut it all down because there's nothing more that could be invented.

SPEAKER_02: 7:35

That's not how it went.

SPEAKER_01: 7:37

Really?

SPEAKER_02: 7:38

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01: 7:40

So hopefully I have my facts wrong on that regard because I'm like, really? Humanity literally said that like nothing more could be invented ever again.

SPEAKER_03: 7:55

No, I don't think people said that. I think some people could have said that, but I don't think everybody said that. Okay, so four people I'd say like four out of five million. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 8:10

Okay, so it really wasn't a thing where they wanted to shut down no the uh entire like warehouse type of thing. No, that wasn't the case. Oh, really?

SPEAKER_03: 8:26

At least during this time, anyways. We'll get into it. Let's let's start though. Let's start.

SPEAKER_01: 8:30

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's dive into it.

SPEAKER_03: 8:32

Let's lay it up. So the 1920s are often seen as a period of immense prosperity in the United States. The population had been booming all throughout the 1920s, and in 1919, for example, there were about 104.5 million people in the country, and then in 1929, 10 years later, the population was 121.77 million people. So we boosted our number like a solid 16 million or something like that. Factories in big cities were churning out industrial innovations such as automobiles, kitchen appliances, and telephones. In rural areas, people were moving west to try their hand at farming, which had been proving prosperous at the time. Amid prohibition and organized crime, the public was doing well for the most part. By 1928, the average individual net income was six thousand dollars, six thousand seventy-eight dollars and ninety-three cents per year. So in today's money, the average person individually was earning$113,839 per year. So we're making over$100,000 on average. In 1929, the most popular car in America was the Ford Model A, which sold$1.9 million in that one year alone. There were 23 million cars on the road, almost four times the amount in 1919. Forty percent of American homes had a radio. Singing in the rain and making whoopie could be heard on radios in cities across the nation, and movie theaters played the Hollywood Review in which Singing in the Rain had debuted. Peakbull could be seen.

SPEAKER_01: 10:12

Making Whoopee?

SPEAKER_03: 10:13

Yes, it was a top hit in 1929, and it made me chuckle, so I had to put it in there.

SPEAKER_01: 10:21

Okay, so what wait, what does making whoopee on the radio entail?

SPEAKER_03: 10:27

What do you think that means?

SPEAKER_01: 10:30

I don't know.

SPEAKER_03: 10:32

I suggest everyone uh pause, go either listen to the song Making Whoopi 1929 or read the lyrics and then uh come back. Let me know. People could be seen sitting on poles as a test to their endurance. Notably, Shipwreck Kelly had held held the record for sitting on a flagpole in Atlantic City, New Jersey for 49 days. His record would be broken the next year. The Philadelphia Athletics won the World Series against the Chicago Cubs on October 14th, 1929, with a four-to-one series victory. Two weeks after the World Series ended, the stock market in Wall Street would crash, sending the United States and the rest of the world into an economic depression that would have radical consequences beyond what anybody could have imagined in the fall of 1929.

SPEAKER_01: 11:22

So I know a guy, I know this sounds weird. Um, I know a guy growing up in the retirement community that I was in, and he walked into Washington, DC with about$500. That was what 1928, 29, and he was worth 17 million dollars, and then on that October 29th, he was worth nothing. So Homeboy lost like 19 million dollars. Homeboy along with a lot of other people, yeah, and and it wasn't like he was screwing people over or whatever, it was just a simple matter of like, hey, I was investing in the 20s, and then October of 29, I lost everything.

SPEAKER_03: 12:28

Yep, it was him and a lot of other people.

SPEAKER_01: 12:32

What in the world happened?

SPEAKER_03: 12:34

We're gonna lay it all out.

SPEAKER_01: 12:36

Please do lay it all out so that I know when to not invest in the stock market.

SPEAKER_03: 12:43

Uh, okay. All right, here we go. So, chapter one. I call in chapter one, boom. And our starting quote here is from Herbert Hoover from his inaugural address from March 1929, back when the uh inaugurations were in March. Ours is a land rich in resources, stimulating in its glorious beauty, filled with millions of happy homes, blessed with comfort and opportunity. In no nation are the institutions of progress more advanced. In no nation are the fruits of the go fruits of accomplishment more secure. In no nation is the government more worthy of respect, no country is more loved by its people. I have an abiding faith in their capacity, integrity, and high purpose. I have no fears for the future of our country. It is bright with hope. Now, we don't know for sure what tomorrow will bring, but we can speculate. People have been doing so for a very, very long time. Any historical event that we talk about could never have been predicted by the people who lived through them, but some could speculate and some were right and some speculate and some were wrong. That's just how it is now and how it was then. The people who are now part of what we call the greatest generation are no different. They just did the best with the events that had occurred during their lifetime, just like we do today, just like Herbert Hoover had done when he had his inaugural address in 1929. While some saw it coming, most people had no idea that an economic depression was right around the corner. So how did it happen and why? Many in the United States view the depression as an American phenomenon, and it's easy to forget that it was an event the event was global. The economic depression hit different countries around the world in varying degrees, like an illness slowly spreading throughout the global economy. But the United States could be considered ground zero for that economic epidemic. The causes of the Great Depression are varied and often debated amongst historians in terms of the biggest or the most influential or blah, blah, blah. Despite the difference in opinion, there are numerous variables that are considered factors in why the depression happened. But to truly understand the variables that are in place, we should probably take a peek into what the global economy looked like before 1929. Very briefly, rash course style, let's get into it. First, let's look at World War I and the Treaty of Versailles. I'm not talking, we're gonna look at the entire war, just the end. The First World War left Europe in tatters. Miles of trenches slithered along the western European landscape, filled with blood and bodies while the skeletons of cities stood bare. It's going to take an immense amount of manpower and money to rebuild the Great Ruild after the Great War. Leaders of the European powers leaned heavily on the global economic system that had been built during the previous colonial era and the industrial revolution that had shaped the world before the war. Because their infrastructure was untouched by violence, many largely relied on the United States to hold them up while they rebuilt their cities, industries, and economies. France, Britain, and Germany were the largest foreign powers taking loans from the United States right after World War I with the promise that they would take the fund now and pay later once they were back on their feet. Germany in particular was very reliant on U.S. loans after the Treaty of Versailles was signed. Why? The Treaty of Versailles sucked for them.

SPEAKER_01: 15:55

So wait, so the Treaty of Versailles, was that like solely dependent on America?

SPEAKER_03: 16:02

No. The Treaty of Versailles was signed by America, France, Britain, Germany, Russia, and the other great powers. It was a compromise.

SPEAKER_01: 16:13

Okay, so it's not like, hey, when the American economy took a dump, it it really didn't fully translate into Germany, or did it?

SPEAKER_03: 16:26

It did because Germany was taking loans from American banks.

SPEAKER_01: 16:31

Got it.

unknown: 16:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 16:32

I think.

SPEAKER_03: 16:33

So Germany was borrowing money from US banks to pay off their war debts and rebuild their stuff.

SPEAKER_01: 16:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 16:41

So I'm gonna stop there because there's a lot more we're gonna get into.

SPEAKER_04: 16:44

That's part of it.

SPEAKER_03: 16:46

So the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, ending the First World War. The terms for Germany were exceptionally harsh, as they were considered responsible for the war. Germany had to take full blame. They were excluded from the League of Nations. And uh later in 1926, the Weimar Republic in Germany would be accepted into the League of Nations, but in 1919 it wasn't a thing. They had to rebuild the government first. All German fortifications in the Rhineland and east of the river were to be demolished without opportunity to be rebuilt. These areas would be occupied by Allied forces for five to 15 years to ensure this was followed. Germany's territories were reduced to 13% of what it was before the war had started. They were prohibited to ally themselves with Austria, and they had to cut their army to 100,000 men, and army size could not exceed that number. They were no longer allowed an Air Force or submarines with the limitation of six battleships. And finally, the big one, Germany had to pay$31.4 billion in war reparations. That's a 1920s money. That's a lot of money.

SPEAKER_01: 17:53

That's a uh that's a crap ton of money.

SPEAKER_03: 17:56

That's an insurmountable amount of money. And in the 1920s, it sent Germany into financial ruin from hyperinflation throughout the 19 yeah, throughout the 20s. It was just bad.

SPEAKER_01: 18:06

But but didn't Germany pay that off?

SPEAKER_03: 18:09

Uh in like 2020?

SPEAKER_01: 18:12

Yeah, because didn't Uncle Merkel pay that off?

SPEAKER_03: 18:17

Yeah, she paid it off like 2020. It took them all it took them a hundred years to pay it off.

SPEAKER_01: 18:22

And yet they still did.

SPEAKER_03: 18:24

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 18:25

Okay.

unknown: 18:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 18:26

I guess I need to sit down and calculate my student loans and they figured it out.

SPEAKER_03: 18:33

They figured it took a long time, but they did it.

SPEAKER_01: 18:36

If if a country can figure out billions of dollars, I think I need to figure out my hundreds of thousands of dollars.

