October 24, 1929. Black Thursday.
The New York Stock Exchange crashed as soon as trading opened. More than sixteen million shares changed hands in a single day, and by closing time stock prices had fallen an average of twenty-five percent. More than a dozen financiers took their own lives that day alone.
Elio’s Notes: Historical records distinguish the trading volumes on Black Thursday and Black Tuesday. Approximately 12.9 million shares traded on October 24, 1929, compared with approximately 16.4 million on October 29. The novel’s original figure is preserved in the translation.
Richard Whitney, then a representative of the Morgan banking interests and later president of the New York Stock Exchange, personally led an effort to buy shares and restore confidence. Yet shares continued to be dumped at any price, falling like snow.
When the New York market reopened on October 28, stocks plunged almost vertically, just as feared. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell another thirteen and twelve percent on the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth, respectively.
In the mere two weeks following the twenty-fourth, thirty billion dollars vanished from the stock market, a sum equal to everything the United States had spent on the First World War. Until then, people had not known that stocks could lose half their value in a matter of days.
People could no longer repay their debts. Banks faced frantic runs and failed one after another; business loans dried up, factories shut down, and workers lost their jobs. The so-called Roaring Twenties came to an end. Its splendid, illusory palace collapsed, its prosperity shattered. America fell from its peak into an abyss, entering an economic depression that would last ten years.