On this day in Labor History the year was 1929.
On that Wednesday morning, people across the United States woke up to newspaper headlines informing them that something had gone horribly wrong on Wall Street the day before.
Black Tuesday, as the day came to be known had capped off a devastating drop in the market that had begun with the Great Crash the prior Thursday.
Twenty-five billion dollars was lost in the crash, which would be about three hundred billion in today’s money.
The crash helped spark the Great Depression that saw unemployment soared to twenty-five percent and nearly half of the banks in the United States fail.
But the day after the crash, the news reports were not all doom and gloom.
While Variety declared in big, bold letters “Wall St. Lays an Egg” others headlines struck a different tone.
The New York Times wordyheadline stated “Stocks collapse in 16,410,030-Share Day; But rally at close cheers brokers; bankers optimistic to continue aid.”
The Chicago Tribune went with the more concise “Stock Slump Ends in Rally.”
Newspaper reporters attempted to explain the crash.
The Denver Post blamed the downturn on “gamblers,” the Philadelphia Evening Ledger blamed “the propagandists of gloom and economic terror” and the New York Times blamed “the reckless Wall Street speculators.”
But many papers also attempted to quell panic over the badnews from New York.
The Kansas City Star assured readers “once the adjustment is completed, the country will move forward to newlevels of prosperity.”
The Nashville Banner similarly predicted “The reaction had to come, and the country will be betteroff for the lesson it has had, costly though it be.”
That costly lesson became a devastating global depression.
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January 30 - Fred Korematsu Day
January 29 - Bread & Roses Striker, Anna LoPizzo, Shot Dead
January 28 - The 1917 Bath Riots
January 27 - Bans on Yellow Dog Contracts Ruled Unconstitutional
January 26 - Sid Hatfield Stands Trial
January 25 - Solidarity Works!
January 24 - Arturo Alfonso Schomburg is Born
January 23 - If Poison Doesn’t Work, Try Briggs!
January 22 - Tragedy in the Mines & in the Union Hall
January 21 - On Strike for Health & Dignity
January 20 - The Flint Womens Emergency Brigades
January 19 - A Snapshot in Misery
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January 17 - Standing Against Wage Theft
January 15 - We Want to Live, Not Just Exist
January 14 - The Rise of the Bellamyites
January 13 - Johnny Cash Plays Folsom Prison
January 12 - The Cost of Wartime Industrial Peace
January 11 - Battle of the Running Bulls
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