SPEAKER_03: 18:45

So my point in terms of Germany and the Treaty of Versailles is they're taking lots of money from the US financial system to keep them afloat, essentially. They're going through a lot. At this period in history as well, the global economy was functioning on the gold standard system, an economic system that bases its currency values on the amount of gold a country possesses. And like everything in this world, the gold standard has its pros and its cons. So the pros of the gold standard, you could say, are exchanging currency between countries is very, very easy. You could go in there and be like, I have this much American money, and it's really, really close, if not the same, to this amount of British money. Pretty easy under the gold standard in that regard. It holds limitations in place for inflation or overspending. So if you can't go above the amount of gold you have, so it's automatically going to control how much you're spending as a country. And then countries that adhered to the gold standard were seen as economically stable and prosperous on the world stage. So it's good for their reputation. Uh, the cons, the bad things about the gold standard, and I would like you to pay attention to this a little bit. Please, under the gold standard, banks did not have the capability to expand money or credit. To boost economic downturns when they did happen, and they did happen a lot. In order to maintain the gold standard in a fluid economy, governments had to increase interest rates or cut spending. So in order to follow the gold standard and keep up with it, governments also and often had to increase interest rates, meaning if you wanted to take out a loan to buy a house or a car or whatever, they're going to jack up the interest rate just so they can keep up with the gold standard. If there was a gold deficiency in one country, other countries would have to make up for that deficiency to make sure the economy stays afloat. So if one country is low on gold, they're going to have to rely on everybody else to stay afloat. Politically, gold commitments often took precedence over social welfare, welfare, employment, and domestic policies for many governments who use the system. So keeping up with the gold standard was more important than, you know, all of the things that governments should be doing for the people living in that country. So those are the bad things about the gold standard. But in the 1920s, we're following the gold standard because it works for now. And by the 20s, most of the world's gold was concentrated in the United States and France, creating an economic imbalance with more countries that had gold deficiencies than countries that had enough gold to keep up with the gold standard. So that's an issue. Because remember, the countries that had the gold had to make up for the countries that didn't have the gold. And it does come back to bite them. So when everything does crash, one of the cons of the gold standard is that you can't take out credit to boost your economy. So you just have to jack up interest and then you're just screwing everybody over who's already screwed over. And it compounds the issue. So there's the gold standard. And the entire world is on the gold standard until the crash of 29 when they start abandoning that. All right. Because the United States was geographically further away from the battlefields, it had little to no rebuilding period when compared to Europe. That compounded with the fact that it had more gold than its European counterparts. 1920s America was a very different picture than we had just painted in Europe. The two economic phenomena that first occurred on the United States in this period is what we're these are these are what this is what we're going to focus on. Average Americans making very large purchases on credit and average Americans playing stock market. Those are the two things we're going to focus on today. It sounds really boring. I promise I'm not going to dig us a big hole of talking about credit scores and how credit is bad. And we're not doing that. I can't do that.

SPEAKER_01: 22:36

But wait. But so, like, was the whole Great Depression thing like tied to people pulling too much up from credit?

SPEAKER_03: 22:46

We're going to talk about it right now.

SPEAKER_01: 22:48

Got it.

SPEAKER_03: 22:48

In 1924, one Ford advertisement asked in big bold black letters. And you can find this ad, it's still up on the internet somewhere. I found it. It was interesting. It says, How did he ever get the money to buy a car? And then following in bold red letters, Ford weekly purchase plan. This was one of the earliest forms of the credit system for Americans to purchase items on a payment plan that would eventually take the nation by storm throughout the 1920s. The credit system for the American population had been available since the 1800s, but this system exploded in popularity in the late 1920s as people began using major retailers who offered to sell items on credit. So, like the famous Sears catalogs that you see in documentaries or whatever, they were selling things on credit for the first time to people. You could go in the catalog and be like, oh, I like that house. I only have to pay this amount of money per month. I'm gonna buy this house and finance it. And we're gonna do it that way. Yep. You could buy a house out of a magazine at this time. It's really fascinating.

SPEAKER_01: 23:52

Well, and and I've seen some articles back then where you can buy like a shotgun.

SPEAKER_03: 24:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 24:01

For like super cheap.

SPEAKER_03: 24:03

You can buy it super cheap, or you could probably buy it on credit.

SPEAKER_01: 24:06

Okay, so are are we seeing are are are we starting to see like the credit thing pile up here?

SPEAKER_03: 24:14

It's exploding right now. So the 1920s, a lot of these major purchases, including cars, radios, appliances, telephones, all of these major purchases and items that were once too expensive for many people to afford, if they were to buy it on on their own, they could now buy it. However, thanks to credit purchases, more Americans were able to enjoy a lot of luxuries that they never had available to them before. That's why we have so much. It's so much. The boobing 20s, the roaring twenties. Partially, you can thank the credit system for that. By 1929, companies had made an abundance of products in hopes of keeping up with the future demand. This created a surplus of goods ready for the taking based on the demands that they were seeing throughout the mid-20s. But there was a problem with their projection strategy. Would you like to try to point out the problem?

SPEAKER_01: 25:02

Um, too many people were borrowing credit.

SPEAKER_03: 25:06

No, not really. The problem was that people they only need one kitchen appliance. They don't need to buy three or four of them all at the same time. All these items, a lot of families, they only needed one, so demand started to drop. Not as many people were buying the products.

SPEAKER_01: 25:23

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_03: 25:24

Yeah. So these are all these great things. We're all buying it on credit. Woo, big boom, everybody, woo! And then we only need one, so we're not gonna, you don't have to buy more, right?

SPEAKER_01: 25:33

Really? Was that enough to cause depression?

SPEAKER_03: 25:38

All of this stuff is one thing after another. These are like little bits of rocks and pebbles that we're throwing into a plastic bag.

SPEAKER_01: 25:47

Okay, there is not one. This isn't like a this isn't a traditional dumpster fire. This is everybody throwing bits and pieces of flammable crap into the dumpster that would then ignite. There is so that you can't blame one person or a group of people or whatever.

SPEAKER_03: 26:12

Yeah, no, it's impossible to do that. There is not one sole reason that the depression happened. It's a multitude of different things.

SPEAKER_01: 26:19

Got it. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_03: 26:21

So all of these things that we're talking about, the Treaty of Versailles and foreign uh countries taking out loans, and then we have the gold standard that we have to adhere to. We have this credit system that is happening that's blowing up. All of these things are little flammable pieces of paper that we're throwing into a dumpster.

SPEAKER_01: 26:42

I thought the gold standard issue was more like in the 1890s.

SPEAKER_03: 26:48

The world is following the gold standard by the 1920s.

SPEAKER_01: 26:51

Okay, oh, okay. So so like the rest of the world is like, hey, our dollar is based on X amount of gold.

SPEAKER_03: 27:01

Yeah, everybody's dollar is based on X amount of gold, including the United States.

SPEAKER_01: 27:05

But I thought they had they ditched that in the like the 1890s.

SPEAKER_03: 27:10

No, no, they were on the gold standard in the 20s.

SPEAKER_01: 27:13

Okay. Because that's that that's where like the uh okay, so like I remember studying like oh gosh, what was it? It was a snow white, it was you know the one with Dorothy Wizard of Oz. Wizard of Oz, yes. And that was closely, like, if you read the book, that was closely tied to the free silver movement and and all that nonsense. But that was in the 1870s, 1880s, that was in 1899, yeah. But the US didn't drop the gold standard until 1933, but they adopted the silver standard, but they were on the gold standard on top of the silver standard that like that that's where the whole Wizard of Oz thing came from. Was that like, hey, it's the 1890s, and then like crap, this is all gonna fall out from underneath us.

SPEAKER_03: 28:24

Yeah, it's also two separate forms of money. So the gold standard is a standard that the world economy uses to keep their spending in check. Yeah, the silver standard is is just what they're making their coins out of.

SPEAKER_01: 28:40

Okay, so one was like, this is what America is doing, whereas like the gold standard is what the rest of the world America's also adhering to the gold standard.

SPEAKER_03: 28:53

The silver standard is completely different, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 28:56

But okay.

SPEAKER_03: 28:58

Amer in in the 1920s until 1933, America's on the gold standard. That's all we need to know. But they were also on the silver, they're on the gold standard, and we're gonna keep it that way.

SPEAKER_01: 29:09

Okay, so we're just gonna like completely negate all of Wizard of Oz, the free silver movement, the whole thing.

SPEAKER_03: 29:18

We're not negating it, we're just it's not important to this current thing that we're talking about right now.

SPEAKER_01: 29:24

Oh, okay. All right, yeah, I'm along for the ride. Yeah, just just shut up and roll with it.

SPEAKER_03: 29:36

The silver standard doesn't have anything to do with the depression.

SPEAKER_01: 29:39

Uh it it I I would argue that it does. But then again, though, like you've done a crap ton of research on this, so you would probably know more than I do.

SPEAKER_03: 29:51

Let's just say that okay, how about this? The gold standard was more of a factor than the silver standard in terms of the Great Depression.

SPEAKER_01: 30:00

I would argue that the uh silver standard was trying to hem off of like they were trying to like stem off the the massive recession that was gonna take place. I remember the late 1800s.

SPEAKER_03: 30:20

We're not talking about the 1800s, though, we're talking about the 1930s.

SPEAKER_01: 30:24

I know. So all I'm saying is that like the silver standard was like this is how we avoid this Great Depression now, because in 1894 was the greatest recession next to the uh Great Depression, right? But it didn't work in the 1930s, so no, no, what I'm saying is like what they did in the uh in the decades prior kind of came to a head in the 1930s, yeah, kinda.

SPEAKER_03: 31:00

Let me just let me let me let me cook.

SPEAKER_01: 31:05

Like, shut up, Ed. Let me talk.

SPEAKER_03: 31:07

Let me cook. Because in at least my research, and maybe I need to do more. I'm not like negating everything you're saying. I read nothing on the silver standard. It never came up, it never came up.

SPEAKER_01: 31:21

Oh, geez, my grandfather remembers the whole silver standard thing. Because the whole the whole idea behind it was like, okay, we're running out of gold, right? We can't base our dollar off of gold. But if we were to introduce silver, then we can incorporate that into the gold standard, which they did, and they're running on both.

SPEAKER_03: 31:48

However, it doesn't help, it doesn't work. We're still running off of the gold standard as a global economy.

SPEAKER_01: 31:55

Well, not today.

SPEAKER_03: 31:57

No, it they stopped doing that in 1933, yes.

SPEAKER_01: 32:01

And and I think that's where it kind of came to a head, is because they switched over to gold and silver.

SPEAKER_03: 32:11

I guess what I then what I'm trying to say is if I had maybe done a deep dive further back than 1919, then I probably would have ran into it. But as of right now, it's small potatoes compared to the other problems that we're running into in the 30s.

SPEAKER_01: 32:27

Okay, if you want if you want to club the issue with facts, okay. But yeah, no, I th I I think you're right because like most people in the 1930s could care less about where their value of the dollar sits.

SPEAKER_03: 32:47

No, they could not care less. In fact, they couldn't care less in the 20s when they were spending it all.

SPEAKER_01: 32:53

Yeah, yeah. I'm just saying, from a from a literature perspective, people were spending a lot of money under the premise that their dollar was being boosted by a lot of silver and whatnot. And then when that collapsed, now we've got even bigger Poo Show.

