Written years after the event occurred, the author of this piece, Frederick Lewis Allen, is considered in many quarters to be the official historian of the American experience in the Twenties. But it seems probable that the principal cause was not fear.

Stock Market Crash of Facts, Causes, Effects

Nor was it short selling. It was forced selling, the dumping of hundreds of thousands of of shares held in the name of miserable traders whose margins were exhausted or about to be exhausted.

The gigantic Bull Market edifice was honeycombed with speculative credit and now was breaking under its own weight Billions of dollars worth of profits, and of paper profits, had disappeared. The grocer, the window-cleaner and seamstress had lost their capital.

80% Stock Market Crash To Strike in , Economist Warns - The Sovereign Investor

In every town families had dropped from affluence into debt Americans were soon to find themselves in an altered world which called for new adjustments, new ideas, new habits of thought, a new order of values. The Post-War Decade had come to its close.

An era had ended. But in the lean years that followed there were suicides - suicides-a-plenty, and you can read about them here.

This article posted below is notable for the author's underestimation of what the Crash was capable of doing to the country. More on this subject can be read on this website CLICK HERE to read additional primary source articles about the Great Depression CLICK HERE to read about African-Americans during the Great Depression.

The attached article tells the story of that one cataclysmic event that ushered in the Great Depression of the Thirties: Search Articles Click Here.