In late October of 1929, terror seized the stock exchanges of North America. Capitalism's speculative party, with its galloping share prices and its celebrity millionaires, came to an abrupt stop.
The Great Crash, it was called, and it was followed by the Great Depression.
October 24th was Black Thursday. "Speculators Shaken in Wild Day of Panic," shouted the bold type headline on the front page of the next day's Toronto Globe.
The New York Stock Exchange, the accompanying stories reported, had experienced massive declines in wild trading. Thousands of accounts were wiped out before leading bankers intervened to halt the slump.
The dread extended to the Toronto markets, the Globe declared, and "rocked" share prices there. In Montreal forced selling ran rampant, and practically every stock finished the day down.
"The biggest crash ever recorded," lamented the famed British economist John Maynard Keynes, whose own investments were entirely gone by the end of the year.
Tuesday, October 29, was blacker still. On Wall Street, 16,410,030 shares were sold, up almost four million from Black Thursday's unprecedented totals. The New York Times industrial averages plummeted, eliminating a strong year's gains, and the investment giant Goldman, Sachs was reduced to barely fifty percent of its worth the night before.
In Toronto and Montreal, liquidation records were set. Horrified investors clogged the financial districts, while employees in the exchanges and the brokerage houses worked themselves to near-collapse in an attempt to corral the paperwork.
The Canadian Annual Review reckoned that "never before the 1929 crash had amounts that ran into billions of dollars been lost on the Canadian Stock Exchanges in so brief a period of time."
"The singular feature of the great crash of 1929," the Canadian-born economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote 25 years later, "was that the worst continued to worsen." The markets jumped back to life, but briefly. The setbacks returned and they persisted.
From the peak of the bull market in 1929 to mid-1930, the fifty most active Canadian stocks diminished on average to well under half their market value. Shareholders in International Nickel and Imperial Oil lost more than $500 million each, those in Canadian Pacific Railway over $60 million.
Standard Oil of New Jersey's John D. Rockefeller, the Bill Gates of his day, was caught up in the turmoil. On November 13, 1929, another disastrous day for the markets, he put his family's money behind a guarantee that his enterprise's shares would not fall below 50. In early 1932, the price was 20.
Historians and economists debate the importance of the Great Crash. Some claim that it brought on the Depression that blighted the 1930s across the industrialized world; others scarcely mention it in their narratives of the decade-long economic ordeal, an international phenomenon with a complex of origins and explanations.
The economic downturn seemed moderate enough when Conservative leader R. B. Bennett hit the election trail in 1930, but he was able to use it to good effect to defeat the Mackenzie King Liberals.
Six months after the election, Prime Minister Bennett realized that the country was in a severe economic depression. The low point came in 1933, when national output and exports (crucial then as now to the Canadian economy) were down a third from late 1920s levels, the farms of the west were in crisis, and a quarter of the workforce was unemployed.
The rich and well-stuffed Bennett was the butt of cruel jokes and the symbol of everything Canadians loathed. In the next election, they got their revenge.
Bennett was gone before the Depression was gone. The economy struggled back, yet very slowly, and a late 1930s recession interrupted the upward trend. In 1939, there were still hundreds of thousands on what passed for relief in Canada before the introduction of the welfare state.
Year upon year of economic woe set peoples against one another. Governments heaped on the tariffs, wanting to protect themselves and punish others. The democracies turned in on themselves, selfish and frightened. Capitalism had apparently failed, and its opponents were in fashion. Territory hungry dictatorships flourished.
The Second World War was a child of the Depression. Then, in a twist of fate, the prosperity of war ended Canada's Depression.
Norman Hillmer is Professor of History and International Affairs at Carleton University.
The Great Crash, it was called, and it was followed by the Great Depression.
October 24th was Black Thursday. "Speculators Shaken in Wild Day of Panic," shouted the bold type headline on the front page of the next day's Toronto Globe.
The New York Stock Exchange, the accompanying stories reported, had experienced massive declines in wild trading. Thousands of accounts were wiped out before leading bankers intervened to halt the slump.
The dread extended to the Toronto markets, the Globe declared, and "rocked" share prices there. In Montreal forced selling ran rampant, and practically every stock finished the day down.
"The biggest crash ever recorded," lamented the famed British economist John Maynard Keynes, whose own investments were entirely gone by the end of the year.
Tuesday, October 29, was blacker still. On Wall Street, 16,410,030 shares were sold, up almost four million from Black Thursday's unprecedented totals. The New York Times industrial averages plummeted, eliminating a strong year's gains, and the investment giant Goldman, Sachs was reduced to barely fifty percent of its worth the night before.
In Toronto and Montreal, liquidation records were set. Horrified investors clogged the financial districts, while employees in the exchanges and the brokerage houses worked themselves to near-collapse in an attempt to corral the paperwork.
The Canadian Annual Review reckoned that "never before the 1929 crash had amounts that ran into billions of dollars been lost on the Canadian Stock Exchanges in so brief a period of time."
"The singular feature of the great crash of 1929," the Canadian-born economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote 25 years later, "was that the worst continued to worsen." The markets jumped back to life, but briefly. The setbacks returned and they persisted.
From the peak of the bull market in 1929 to mid-1930, the fifty most active Canadian stocks diminished on average to well under half their market value. Shareholders in International Nickel and Imperial Oil lost more than $500 million each, those in Canadian Pacific Railway over $60 million.
Standard Oil of New Jersey's John D. Rockefeller, the Bill Gates of his day, was caught up in the turmoil. On November 13, 1929, another disastrous day for the markets, he put his family's money behind a guarantee that his enterprise's shares would not fall below 50. In early 1932, the price was 20.
Historians and economists debate the importance of the Great Crash. Some claim that it brought on the Depression that blighted the 1930s across the industrialized world; others scarcely mention it in their narratives of the decade-long economic ordeal, an international phenomenon with a complex of origins and explanations.
The economic downturn seemed moderate enough when Conservative leader R. B. Bennett hit the election trail in 1930, but he was able to use it to good effect to defeat the Mackenzie King Liberals.
Six months after the election, Prime Minister Bennett realized that the country was in a severe economic depression. The low point came in 1933, when national output and exports (crucial then as now to the Canadian economy) were down a third from late 1920s levels, the farms of the west were in crisis, and a quarter of the workforce was unemployed.
The rich and well-stuffed Bennett was the butt of cruel jokes and the symbol of everything Canadians loathed. In the next election, they got their revenge.
Bennett was gone before the Depression was gone. The economy struggled back, yet very slowly, and a late 1930s recession interrupted the upward trend. In 1939, there were still hundreds of thousands on what passed for relief in Canada before the introduction of the welfare state.
Year upon year of economic woe set peoples against one another. Governments heaped on the tariffs, wanting to protect themselves and punish others. The democracies turned in on themselves, selfish and frightened. Capitalism had apparently failed, and its opponents were in fashion. Territory hungry dictatorships flourished.
The Second World War was a child of the Depression. Then, in a twist of fate, the prosperity of war ended Canada's Depression.
Norman Hillmer is Professor of History and International Affairs at Carleton University.
Plus, I think we have enough issues with suicide on the rise without adding the stress of a depression on the country which would contribute to the overall suicide rate.