SPEAKER_03: 33:21

Right. But why did it collapse? Right? So everybody's buying things on credit. They're buying things they don't need on credit, they're buying things they do need on credit. Everybody's buying things on credit. By 1929, the companies had made an abundance of products that we talked about, and they couldn't keep up because people only bought things once. We talked about that. Not as many people were buying the products that were being manufactured in factories across the nation. In the manufacturing plants, companies were hiring more and often kept wages the same instead of raising them during the boom in production. So just keep that little tidbit in mind. Automobiles and radios weren't the only things Americans were putting on credit. The 1920s saw a movement of American participation in the stock market that had been previously only available to stockbrokers on Wall Street. The American stock market has been around since the late 18th century. It's been around for a long time. Though it was primarily used by wealthy financiers. By the 1920s, it had become an American financial institution, and many be began to pay attention to it. A new program was introduced in 1924 that would involve millions of Americans by 29, buying stocks on margin. What does that mean? Buying stocks on margin. That means that Americans had the ability to go to a stockbroker, buy stocks with a 10% down payment of that stock, and then pay the broker for the rest of the purchase in monthly installments. Kind of like buying stocks using a credit card owned by a stockbroker.

unknown: 34:55

Such a good idea.

SPEAKER_03: 34:57

To continue playing the stock market, people would often take out mortgages on their homes or businesses to put up larger margins in hopes of doubling what they put in. Then by 1929, an estimated 1.5 million Americans had owned stocks. That's a lot of people. This is how it works. This is basic flow. All right. So let's say you want to buy some stocks in the 20s and you want to buy them on margin because you can't afford the shares up front. If you want to buy stocks in the late 20s, you call your stock broker, who then calls the stock trader. Two different things. Broker is different than trader. The stock broker is the guy who calls the trader, and the trader is the guy who works for the company, right? At Wall Street. So the stock trader is the guy on the floor, and the trader gives the broker a price. Then the broker goes back to you, the client, with that price and the margin included. So the broker then includes a margin and the trader price, and they give it to the customer who will then say if they want to buy the stock or not. Does that make sense? Is that confusing at all? Because I had to read it like three times. And that is the goodest way I could figure it out.

SPEAKER_01: 36:04

I think it makes sense.

SPEAKER_03: 36:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 36:06

So you basically put, it's like, okay, I want to buy a portion of your company. I don't have the money to buy that portion. Therefore, I'm gonna borrow money to buy that portion of your company. Correct.

SPEAKER_02: 36:28

And then make the monthly.

SPEAKER_01: 36:29

As a result, I really hope to god your company does well.

SPEAKER_03: 36:34

Yeah, you're you're gambling.

SPEAKER_01: 36:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what it is. It's pretty much and it's no different than today. Now we we have some things put in place to like protect that, but but it's true. It's like, okay, Kara, your company is worth say a hundred million dollars. I want a piece of that action, so I'm gonna give you like a million dollars in return. I'm gonna get a one percent or two or three or four percent return out of all of that under the premise that like your company is gonna do okay, right?

SPEAKER_03: 37:21

That's how the stocks work, basically, and that's cool.

SPEAKER_01: 37:25

At yeah, it at this time, it's at this period.

SPEAKER_03: 37:28

Yeah, we're not gonna talk about it today. I'm not gonna get it.

SPEAKER_01: 37:30

Yeah, today it's completely different.

SPEAKER_03: 37:32

We're not because back in the 20s. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 37:35

I think like when everything burned to the ground at this time, as as the dumpster fire that you're gonna bring up, the uh the reclamation out of all of that is like, okay, you can't you you you're you you can't buy this sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_03: 37:59

It's gonna be a whole thing. We are going to talk about the whole thing. That's why this thing, this whole thing is like three parts. So okay, cool. I'm glad that was kind of clear. If anybody still wants clarification, please let me know and I will try to write it better. Uh all right.

SPEAKER_01: 38:19

So the huge So basically what Kara's saying is that if you have investment portfolios that you're unsure of, she will answer those questions.

SPEAKER_03: 38:30

No, no, no. I am not an accountant. I am not a stockbroker or trader. I am a historian. Please do not come at me. The huge influx of Americans buying stocks on margin caused inflated stock numbers, making it seem as though the economy was incredible and nothing could bust it after all the boom it was experiencing. The numbers the public was seeing or being sold to them were based on how many stocks that were being exchanged and their dollar amount, not by how the company was actually doing financially. A majority of the population, including economists, newspapers, and other influential voices, encouraged Americans to buy more stocks through Wall Street. Newspapers began publishing the stock numbers daily for the public to follow while economists, editors, and journalists added additional commentary or explanations to the statistics statistics being presented to them in the issue of the day. I have two examples here. I have one from the World newspaper from March 30th, 1929. It says, quote, that at least a part of the great amount of money in the securities market may represent temporary employment of funds eventually finding their way to the business uses, and that the prosperity of the present business cycle will probably not end in 1929 is the belief expressed by the J. Henry Schroeder Banking Corporation in the quarterly review of the London House of Schroeder. In other words, the economy is doing so great, and the business. Cycle is doing so awesome that this prosperity is not gonna end in 1929. It's just gonna keep going on and on and on and on. It's gonna be great. And then this next one, five oh, 15 days before this one I just read. March 15th from the same newspaper. The atmosphere of doubt and caution, which Wall Street is in recent weeks has come in regard, almost as habitual on Thursdays, was swept away yesterday in a rush of buying. Perhaps the market's own strengths weighed as heavily with speculative speculative minds as the logic of the situation, since the tape is the one institution Wall Street does not argue with. At any rate, the market appeared entirely confident for the opening gong. It was a firm, almost buoyant opening. Many initial transactions involving large blocks at a sizable price advances. The advance was one of the most vigorous of the year, amounting to a net gain of 6.97 points in the Dow Jones average of 30 representative industrial issues. In other words, the market is doing wonderful. I know we were all worried, but don't worry. We're doing awesome. It's March 1929. So people are reading articles like this every single day. And every single day, articles are saying, We're doing great. Keep going, keep buying, keep buying, keep buying. Even if you can't afford it. Don't worry.

SPEAKER_01: 41:23

But wait, so there was nobody in the economy at the time that was like, hey guys, slow down. Like things are not going to keep going the way you think.

SPEAKER_03: 41:38

There were a few, and we are going to talk about the most famous one here soon.

SPEAKER_01: 41:43

Okay. Yeah. Because I feel like there's gotta be some some naysayers that were like, guys, chill the F out like 100%. This is gonna implode.

SPEAKER_03: 41:58

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 41:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 42:00

So just so everybody knows, and I I should have added a little bit to this, but I ran out of time. But the Dow Jones is still around today. I'm sure you've heard of it. Uh in the 1920s, the Dow Jones was the most popular resource to track stock market status. It was established in 1896 by the editor of the Wall Street Journal at the time, Charles Dow. The Dow was and still is an average performance of 30 of the country's largest companies. Back in the 1920s, the Dow was used to see how those companies were doing on average in terms of stocks. The average is calculated by using the price of one share per company. So even then, it's not a true average of performance, but how many shares are being bought and sold. It's not exactly the most accurate way to see how healthy the economy is, or the most precise way, but it is the easiest way to follow it. So it's like a nice ballpark figure that a lot of people can can read and look at and be like, oh, okay, we're doing okay, and then continue today.

SPEAKER_01: 42:59

That's why they call it the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It's it's it's accumulation of like the 30th, uh, or the 30th of the top performing stocks. Right. And and and is still that way today. Like, like if you were to go on to the uh Dow Jones, you would have kind of like a basic idea of how your stocks are doing.

SPEAKER_03: 43:28

Yeah, but you can't like base everything off of that one number. You should probably research a little bit because it's not the most accurate thing in the world, but you know, and I think that that's where a lot of people ran into problems because they didn't know that they would just follow the DAO and be like, okay, everything's great, we're gonna keep buying.

SPEAKER_01: 43:47

Yeah, you know, they were never taught how to really read into it, so yeah, because it it it it's designed to be like a ballpark figure, right? That's it, like nothing accurate, nothing like hey, base your retirement off of this. It it's really designed to be like, hey, we think the stock market is behaving this way, roll with it, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 44:18

Yeah, so like you you have the public just starting to dip their toe into stock market trading in 1924, and then by 1929, five years later, you have 1.5 million people trading stocks. So, yeah, you're gonna have a lot of people not knowing what they're doing.

SPEAKER_01: 44:36

Oh crap, okay. Uh yes, yeah, that's a lot.

SPEAKER_03: 44:40

That yes, it's crazy. By September 3rd, 1929, the Dow reached 382 points, which set an all-time record for the time. For comparison's sake, in September of 1924, it had been worth 100 points.

unknown: 44:58

Wow.

SPEAKER_03: 44:59

So crazy influx of activity of like just regular people buying stocks on margin with their stockbroker credit card. Right? Can you see some fake inflation happening?

SPEAKER_01: 45:16

People were buying stocks on credit, yep, via stocks bought on credit that they didn't actually have. So it was like credit on top of credit on top of credit.

SPEAKER_03: 45:32

Well, they're just buying lots of stocks on credit, on top of, you know, they're they're putting out they're putting in their houses on collateral and oh god, yep. Businesses are putting their mortgages on collateral, and yeah, like people are because they don't believe that this thing's gonna tank. They're like, oh, I'll just take out a second mortgage, it's cool, so I can buy these stocks and I'll just double my money next week.

SPEAKER_01: 46:00

Oh goodness, uh like I'm I'm getting anxiety just thinking about this.

SPEAKER_03: 46:07

It's nuts.

SPEAKER_01: 46:08

So the economy this is the the this isn't how it works because ultimately you have to pay back that debt, right? And they thought they were going to be able to, and even if they lost their homesteads and their livelihoods, how are they gonna pay that back?

SPEAKER_03: 46:29

Well, they didn't think that that was a possibility because this whole time they're being they're being sold. Like, oh, don't worry, our economy is doing great. Look at all this innovation, look at all these great things we're doing. Economists are saying this is plateauing, it's the highest plateau ever, and it's never going to drop, right?

SPEAKER_01: 46:50

Sorry, like my my anxiety is just flying to the roof right now. Like it's just like this is not sustainable.

SPEAKER_03: 46:59

It's not, it's crazy. Oh, all right, chapter two.

SPEAKER_01: 47:06

Oh, oh, we're only in chapter two. Okay, great.

SPEAKER_03: 47:09

Chapter two. Runaway freight chain. And I start this one with a uh quote from Sir from a Mr. Studs Turkle. He wrote a book called Hard Times and Oral History of the Great Depression. It's actually a very fascinating book.

