Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is Thomas Sterling, broadcasting live from the heart of New York City on station WXZ. The date is October 29, 1929. We are standing by for the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. The air here on Wall Street is thick—not with fog, but with fear. After the tremors of last Thursday and the slide yesterday, the question on every lip is: will the bankers step in again? Or is the bottom truly falling out?
[10:00 AM]
And... there is the bell! The market is open! And... good heavens. It is bedlam instantly. I am receiving reports from the floor that large blocks of stock are being thrown onto the market immediately. Kennecott Copper, General Motors, Sinclair Oil—huge sell orders are hitting the books. There are no buyers. I repeat, there are almost no buyers. Prices are not just slipping; they are plunging vertically. It is a sheer drop. The roar from the floor is deafening, a sound of pure, unadulterated panic.
[11:00 AM]
We are one hour into trading, and the situation is deteriorating rapidly. The ticker tape—the lifeline of information for thousands of investors across the nation—is already lagging behind. It cannot keep pace with the volume of sales. You might be reading a price for U.S. Steel that is already twenty minutes old, and in this market, twenty minutes is a lifetime. Traders are screaming, waving their hands, collars unbuttoned, sweat on their brows. The orderly conduct of finance has dissolved into a stampede.
[12:00 PM]
Noon. The sun is high over Trinity Church, but it is dark inside the Exchange. Rumors are flying faster than the trades. Men are looking toward the doors, hoping to see Richard Whitney or the Morgans, hoping for a repeat of last Thursday's miracle rescue. But the bankers are silent. There is no organized buying support. The 'smart money' seems to have left the building. We are hearing of margin calls going out by the thousands—brokers demanding more cash from investors who have none left to give. Forced liquidations are driving prices down further.
[1:00 PM]
We have passed the one o'clock mark. A brief ripple of hope just moments ago—a rumor that Charles Mitchell was seen entering the offices of J.P. Morgan. A collective breath was held. Is a rescue package being formed? ... No. It appears to be a false dawn. The selling has resumed with even greater ferocity. White Sewing Machine Company, which traded at forty-eight dollars months ago, has reportedly just sold for a dollar. A dollar a share! Fortunes built over a decade are evaporating in the span of a lunch hour.
[2:00 PM]
The volume is unprecedented. We are looking at millions of shares changing hands. The floor is covered in torn paper. The ticker is now reported to be over an hour late. Think of it—men are selling stocks blind, not knowing the price they will get, only knowing they must get out. The contagion is spreading Uptown. Crowds are gathering outside the Exchange, held back by police. It is a sea of fedoras and grim faces. They stand in silence, watching the building as if it were a burning house.
[3:00 PM]
The closing bell! Thank providence, the closing bell has rung! The trading day has ended, but the nightmare has not. The final gavel brings no relief, only a cessation of the hemorrhage. The floor is a wreck. Men are slumped against the trading posts, weeping openly. We do not yet know the final damage because the ticker is still running—it is clattering away, trying to catch up with history. It may run for hours yet.
[5:30 PM]
The sun has set, ladies and gentlemen. The street lamps are on. And still, the ticker taps.
We are finally getting a picture of the devastation. The Dow Jones has plummeted. Billions of dollars in value—gone. Vanished into thin air. The prosperity of the last few years... it feels like a dream from which we have violently awakened.
This is Thomas Sterling, signing off from a changed world. Good night, and good luck to you all.
Backgrounder Notes
As an expert researcher and library scientist, I have analyzed this transcript of the 1929 stock market crash. To provide a deeper understanding of the economic and historical context of "Black Tuesday," I have identified the following key concepts and facts for further clarification:
1. Black Tuesday (October 29, 1929)
Black Tuesday is considered the most devastating day in the history of the New York Stock Exchange, marking the beginning of a decade-long economic collapse. On this single day, the market lost roughly 12% of its value and saw a record-breaking 16.4 million shares traded—a volume not seen again for nearly 40 years.
2. Ticker Tape Lag
Ticker tape was a telegraph-based system that printed stock symbols and prices on long strips of paper to provide investors with real-time data. During the crash, the unprecedented volume of sales caused the machines to fall hours behind, meaning investors were making panicked decisions based on prices that were already obsolete.
3. Margin Calls
A margin call occurs when a broker demands that an investor deposit additional cash to cover potential losses on stocks bought with borrowed money. In 1929, many investors had only paid for 10% of their stocks' value; when prices fell, brokers issued thousands of these calls, forcing the immediate sale of assets when investors could not pay.
4. Black Thursday and the "Miracle Rescue"
Mentioned as "last Thursday" in the text, October 24, 1929, was the first major wave of panic. On that day, a group of powerful bankers led by Richard Whitney (acting for J.P. Morgan) successfully halted the slide by placing massive buy orders for "blue-chip" stocks, a tactic that failed to work when they tried to replicate it the following week.
5. Blue-Chip Stocks (e.g., U.S. Steel, General Motors)
The article mentions companies like Kennecott Copper and U.S. Steel, which were considered "blue-chip" stocks—high-quality, industry-leading companies thought to be safe havens. Their rapid collapse on Black Tuesday signaled to the public that even the strongest pillars of American industry were failing.
6. Forced Liquidation
Forced liquidation is the involuntary sale of assets to meet a debt or margin requirement. Because so many investors were unable to meet their margin calls, brokers were forced to sell their clients' stocks at any price available, which created a "vicious cycle" that drove prices even lower.
7. Richard Whitney
Richard Whitney was the Vice President of the New York Stock Exchange and a floor broker for J.P. Morgan & Co. He became a symbol of hope during the crisis after his dramatic intervention on Black Thursday, though he was later famously imprisoned for embezzlement following the total collapse of his own firm.
8. Charles E. Mitchell
Charles Mitchell was the head of National City Bank (now Citibank) and a prominent financier of the 1920s. His appearance at the offices of J.P. Morgan was scrutinized by the public because he had previously used his bank's massive credit reserves to prevent a market "freeze" earlier that year.
9. White Sewing Machine Company
This company is frequently cited by historians as a classic example of the crash's absurdity; its stock plummeted from a high of $48 to just $1 a share in a single day. This specific anecdote illustrates how the total absence of buyers caused the intrinsic value of companies to become irrelevant during the panic.
10. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA)
The Dow Jones is a stock market index that tracks 30 large, publicly owned companies trading on the New York Stock Exchange. In the aftermath of the October 1929 crash, the Dow continued to decline for three years, eventually losing nearly 90% of its value before bottoming out in 1932.
