The stock market crash led to the Great Depression, but not to a rash of suicides as was commonly reported. Wikimedia
18 Mass defenestration following the stock market crash
In October 1929 the decade known as the Roaring Twenties came to an abrupt end, or at least that is how the history books tell it, with the stock market crashing, ushering in the Great Depression. In truth, the American economy had been exhibiting signs of problems throughout that spring and summer, and the collapse was foretold by the collapse of British markets a month earlier. The collapse of the New York Stock Exchange began on Thursday, October 24, was widely covered in the newspapers that weekend and nose-dived on Monday and Tuesday of the following week. Almost immediately sensationalist news reports told of mass panic in New York, with financiers, brokers, and bankers, leaping to their deaths from office windows as their fortunes were wiped out.
The tales of a dramatic increase of suicides during the collapse of the markets in 1929 were untrue, for the most part, and are part of the myth of the Great Depression today. Many brokers actually made money as the rich and large banks increased stock holdings to both boost public confidence in the markets and expand their shares. In fact, the reported suicide rate in New York decreased during the crash and for weeks following the financial disaster. Despite the florid accounts of people leaping from windows to the streets below, there were but two suicides by defenestration in New York between October 24 and the end of the year 1929, and one of those was challenged as being more likely a homicide.
Orson Welles meets with reporters in the aftermath of the War of the Worlds broadcast. Wikimedia
19. Orson Welles and the War of the Worlds broadcast induced widespread panic in 1938
According to a popular story, when Orson Welles broadcast an episode of The Mercury Theatre of the Air based on H.G. Wells popular science fiction story The War of the Worlds, the live presentation caused a nationwide panic, as listeners were unable to ascertain that the broadcast was entertainment and not a live news broadcast. No doubt some listeners were fooled, and since commercial breaks were infrequent (that the story was fiction was aired during the first break, about thirty minutes into the broadcast) the tale presented as evolving news of a Martian invasion was frightening. The broadcast creating a widespread panic is a myth, however. For one thing, there just weren’t that many people tuned in. Four different times during the broadcast listeners were reminded that the show was a play.
The newspapers of the time exaggerated the level of the panic, far beyond the phone calls into CBS stations of listeners demanding more information. Radio was an emerging competitor for newspaper advertising markets, and the papers stressed first the irresponsibility of the airwaves inducing panic among the people for commercial gain. According to polls taken at the time, only about 2% of the radio audience listened to the CBS broadcast, and in many markets, CBS affiliates substituted local programming that Halloween night. The War of the Worlds broadcast did happen, and it did frighten some listeners, but the extent of the panic it created was wildly exaggerated, to the point it became another American myth, one which Orson Welles exploited for years.
A 1947 planning map for the proposed Interstate Highway System, prepared five years before Eisenhower was elected President in 1952. Federal Works Agency
20. Dwight David Eisenhower and the Interstate Highway System
One of the myths of the American Interstate Highway System is that Dwight Eisenhower, impressed with Hitler’s autobahn, wanted a similar system for the United States. Except that it wasn’t Hitler’s autobahn at all, it was largely in existence in 1931, two years before the Fuhrer became Chancellor of Germany and the Nazi party assumed control of the German government. Hitler did expand the project upon assuming power, under the leadership of Fritz Todt. The autobahns were not built to facilitate the movement of troops, as most of Germany’s war machines moved long distances by train or air. They were built as a public works project. Eisenhower, who had traveled across the United States by car and truck in the 1920s, was well aware of the need for a better road system there.
In the 1930s the US government began extensive studies of what eventually became the Interstate Highway System, as well as improvements to the existing US Highway System. As President, Eisenhower, no doubt recalling the months-long cross-country trip of the 1920s became a champion of the project, influenced by both General Motors and Standard Oil, both of which saw the benefits to their business models. Construction began in 1956. The original system was declared complete in 1992, after 35 years of work and more than $500 billion dollars spent. As the interstates grew America’s passenger and interurban rail systems faded. Large sections of the interstate system are functionally obsolete today, carrying traffic well beyond their design loads, especially on bridges across the country.
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