SPEAKER_01: 47:22

Wait, studs Turkle?

SPEAKER_03: 47:24

Yeah, he has a great name. But his quote is the worst day-to-day operators of businesses are bankers.

SPEAKER_01: 47:35

True. Fair enough. Like all right. A quote coming from a guy by the name of Studs. Yeah, he he's got it nailed. He's got this figured out.

SPEAKER_03: 47:50

I think he was like a he was a writer and an actor, and he did all kinds of things. That guy was interesting. I suggest anybody who has time look him up. Studs turkle. T-E-R-K-E-L.

SPEAKER_01: 47:59

All right. I'm I'm gonna name if I have a son, I'm naming him studs.

SPEAKER_03: 48:04

It's very close to my dog's name.

SPEAKER_01: 48:06

Studs?

SPEAKER_03: 48:07

Spuds. All right. While many were championing the stock market as a way to get rich quick, there were a few who did see the writing on the wall. Some economists and government figures had warned of an economic bust that would surely come to bite them. The last memorable one was in 1907, in which the stock market fell almost 50%. That's a story for another episode. That's a whole thing that I would like to talk about. It is interesting. Anyway, for some who have studied economics for a living, a major bust was inevitable.

SPEAKER_01: 48:40

Like the free silver movement.

SPEAKER_03: 48:42

Like droughts in the Great Plains. Roger Babson was an accomplished economist and philanthropist who had viewed economics in this way. After the 1907 market crash, Babson began writing a financial journal that had gained popularity over the years. In his journals, he claimed that the economy worked in cycles, following patterns of prosperity and then destitution, and then back and forth in waves over all of these years. On September 5th, 1929, Babson held a speech at the annual National Business Conference. In his speech, he stated, quote, Sooner or later, a crash is coming and it may be terrific. September 5th, 1929, that was about a month and two or three weeks before the crash.

SPEAKER_04: 49:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 49:28

The responses immediately after were very mixed. Many ignored his warnings while few took it to heart and sold their stocks because they were like, uh-uh, I'm not, I'm gonna listen to this guy. The few voices of warning, such as Babson's, did have a difficult time cutting through the noise of the excited spending. Because, like, bro, stop being a Debbie downer. This is awesome.

SPEAKER_01: 49:51

Yeah, the market's hot. Like, why are you saying this crap?

SPEAKER_03: 49:55

Jesus.

SPEAKER_01: 49:56

Just shut up. Rule the party of the city. Let people invest. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 50:04

Anyway, people would strive for the kind of lifestyle that was advertised to them and getting rich quick. Possibilities were the center of mind of many. Want to get rich? Play the stock market. 10% down, and you're rolling in it no time. You can play your margins and then some. It's like using your stockbroker credit card to play crabs in Vegas. We're doing great. If you follow the roots to all of these, that's great. If you follow the roots to all of these credit systems from brokers and major companies and average Joe's and all of this, you're gonna find yourself in front of very similar buildings with various titles, but providing the exact same service. The banks. Always down to the banks. Think about all of the credit floating around. All of this credit. American people are buying on credit, stockbrokers are selling on credit, and taking up bank loans for stocks they are brokering. And across the pond, foreign countries were borrowing money after being ravaged by the first world war.

SPEAKER_01: 50:59

Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_03: 51:01

Everything was on credit. Everything is on credit. Where's the actual wealth? Everything's fine. The actual wealth was in circulation, but it was disproportionate to the rate that was being borrowed. All right. Charles Mitchell owned National Citibank, and he began focusing on the general public for credit loans and investing in Wall Street throughout the 1920s. Before his efforts, the National City Bank focused on investments from corporate entities, not the average person, not the average Joe like the regular guy. As of 1928, and going into 1929, the Federal Reserve saw what National City was doing because National City was the biggest and largest bank to go to average people and say, buy these things, invest on margin, invest on credit. You're doing great, honey. Right? National City Bank is the biggest bank doing this. So the Federal Reserve, they began issuing warnings to banks like National City that offering loans or investments to people for the stock market would cause a collapse in the future. So the feds were worried. The Federal Reserve was trying to rein this in a little bit, right? Citibank ignored these warnings and continued to offer the investments to people who could not afford them without the margin. They had gone so far as to offer$25 million to investors in that same year. While the National Citibank wasn't the only bank following these investment practices, they were the first to do so and the biggest. So National Citibank, come on, guys, let's go.

SPEAKER_01: 52:40

Okay, so so now we're we're talking about national banks just giving millions.

SPEAKER_03: 52:46

Well, this is National Citibank. This is a big national bank, but it's just one entity.

SPEAKER_01: 52:52

Okay. Citibank is like, yeah, hey, it's okay. Just here's a bunch of money to go buy this home that you can't afford.

SPEAKER_03: 53:06

Correct. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is like, stop. Stop.

SPEAKER_01: 53:13

The Federal Reserve was like, guys, stop. It's the comp just quit it. Like, you're killing me.

SPEAKER_03: 53:21

Yeah, the Federal Reserve was worried about a collapse, like the one in 1907, right? So they began raising interest rates on borrowers to try and curb the stock market spending. So they're trying to scare scare people from taking out loans because who wants that kind of interest? People don't care, apparently.

SPEAKER_01: 53:41

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03: 53:43

Their goal, right, was to curb the spending, put some sort of guardrail up there for investors or whatever. The raise in interest did deflate the market numbers, but it also slowed down the rest of the economy and tightened up the available credit, affecting not only the Americans using it, but the foreign powers overseas as well.

SPEAKER_01: 54:03

So my gosh.

SPEAKER_03: 54:06

Being a gold standard center, the raise in interest rates forced other countries to keep up.

SPEAKER_01: 54:12

Wow.

SPEAKER_03: 54:13

Woo!

SPEAKER_01: 54:14

Yeah, this is this is just a hot mess in the making.

SPEAKER_03: 54:18

Can you see why I'm like there's so many things I want to make sure I'm clear, but also you can see it when you're clearly looking at it, right? But when you're in the weeds like that, when you're getting all of those newspaper ads, buy, buy, buy, we're doing great, we're doing great, we're doing great, we're doing great. It's probably hard to see, you know?

SPEAKER_01: 54:37

Well, and and it's one of those things is like if you're in the 1930s, caught up in this rancor of like buy, sell, buy, sell, buy, sell. I can't say I really blame a lot of them because yeah, like they're the media, the the news, everything was just be like pushing you towards one way without any understanding that when this turns sideways, it goes really sideways, yeah, like beyond sideways, like beyond sideways, like it's bad.

SPEAKER_03: 55:18

Um, and also try to think about the culture that we talked about in the Prohibition series, that that roaring 20s culture.

SPEAKER_01: 55:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 55:27

You had all of that going on at the same time. That was the 20s culture, you know? So you're just in all of that. It's like the culture we live in today. It seems like it's really complicated, and you're like, I don't know how people would be able to understand it coming from somewhere else. It's the same then as it is now. It's just maybe it looks a little bit different, but it's still that complicated. So when you're in the weeds, you're really in the weeds. So a lot of these people, man, can't blame them. I I empathize with them. That's that's that's hard.

SPEAKER_01: 55:59

Yeah, because I I I legitimately knew people that had lost like 17, 30 million dollars easy in like 1920s times.

SPEAKER_03: 56:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 56:14

Like everything just blew. Well, I mean, look at Arthur Miller, right? Arthur Miller, who wrote some of the greatest modern plays, like it, you know, like the crucible and stuff like that. Uh, he lost everything. His dad lost everything under the premise that it would be like, hey, dump all your money into this and it will pay out over time. Boy, did it not pay out.

SPEAKER_03: 56:51

But now you can kind of see why, right? Like, there's so many different variables when you lay them out like that, you're like, oh crap. Whoa.

SPEAKER_01: 57:02

Um, yeah, it it's a it's a perfect case of where like you and I, and hopefully anybody who listens to this podcast is like, you know what? I'm gonna hold off dumping every dollar I have into this one thing because it may not pay out.

SPEAKER_03: 57:21

It's better to do some research before you make a big decision. That's what I'm gonna say. Um, chapter three, bust.

SPEAKER_01: 57:28

Oh god, we're only in chapter three of this dumpster fire? Chapter three, bust.

SPEAKER_03: 57:33

All right. What do you know about ticker tape? Let's take a break from money. Hold on. What do you know about ticker tape? That's okay. You're muted. Ed, you're muted. There you go. Hi, back. There he is.

SPEAKER_01: 57:49

There I am. There he is. So, like, ticker tape is like basically like a stream of consciousness of like whatever the markets are doing.

SPEAKER_03: 58:04

Kind of.

SPEAKER_01: 58:06

So, like Abraham Lincoln would would look at the ticker tape to figure out how many people died the previous day. It it it it was basically like the little uh it's it's kind of like the little stream of I don't know, data or news feed or whatever that you would see on like CNN or Fox News or whatever of like what is going on.

SPEAKER_03: 58:34

Yeah, yeah. So ticker tape is telegraph paper, but it's three-quarter inches wide and really, really long, like a receipt.

SPEAKER_01: 58:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 58:43

Right? Stock market tickers were just telegraph printers made for the stock market, and they were invented in 1867, which then splurred a flurry of innovations for telegraph and stock market communication, including one of Thomas Edison's innovations, the universal stock ticker. I just thought that was interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 59:02

Really? Okay, so Edison had had a saying.

