The Stock Market Crashes
Stocks plumet
On October 29, 1929
Black Tuesday hit Wall Street as investors traded some 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. The banks didn't have enough money to pay the investors their income. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression (1929-39)
Bread Lines in Time Square!
Lines as long as 6 hours to get a loaf of bread in New York, people starving with no money because of the depression. During the Great Depression thousands of unemployed residents who could not pay their rent or mortgages were evicted into the world of public assistance and bread lines. Unable to find work and seeing that each job they applied for had hundreds of seekers, these shabby, disillusioned men wandered aimlessly without funds, begging, picking over refuse in city dumps, and finally getting up the courage to stand and be seen publicly – in a bread line for free food.