SPEAKER_03: 59:05

Edison had had a little bit of a go at that.

unknown: 59:08

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_03: 59:09

So when a person tells their broker, right? So we talked about, okay, you want to buy stocks in the 20s, you tell your broker, and then the broker tells the guy at Wall Street, and the guy at Wall Street goes back to the broker, and the broker goes back to you with the price, right? That's and that's where we ended. So let's say you say yes, I want to buy that share for this price, right? So when the person says yes and they tell their broker they want to buy a share, the purchase is recorded on a slip of paper, okay, that's given to the trader from the broker. So the broker will call up the trader at Wall Street and be like, okay, they want to buy it or whatever. That slip of paper is written down by the trader over there at Wall Street, and that slip of paper is given to a typist who types up the order or that or the number of shares and the price it is. And then that type piece of paper is added to a stack of other orders writing to be processed by telegram. Graph. Okay. Now, this was done on the market ticker, which sent out coded market share sales printed on the three-quarter wide ticker tape that we were talking about, like a receipt for the stock market being printed on Wall Street and to brokers all over the world for people buying all of these shares. The mini telegram machines were called tickers for the ticking noises that they made when they printed all of the ticker tapes all the time. They printed 300 characters a second. That's a little more than like two Twitter tweets back when X was Twitter. By the time we get to 1929, the millions of shares, remember, 1.5 million people are buying and selling all of the time. The millions of shares being traded on ticker tape was already strenuous on a system that was done almost exclusively by hand in this way. Lots of steps, lots of paper. And once we hit October, man, okay. I am going to start before we talk about the crash that we've been talking about this whole time. I'm gonna get into it right now. I do have a quote here from a guy who was there. This is from Frederick Lewis Allen in his book Only Yesterday, which he wrote in 1931. He says, on that monumentous day, or momentous day, sorry, Frederick, on that momentous day, Thursday, October 24th, stocks opened moderately steady in price, but in enormous volume. The pressure of selling orders was disconcertingly heavy. Prices were going down. Presently, they were going down with some rapidity. Before the first hour of trading was over, it was already apparent that they were going down with an altogether unprecedented and amazing violence. Thank you. Thank you, Frederick. All right. The crash of 1921 is usually bookmarked as the start of the Great Depression, but it was not the cause. Okay. I'm going to be very clear for my friends who may be taking a US history class. The crash did not cause a depression, but it could be argued that it was catalyst, but it was not the cause. We just talked about lots of different causes that caused the Great Depressions and what historians and economists argue about semantically. Now, there are two stages to the stock market crash in 1929: Black Tuesday and Black Thursday. I should have switched those, but it's fine. We're first going to talk about Black Thursday, October 24th, 1929. And for those of you following along on our website, when I actually get this updated, there's a uh article that you can read. It's cool. Anyway, yeah. Because of the increased stock market activity of people buying on margin and stock inflation, the stock market had already been trending upward for almost 10 years. Never went down. It just went up. So that's another reason people were like, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. 10 years. It never went down. Then on Wednesday, October 23rd, it dropped by 4.6% in a panic. Investors began selling their stocks the next day, Thursday. A total of 12.9 million shares were traded or sold that Thursday. Remember our ticker tape conversation?

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:07

Whoa.

SPEAKER_03: 1:03:08

12.9 million with that many trades happening in a single day. The work that had to be done was astronomical, creating a delay in reporting updated numbers to traders on Wall Street, let alone the public. The delay caused further panic and discontent as people watched Wall Street try to deal with the downturn. The confusion was so chaotic that the NYPD was dispatched to New York stocks to the New York Stock Exchange to make sure that riots didn't break out. Throughout that Thursday, a number of banks, companies, and wealthy investors bought huge amounts of stocks in order or try to attempt to balance out the amount of sales that were being made. So that same day, that Thursday, we're still on Thursday, at 1 30 p.m., Richard Whitney, the vice president of the New York Stock Exchange, bought 25,000 shares of U.S. steel at$205 per. That's 1920s money. With a total of$5,125,000 in 1920. That's a lot of money. Bro tried to save the market in one go. Gotta give him some credit for that, I guess. Uh his investment gave other wealthy investors confidence to match his purchase or come close to it, at least, with the intention of balancing out the market or bringing it back to a profit if they were lucky. The attempt was successful enough to come in at the end of Thursday, just a few points shy of breaking even. Whitney was even seen as a hero that day. And we will check back on him in like five or six years. We'll get there. But yeah, don't forget that guy. That guy's uh we'll chalk, we'll chat, we'll talk. Anyway. The next day, Friday the 25th, the market recovered a small amount. All weekend, traders and tickers worked on playing catch up as they updated the market shares from the chaos of Thursday. However, Monday, the stock market would fall again by 12.8%. And then Tuesday happened. Tuesday, much like Black Thursday and Black Monday. Black Tuesday saw an insurmountable amount of sales with little to no purchases to balance out the exchange. The stock market was in complete free fall. About 16 million shares estimated were sold that day, with stock value was plummeting rapidly. Billions of dollars were lost, and thousands of investors and traders found themselves without a leg to stand on. Jonathan Norton Leonard wrote in his book three years down, 1939, about what he wrote he wrote in his book what it was like that day on Black Tuesday at Wall Street. He says, the wires to other cities were jammed with frantic orders to sell. So were the cables, radio, and telephones to Europe and the rest of the world. Buyers were few, sometimes wholly absent. This was real panic. When the closing bell rang, the Great Bull market was dead and buried. Nice, y'all. 16 million shares in a day? Whew.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:56

Wait, that that's even a lot by like today's standards.

SPEAKER_03: 1:06:01

Yeah. Like that's crazy.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:02

16 million shares?

SPEAKER_03: 1:06:05

And that's just being sold.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:07

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03: 1:06:08

The ticker delay, as you can imagine it would be, forced traders and investors to work around the clock. It's assumed that there were many trades that were likely lost altogether in the chaos of Tuesday's scramble. So it could have been way more than 16 million. We really don't know.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:24

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03: 1:06:26

Traders would be seen asleep on the trading floor as they worked to keep up into the night.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:32

As in like they just gave up.

SPEAKER_03: 1:06:35

I think they just fell asleep because they were trying to get caught up.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:39

Wow.

SPEAKER_03: 1:06:40

The New York Stock Exchange would close for the rest of the week after activity was suspended Wednesday afternoon. Myths about traders off offing themselves or committing suicide on Black Tuesday spread like wildfire thanks to New York headlines immediately after the crash happened. This is actually just that. It was a myth. That didn't really happen as much as the papers would lead you to believe. No, this kind of depression or response to the depression would not be seen until a little bit later in the following years when people were really struggling financially, living in shanty towns or worse. Some argue that rumors spread by Wall Street actually may made the panic worse. So thanks, newspapers. And then, like Domino's, the economic impact of the crash was first felt by Wall Street brokers and then investors and then banks and then companies and then the people very, very fast. When the crash happened, investors had no money to pay the banks directly, invested in stock money, since most of their shares were being purchased at margin. Okay. After selling whatever they could, they then began calling the clients asking them for the balance they were owed. So brokers couldn't pay traders, traders couldn't pay companies, companies couldn't pay banks, banks couldn't pay people.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:47

Yeah. It's basically a runaway chain reaction.

SPEAKER_03: 1:07:52

Correct. In turn, banks were not getting enough money to pay out the loans, full withdrawals, and deposits, and they were immediately sent to somebody that was owed, like a drop in the bucket. So oh, cool. We got a deposit in great, give it away to this person. The panic caused an influx of people attempting to withdraw their money from the banks. To compound the issue, banks were then also lending out money to foreign countries who could no longer do so. And those countries who were trying to borrow money from the US, they no longer had that financial cushion. So it would send them into depressions as and now you have a global depression.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:27

Yeah. So basically, like this was a runaway chain reaction that just messed up all the economies in the world.

SPEAKER_03: 1:08:37

Correct. It went as far as Japan. Japan was even felt, which I thought was really interesting. I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:43

But yeah, I I I would say, like, when all this kind of like blew up, like Europe took a beating more than anything.

SPEAKER_03: 1:08:55

Beating, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:56

And I think it's because they were the closest, um, closely tied, I guess, to the Yeah, and and I and I think Europe was like heavily invested in America because vice versa. America came out of World War One, like in strides, and I think a lot of people were investing in America.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:20

Oh, they absolutely were, and they had uh and and I don't blame them.

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:26

Yeah, I don't, you know, I don't blame them. I I would have invested myself, like like yeah, it's just what what else can you do? So yeah, it yeah, it's one of those things where like I honestly don't blame the people.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:44

No, like I don't either. Like, there's a few people who maybe made a questionable choice, like that guy from Citibank, but like yeah, but you can't blame him for the whole thing, you know, it was just that one thing, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:02

If you're a millionaire, you're gonna dump like okay, I'll I'll I'll throw in a couple million dollars and see what happens, yeah. And then when it all implodes, because the entire world is dependent on how these stocks do, yeah, yeah. You're you're just asking for a hot mess.

SPEAKER_03: 1:10:28

So, friends, our dumpster is officially on fire. How does it feel? All right, now I know our show is about dumpster fires, and we talk a lot about how the dumpster fire gets lit, but I also want to talk a lot about how the dumpster fire is put out. Okay, because I think that is the half of a failure that should be the part that's celebrated.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:54

Well, I I I I think how the fire is put out is how we as a species of people are like, okay, this went down, it's a hot mess, and this is how we put it out, and this is how we move forward.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:16

Now, I think before we start talking about how to put it out with our two leaders who are going to attempt to do so in two different ways, um we should probably talk about A, we're gonna first talk about how um global governments responded, but B, we should also talk about just regular people like you and me. We're gonna talk about them a little bit too. Okay. Chapter four, apples. I wish the camera sometimes would work. Um, all right, global responses.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:49

Just apples.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:50

Apples. That's literally the uh the chapter. That's it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:52

That's all that's called. We're we're we're just gonna talk about apples. Yep, we're gonna talk about some apples.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:57

How do you like them, apples? Global responses immediately following the crash varied. But due to being on the gold standard, many countries, including the US, had to increase tax percentages, implement or raise tariffs on foreign trading, and cut spending wherever possible. At the expense of the average working person, economies scrambled to keep up with the gold standard and the collapsing banking systems across the world. Tariffs cause distrust between countries, causing isolationism or resentment, while at the same time increasing prices for goods bought by the consumer. Cutting spending or increasing taxes would hurt the consumer more directly, but either way, the consumer is the one who's getting screwed. In a nutshell, because literally everybody was buying everything on credit, the global economy was still recovering from a world war, countries were being limited by the gold standard, and tariffs were being implemented, production was overproducing, and banks were slinging credit sales. We got ourselves a depression. And uh we have some tension in the foreign affairs sector, and that's fine, we'll figure that out too. But the tension is really gonna get real in Europe. Um, and and we will talk about the really real tension in Europe, especially out of Germany, and probably episode three, if not four, depending on how far I want to take this. But just know. We got there's stuff going down over there, all right. We are in the interwar period. Please remember we are between two world wars here, and we are talking about just a little itty bigeon of a little bit of history. So we love it. Amongst the general population, the race to obtain money before it was lost was on. People quickly lost their homes as they had put it on collateral for loans that they had taken out previously during the boom of the 20s. Companies that had overproduced could no longer keep the employees that they had hired for that mass production, but they did try their best to keep who they could afford in the depression's early years, but they had to do so with lower wages. Okay. Between 1929 and 1932, the average unemployment rate rose from 3.2% in 1929 to 23.6% in 1932.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:20

Wow. That's a lot.

SPEAKER_03: 1:14:22

That's 20%. That's a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:25

Yeah. Keep in mind also that's a lot of people unemployed.

SPEAKER_03: 1:14:30

That's a lot of unemployed people. Keep in mind also that uh 1933 is considered the height of the depression, and unemployment would be just a little bit higher than that in 1933. So we're this today, we're stopping at 32. Next time we're gonna talk about 33. I have a reason for that, but we'll get there.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:50

That's rough.

SPEAKER_03: 1:14:51

It's rough, buddy. It's rough.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:55

What happened to you, buddy?

SPEAKER_03: 1:14:57

Right. And I do also want to note um 23% is a really high number for unemployment, but also you do have 77. My math is probably bad. 87% of the population who are still working. Many of the people who are still working, though, are terrified of losing their job. They're getting paid very, very low wages, or they're just incredibly lucky, or they're self-employed farmers who are about to go through a drought. Keep in mind.

SPEAKER_02: 1:15:32

What episode was that?

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:34

Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, that that's another episode.

SPEAKER_03: 1:15:37

I know we have it. We did it. I did it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:39

I know you did.

SPEAKER_03: 1:15:40

I don't remember what number it is, but friends, go find it. It's pretty good.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:44

Oh my goodness, that that is brutal. Like, because I I I was caught up in the uh 2019 whole kerfuffle, and I was a part of the what was it, like 8% that lost their jobs, and then here on the other side. Yeah, 2008, 2009. And I was complaining that, like, woe is me, I'm losing my job, but like, dude, to lose like 30 percent.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:23

Yeah, that's a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:26

That's that's millions.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:29

Yeah, I wish I could show a visual, but we are an audio formatted podcast.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:36

Yes, that's a lot. We'll we'll include it in the show notes.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:39

Yeah, look it up somewhere. It's it's it's a lot of people. Yeah, people who lost their homes due to foreclosure, collateral, or other reasons were forced to resort to creating shanty towns. The shantytowns sprung up all over the country, primarily in big cities, and we become a symbol of the depression for years after the fact. I am purposely leaving out a name for them. I'll tell you why later. Instead of buying, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:04

Okay. I just want like I I can't edit that out, but like I'm just thinking, eh. I kind of know a guy at that time that was let's just say episode one and episode two are gonna overlap. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:17:23

Uh yeah, shady tails. Okay. Instead of buying or purchasing items that were damaged as they would have before, people would just repair them or mend them. That includes clothes, shoes, or items found around the house. So you're you're getting you're you're starting to see that um if anybody's talked to anybody who knew anybody during the Great Depression, they would do everything they could not to spend money, even until they were super super old. And I'm sure you can tell me if this is correct. And it's because of this reason, is they just grew up that way, or they lived during depression where they didn't have anything, so they they did what they could around the house to make sure that they still had what they needed, but they didn't they didn't have to spend so much money to get it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:03

So I I I remember my grandfather telling me when he was a kid during the uh the Great Depression because he grew up in Elgin, Illinois, and everybody was kind of like making their way through Elgin. And one of the things that my grandfather remembers as a kid, and I and I kind of hold on to this to this day, is they would make meals, and they would purposely put these meals on plates on the back porch because people that were trying to move out west needed a place to eat, they needed a place to sleep, they needed whatever. And yeah, my grandfather remembers as a kid like preparing meals for these folks that were just trying to find a better way of life. And here's a funny thing: every day, those dishes that they would put out every night, they would be cleaned, scrubbed, like scrubbed, cleaned, and stacked neatly with the uh you know, forks, spoons, and knives all on the top row plates every day.

SPEAKER_03: 1:19:28

Yeah, this is um it was an interesting phenomenon. You would have just people helping other people just because they knew they needed help.

SPEAKER_04: 1:19:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:19:37

Um, and and any way they could, whether it was like work or labor for somebody or just doing something kind for somebody else, or here's a meal, or here's some and it was a vastly different country. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:51

This was people just helping people out because, like my my great grandfather, he had a gas station. So he stayed gainfully employed all through the depression. Same thing with my grandmother. That's good. And what did they do? Hey, we have excess money. We're going to dedicate that to people that are struggling. People that are trying to make it through. And that's not something that we see today.

SPEAKER_03: 1:20:22

Yeah, it's uh it's pretty interesting the way it affected people. One interesting quote that I thought was was fascinating was from an African-American man. And he said, uh, the Great Depression made it to where everybody was on a level playing field. So the white folks and the black folks were on a level playing field.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:40

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_03: 1:20:42

I thought that was a really interesting quote. And I'm paraphrasing because I don't have it in front of me. Um, but from that perspective and point of view, it kind of uh makes you think a little bit for for the African American people who were affected by it. Yeah. The Native Americans too.

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:01

I I want to read the poetry from that time period. Because like you you know me. I I I look at history from the perspective of the literature from the time period, but I don't know much about it. I I I've never come across any sort of literature from that time period to really shed light on, like, I mean, yeah, I I I've read like Leslie, Marmon Silko, and and all that kind of stuff, but that was more like 50s, 60s.

SPEAKER_03: 1:21:35

Yeah, for me, I was reading a lot of just interviews of people who were living through it, and just like little summaries or blurbs of books that they had written about it. I did read a majority of a book from a man who lived through it. So a lot a lot of the perspectives that you get are are just direct nonfiction.

SPEAKER_01: 1:22:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:04

Read this thing that I went through.

SPEAKER_01: 1:22:08

You know, just primary source.

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:10

Yes, here it is. Um but what I wish I could have had time for or would have done more of is the African American perspective, yeah. And I think I'm going to do that with this next episode because this episode I'm mainly focusing on the general what happened, yeah, like the type of view overviews, just so everybody's kind of on the same page. But I I think I'm gonna um dive into that African American, and if I can, Native American perspective, and can I give you guys some of that too?

SPEAKER_01: 1:22:45

I I would welcome that because that is like the one area where I am horrifically deficient in is in the Native American side of things in terms of the Great Depression.

SPEAKER_03: 1:23:01

Yeah, and there's a lot going on in that sphere. Um, but I I don't have enough information to just like freely talk about it. I'd but I'd like to do more reading on it. So maybe I'll add that in there. This is this is gonna be a four-parter, I guess.

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:18

Here we are. So what you're saying is that I've I've got the next three, four weeks.

SPEAKER_03: 1:23:23

Yeah, you got some time. Yeah. All right. Soup kitchens and food banks saw a massive influx of people and could hardly keep up, creating long lines of people for facing hunger. Those who were more fortunate had donated to these institutions. For example, Al Capone opened one of the first soup kitchens in Chicago. Fun fact.

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:46

I I I love that.

SPEAKER_03: 1:23:48

It's a fun fact for you.

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:49

You're like he he's an ultimate douchebag.

SPEAKER_03: 1:23:52

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:53

But he really did try to help out.

SPEAKER_03: 1:23:56

He did, he did, and remember, we also have prohibition going on at the same time.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:24:01

So that last episode of Prohibition, here we are, same time.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:05

Yep. And that's all a tax write-off.

SPEAKER_03: 1:24:07

Facts. Soup kitchens weren't the only places facing long lines and wait times. Seeing men waiting outside doors of factories or ports to be picked for work became a common daily occurrence. Many found that foremen who chose men would have favorites or their own discriminations, i.e. racism, when picking people for work that day, causing incredible tension and frustration. And this is going to come to a head in a few years. And do I have some rabbit holes that I went to after that? Others did what they could to make ends meet, from selling belongings to selling things they had made. Some people sold services like shoe signing, cleaning, or more taboo services like sex work. Some people found a creative solution that proved to be fruitful for a short period. I was so proud of my wordplay. You go, Kara. While the Great Plains were beginning to show signs of drought, apple growers in New York, Michigan, Virginia, and Washington found themselves growing too many apples and found themselves with a surplus in the early 1930s. The chairman of the International Apple Association, that is a thing, the International Apple Association, Joseph Sicker, what a name, had an idea. He figured, why not sell these apples at an extremely discounted rate and have others sell them in the streets? Sicker worked with the produce industry to purchase$10,000 worth of surplus apples and sold them to underemployed people or unemployed people. And what they would do is they would sell as much as they possibly could and then pay$1.75 per box at the end of the day, keeping the balance of the profits for themselves. And um just I did the conversion for$1.75 a box. It's today's money, it's like$33.24. So if you're out there selling apples all day, you're gonna take in some profit, right? This system met three major needs that Sicker had observed in his community. I think he was in New York. It got rid of the surplus apples. That's a win. It gave the unemployed some sort of income, and it gave unemployed men in particular a sense of purpose after losing their jobs. Because what I didn't talk about, and I should have, is that all of these men, they they felt like they didn't have any purpose anymore. They felt like they were useless. They, you know, the man has to put the bread on the table type of culture that we are living in. And all of a sudden, they can't do that. And for them, it's like an existential thing. You know, depression rates are way up among the men, and now they can't take care of their families, and for them it's really embarrassing and it's really sad, and they feel like they have no purpose in life anymore in that type of deal. That was a widespread thing.

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:54

Okay, so women need to understand as well as men need to understand that like women honestly don't give a crap what their husbands do. Like they they honestly don't care if they're laying bricks or if they're a business, you know, CFO or whatever. However, though, on the men's terms, men feel like that like unless they are contributing to the household, they're not doing anything at all. And men feel like, what what use am I if I am just laying bricks or whatever? And it's it's it's a really, really, really tricky thing because men need to understand that women don't care about what their husbands do for a living, but men put a huge priority in terms of what it is that they do for a living in contributing to the greater good. So, like, I I like going back into the Great Depression, I can see where these men were coming from, and it sucks because this is like, what good am I? What um what am I doing? Yeah, and and and it's so ingrained into the human psyche or the zeitgeist, but yet I really wish and and and and I I'm gonna put myself in this category. I really wish I could embrace the fact that my wife literally does not care what I do for a living.

SPEAKER_03: 1:28:51

As long as you get home safe every day, that's all she cares about.

SPEAKER_01: 1:28:54

Yeah, and you're not a jerk face, yeah. Um I'm I'm I'm not an a-hole.

SPEAKER_03: 1:28:59

Yeah, you're not like coming home from a saloon, yeah, just a complete jerk face.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29:05

But like I can also see where these guys are coming from.

SPEAKER_03: 1:29:09

I could see it too. Maybe not as much of a stronger sense as you can, because I'm female, but I can I can see the perspective for sure.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29:21

Yeah, but but ultimately, like you could you you can look at your husband and whether he has a corporate executive position or he was laying bricks, you you you don't care.

SPEAKER_03: 1:29:37

No, and we talk about that a lot actually.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:29:41

Like I don't put as much stock into what I do. There are things that I love to do, like I love teaching, but if I have to do something else to pay the bills, I don't care. But I would rather teach if I'm making less money. Where as he's like, Well, yeah, but wouldn't you want to retire at a decent age and make all of this money so you can live without struggling? Which is fair, but yeah, but also like, yeah, so it's that conversation, and I'm sure every husband and wife, or wife and wife, or husband and husband, whatever. I'm sure every couple has that conversation.

SPEAKER_01: 1:30:15

Yeah. But you know, yeah, I I I've I've had this conversation many times. At the end of the day, though, my wife could care less what I do. Yep, she could care less how my paycheck is made, unless it's like illegally, like I'm selling meth or whatever, right?

SPEAKER_03: 1:30:36

But like it within reason, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:30:39

Within reason, but at at the end of the day, like women have this profound ability to look past any sort of deficiency in terms of their spouse's contribution, like superheroes. Yeah, like, yeah, yeah. Y'all can just be like, I don't care. I really don't care if you're a bricklayer or you're sucking out poop from a from a trailer or whatever. Just hey, dirty money comes home clean.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:19

That could be taken so many ways.

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:21

I know, I know. Okay. But but but it it it kind of stands though. It's just like men and and I'm I'm I'm in this category, men need to understand that if you have somebody who loves you and cares about you, they don't care at all about what position you have at work.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:47

Yeah, I can agree with that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:51

But then men are like, well, I need to be an executive, I need to be this, I need to be that, I need to be whatever. No, yeah, it it it is super tricky. It really is. It is, but the apples, but those, but those apples, these apples.

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:10

You know what these apples did? They gave unemployed men a sense of purpose after they lost their jobs.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:16

There we go. Apples, those apples.

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:20

We like apples.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:21

God bless those apples.

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:22

God bless those apples. Apple selling became immensely popular in New York City. If you were to visit that city in 1930, you would see apple sellers on every street corner, like Apple Starbucks. An estimated 6,000 people per day were selling apples no matter what the weather looked like. Some Apple vendors were given clothes and donations from folks walking in the streets. They knew the apple sellers were the ones who were down on their luck, so a lot of people who were better off helped them out in more ways than just buying apples off of them. The apple craze didn't last long, though. By late 1930, early 1931, so many apples were being sold that the apple suppliers needed to raise the box price per day by up to 250 to try to generate enough profit for the growing amount of vendors. Eventually, the practice began to fade despite the suppliers' efforts to keep it going. Surplus began to dry up, and people began to notice that Apple sellers would clog up traffic in the streets, and not to mention the endless amounts of apple cores that littered the ground. Despite not lasting very long, it did leave quite the impression on the period. Pop culture and apples remained a symbol of the Great Depression for a very long time. Even today, by some standards, if you talk to somebody, sometimes they'll be like apples. You're like, Why apples? Well, there you go. That's why. All right. Apples. Chapter five.

SPEAKER_01: 1:33:45

It's a lot of apples.

SPEAKER_03: 1:33:46

It's a lot of apples. Chapter five, boxcars. This rabbit hole that I went down, guys. This rabbit hole is not even in my handwritten version because I found this rabbit hole very late in the research process, and I was like, this is cool. So, in the months after the crash, an increasing amount of unemployed young men, and even some women desperate for work, turned to a very creative solution to travel to different towns and cities hoping for more lure. 250,000 young people aged somewhere around 15 to 23 took to the rails looking for work, adventure, or an escape from the lives at home. They would become known as boxcar children, joining a growing culture of unemployed men called hobos. Okay, guys, what do you think of when you think of the term hobo? Be honest.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:38

I mean, I I I kind of think of like the homeless vagabond guy just traveling via train across the nation.

SPEAKER_03: 1:34:48

Okay, fair. A lot of people think of like the stereotypical homeless guy. Sometimes people think of don't want to do anything, right? It's usually used as a derogatory term.

SPEAKER_04: 1:35:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:35:03

But these people were very proud people. I found this fascinating. These people were very proud. Um, and I actually kind of after doing my research on them, I kind of respect them a lot more. Um and we don't know where the term hobo really comes from. There's a lot of different theories, but there's we haven't pinned one down yet, which I thought was interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:25

Hobos have been around. Fun fact Doc Brown, right? Back to the future. He was a hobo.

SPEAKER_03: 1:35:33

Oh yeah, 100% he was. He's just a time traveling hobo.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:38

Yep. Yeah, he was just he he he he was a brilliant man who came up with an incredible technology, and he literally just traveled through time. Uh somebody and you'll notice that like on the third movie, he ends up traveling through time via a train.

SPEAKER_03: 1:36:03

Yeah, first one's the best one, third one's meh.

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:07

Yeah, well, I I I kind of like the third one because it had Z Z top in it, and but but but like ultimately at the end of the day, he was traveling through time via a train. Kind of like a hobo, kind of like a hobo.

SPEAKER_03: 1:36:30

I could I could get behind that, yeah. I could get behind that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:34

So, like, yeah, like here's Doc Brown, this quantum physicist, just being like, hey Marty, we gotta go in the future to deal with your stupid self, and then we gotta go 50 years in the past to deal with my stupid self. But but but that that's completely besides the point. I I I all I'm saying is that like the idea of the hobo being this white trash, homeless vagabond. No, no, these were people legitimately trying to get from one end in one end of America to the other end of America with some degree of dignity.

SPEAKER_03: 1:37:20

Yeah, I found these people fascinating.

SPEAKER_01: 1:37:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:37:23

So hobos have been around since the end of the Civil War. They were usually military war vets who didn't want to return home or they had no home to return to. Instead, they would work on the railroads while uh riding their train tracks, many of them built. Hoboculture ended in the years that followed them. Oh, sorry, ebbed in the years that followed. Uh, but it did show new revival during the Depression. Between 1865 and 1917, hobo culture was a fairly popular way of life in American culture. The workforce they provided filled positions that were seasonal and they were popular hires because they were able to move from town to town or take winters off while local people usually needed year-round work. Many hobos would work jobs on farms, fish canneries, or seasonal work that they would travel for. During the winter, it was common to see them living in shanty towns called jungles. They called their little towns jungles, where they built communities and took care of one another during the cold months. And then uh, or if like work was nearly non-existent because farming is really hard in the winter. If you've ever tried it, good on you, because I'm not gonna try that. In these communities, hobos had their own form of slang, a union, and even a newspaper. Hobos were very proud people, uh they were very protected of protective of their title, which I thought was cool. Unlike tramps, God, tramps, screw the tramps, uh, who were considered beggars who didn't work, or bums who didn't work or beg, they just bummed it out. Hobos traveled to work and worked to travel.

SPEAKER_01: 1:39:02

So they would often we're not talking about lot lizards.

SPEAKER_03: 1:39:06

Correct. We are talking about dudes who wanted to work and they were very proud of their work. Work was their thing. They would often take payments in various forms, whether it was money, goods, or just simply helping another person. The hobo definition of work was doing something to better themselves or somebody else. Money was just a bonus. James E. Howe, the millionaire hobo, was the heir to a million-dollar fortune in St. Louis. Instead of living the life of a rich man, he chose to live the life of a hobo. And he lived with a hobo community, learned about their culture, their ideologies, and uh the people who lived their lives there for a few years, a number of years. And then after he decided to leave the hobo culture, he did everything he could to better the community that he had learned so much about. He founded the International Welfare Brotherhood Association. Which was a union for migrant workers, i.e., hobos. They started a newspaper for hobos around the country and they they would uh publish information about where the best stop is for the best types of food, or uh there's jobs here in this city, and there's jobs here in that city, skip this city, they stock uh this city's racist, but this city's friendly to um minorities, and so on and so forth, just to help them out. And it was um printed and published in various jungles.

SPEAKER_01: 1:40:35

Wow.

SPEAKER_03: 1:40:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:40:37

Isn't that interesting? There's a lot going on there.

SPEAKER_03: 1:40:40

So much. The union had even organized hobo colleges that were operated during the winter, the largest one being in Chicago. And classes were things like law, and um there was another one. It was law and accounting, and there was something else, but yeah, like full on. Hobo culture was romanticized primarily thanks to a famous hobo named Leon A. Livingston, or alias number one, who authored his supposed experiences as a hobo in the United States in the late 1800s, early 1900s. Today, his 12 books are considered part truthful, part exaggerated to make for a good story. However, his writings are still used to get a general idea of what life was like, but just remember, take it with a grain of salt if you choose to read them. They are entertaining. During the 1920s economic boom, hobo culture was not as popular as it had been once before, especially before the first world war. However, when the Great Depression hit, the number of people who decided to take up this lifestyle swelled again. And that's understandable. I get it. Hobos were often solitary people, but they did show that they cared about their community. When traveling, they supposedly left signs written with chalk or charcoal to communicate with other hobos about different locations along the railroad. The signs were coded with symbols that were almost like hieroglyphs using a coded language that some scholars are working on deciphering, and then some scholars are saying that it may not be as complex or important as what you're saying. They still argue about it. That's what historians do. We love them. For example, one uh cipher that we think is pretty on point is a top hat. So they would just draw like a rectangle with a line under it, and that was saying uh a rich man lives there. Others are like squigglies and stuff that we don't really either know or have an idea of. Things like a dog lives here or a nice lady lives here, she will give you food, stuff like that. Hobo life wasn't all that easy. Sounds cool, right? Sounds like it's an adventure, especially for younger people who ran away via train car. Young men and women had a lot of various reasons for riding the rails. Some looked for work to help support their families, while others were looking to escape a difficult life at home, whether it was abuse or poverty. Some just wanted to do it because it was exciting. The reality that they had found was indeed exciting, but it was also very dangerous. Train hopping was indeed illegal. Like this was not something that was allowed. And in the 1930s, many local law enforcement officers were quick to arrest anybody they considered a hobo. Not only that, but riding, jumping on or off train cars and sleeping on a giant moving vehicle without being detected was just plain dangerous. There are reports of hobos being found frozen after they were locked into refrigerated boxcars. Hobos were often run over, limbs were lost in some sort of accident while or on or around trains. I read one story where a kid uh didn't duck fast enough when going into a tunnel. Oh um, he survived, but he had a from what I've read, he had a really gnarly like a scar where you could see his skull and stuff.

SPEAKER_04: 1:44:06

Oh, jeez.

SPEAKER_03: 1:44:08

Yeah. I read so many primary uh interviews on this. I was so fascinating. Anyway, uh while most hobos were willing to help others teach people and show kindness, there were also absolutely a number of bad actors who would be out looking for a fight. Female hobos would often need to think about all of these dangers along with assault when traveling. Oh, yeah, that happened.

SPEAKER_01: 1:44:32

I I I I I hate it like when I study like women in the 1800s England, where like they just have to take up sex work. Yeah, they had a roof over there, and it it frustrates me because you know like they're not enjoying it. Yeah, for them, it is I'm just here to collect a paycheck, but like the guys are capitalizing on that, and I don't know that that just bothers me to no end because I I I don't know, like I I I feel like humanity, there's not a lot that we can really claim as like an enjoyment, but taking advantage of women who are just trying to make ends meet, and I don't know. It it to me it it's just it's just frustrating. Yeah, that like sex work has to be a viable profession for women, women shouldn't be.

SPEAKER_03: 1:45:44

Sex work and its history is fascinating, yeah. Um, and there's so many perspectives on it, and I'm not going to get into it right now, right? Because that's a can of worms, and you can tell I'm really trying to control myself because it's interesting and it's fascinating and it's sad, and it's and I just want to talk to all of these women who wanted to do that for a living, or who didn't who didn't want to do that for a living, or both. Because there were women who wanted to do that for a living, anyway. I'm gonna I'm opening the can. I'm gonna close the can. I'm closing the can.

SPEAKER_01: 1:46:18

Well, all I'm gonna say is that hey, if that's your thing, cool, go for it. Like that that that's the avenue you want to take. But there's just been so many women in history where they've had to forego a career, they've had to forego their like their their their career path. Yeah. And they had to go to sex work, yeah. Because that's the only way that they they could make ends meet at the expense of, I don't know, some guy two minutes later, like, cool, I'm happy, and then he pays X amount of money, walks away. But yet these women are like, I kind of want to write poetry, I kind of wanted to engineer this solution to a problem. I kind of wanted to maybe, you know, contribute to the economic profitability of my nation. Yeah, so yeah, it it it just bothers me. It I don't know. I know, I know, and I'm going completely off the rails here, but it's just like literally off the rails. Yes, it's just that women should not have to put themselves up for sale to make ends meet when they have so many skills and so many talents and so much to contribute to society. But anyways, I digress hobos, homeless people. It's it's just frustrating to me. Hobos mainly because I have two daughters of my own, and I would I would hope that they would never have to subjugate themselves to this line of work.

SPEAKER_03: 1:48:21

Well, I mean, female hobos didn't really do that, they just had to watch out for it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:48:27

Yes, but it was also a thing.

SPEAKER_03: 1:48:30

I mean, it was a thing, 100%, but hobos didn't really do that. They just had to look out for bad people.

SPEAKER_01: 1:48:39

Now, let me ask you this question. So, like hobos in general, right? Because I see the picture here where they're like sitting on top of a railroad car and whatnot. Was there like a code of conduct? Did they did they like adhere to like okay, we're gonna treat our fellow human being a certain way?

SPEAKER_03: 1:49:00

From what I read, it was a lot like the old experienced hobo guys showing the young guys how to do it, and they showed them kindness and taught them about their way of life, so in in return they would you know pay it back. I'd say for the most part, the hobos were actually kind considerate people, and then you had some people who were not kind considerate to mess that up for the majority, but they would make sense. Maybe I don't know.

SPEAKER_01: 1:49:43

Well, because I I remember my grandfather telling me, like, the sheriffs in Elgin, Illinois, like, if you were a homeless guy with a family and you're passing through and you needed help or whatever, they would take care of you. But as soon as you started to like do anything nefarious, then that sheriff and the rest of the community would beat the living crap out of you and just throw you on the roadside and not give a crap.

SPEAKER_03: 1:50:19

Yeah, I could see that happening for sure.

SPEAKER_01: 1:50:22

So I don't I don't I don't know if that was like a strictly an Elgin Illinois thing, but I don't know. I just feel like America was a different country 30, 40 years ago than what it is today.

SPEAKER_02: 1:50:36

This is 80 years ago.

SPEAKER_01: 1:50:38

80 years ago, if you want to color the issue with facts.

SPEAKER_02: 1:50:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:50:44

So anyway, hobos would fight stereotypes for many years. Even after the peak they saw during the Great Depression. Smaller hobo groups are still around today, though they don't quite travel by train car anymore or leave chalk messages like they did back then. Hobo culture and boxcar children would leave a mark on the minds of people who think about the Great Depression even now. The image of a homeless person around a can fire comes from hobos. Yeah, I thought that was interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 1:51:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:51:14

All right. Now let's tie this bad boy up. For the next 10 years, the American people would face unemployment in major cities and drought in the plains. In American history, the 1930s are often remembered by images of soup kitchen lines, destitution in the dust bowl. And anyways, that's true. People were living in shanty towns, they did beg for work and they did have to make difficult financial decisions due to poverty. But there's also a lot under the surface that we tend to forget about. Like, what were the 1930s actually like? What was going on? Yes, the depression was going on, yes, people are waiting for soup kitchen lines. But did you know that there was a labor union strike in 1934 where people were beat to death by law enforcement? No, did you know that there was a woman who stood up for the men inside doing a sit-in?

SPEAKER_01: 1:52:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 1:52:07

So so they could keep their job?

SPEAKER_01: 1:52:09

She wasn't throwing like cue balls through mirrors, right?

SPEAKER_03: 1:52:13

She was walking. If I remember correctly, it's been a little a couple weeks. I think she was walking around with a baseball bat.

SPEAKER_01: 1:52:20

Okay, so we have a woman walking around with a freaking hatchet.

SPEAKER_03: 1:52:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:52:26

Like wrecking businesses. Now we have a woman with a baseball bat. She's sick, dude. And then what about the woman that was like throwing pool balls through?

SPEAKER_03: 1:52:38

Oh, that's the same hatchet lady that's Carrie Nation.

SPEAKER_01: 1:52:41

Yeah, well, Carrie Nation is like she's great. But she's she's the hottest thing that has walked on to America.

SPEAKER_03: 1:52:50

Read her autobiography, please.

SPEAKER_01: 1:52:52

Oh my gosh. Carrie Nation is amazing. She's a lot. But then there's also Gaynan.

SPEAKER_03: 1:52:57

Yes, these are people of the 20s. Now we're gonna talk about people in the 30s. Let's talk about the dirty 30s, shall we? How did these people in power respond to the crash or find the road to recovery? How did those decisions impact everyday people? The crash of 29 may have been a dumpster fire, but what was done to put the dumpster fire out, at least in the early 30s. Step one, light more dumpster fires. And that's where we're gonna end it today. That's where we will end it today. Next time, we will talk about Herbert Hoover and his decisions while he was president.

SPEAKER_01: 1:53:38

Before Oh, yeah, like the Hooverville's and let's uh whatnot.

SPEAKER_03: 1:53:43

Yeah, so we're gonna overlap with this episode a little bit. We're gonna talk about how he responded to the crash, yeah, um, and what was done there, and then we'll talk about the election of 1932, late 19th, November 1932, and then um we'll move on to the next president to see what he does differently.

SPEAKER_01: 1:54:09

Yeah, because that that there we're getting into like Roosevelt and so next episode's going to be Hoover, and then the episode after that is going to be Roosevelt.

SPEAKER_03: 1:54:20

I think that's how I'm gonna do it. Okay, yeah, stay tuned. Thanks everybody for sticking around for two hours to talk about stock trading and apples and trains.

SPEAKER_01: 1:54:31

Yeah, in the meantime, um be sure to reach out to your friends and relatives, uh, boast up the podcast, like let them know what we're all about. Um, The Day Sumpsi Fire is is a podcast that looks at like where things went into a horrible, horrible tail spin, I guess. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, yeah, and and here we are, like we've we've managed to like claim out of these issues, and like we're better off for it. And you're gonna be better off for it because chances are you haven't like killed tens of thousands of emus, you haven't sunk half the British fleet in in a battle, like you certainly haven't done what Custer has done. So, like, yeah, spread the word, tell your friends and family, show them how to find our show.

SPEAKER_03: 1:55:46

Also, if you could uh show us some love, leave a review.

SPEAKER_01: 1:55:50

Those are those are actually very helpful comments, choose and just show people how to find us on YouTube and Amazon and wherever. So so yeah, um, thanks, Kara. Uh uh, we I know I know we've got like 27 more episodes coming up. Two three tops. Three tops. Probably. I'm working. I I'm working on one of the greatest bank heists of human history. Sweet. Yeah, yeah. It it it's a complete reversal from what we've got going on here here with the uh Great Depression. I'm working on where like four hackers tried to steal a billion dollars.

SPEAKER_03: 1:56:47

Sounds very recent. Would that be the most contemporary one we've done?

SPEAKER_01: 1:56:52

Yeah, okay. Because that was 2016.

SPEAKER_03: 1:56:58

Okay, so less than 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_01: 1:57:01

Yep. Yep, yeah. That that's good. The most recent one. That's that that that's what I'm working on. And uh, yeah, yeah, tell friends and family. Uh, I know a lot of people are traveling right now, so spread the word because they're all gonna be traveling. And um, yeah, I really don't have much else to add.

SPEAKER_03: 1:57:26

Excellent. All right, everybody keep it a hot mess. Uh, check out the website and all that good stuff. Otherwise, we'll see you next time.

unknown: 1:57:33

Bye.

SPEAKER_01: 1:57:34

Alrighty. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you in the next one