Economy

The stock market in 1929 had been growing increadingly unstable for months before the crash came. The movers and shakers just neglected to inform anyone outside their tight little circle what that might mean. A couple got out just in time and the rest, while considerably poorer than they'd been at the beginning of the year, never missed a meal, unlike the rest of the suckers.

By the time the crash came and the Depression hit, housing prices had fallen for nearly a decade, farms had failed as wholesale food prices had dropped below what it cost farmers to plant, and the Dust Bowl finished them off. The signs of a sick economy were all there before Wall Street crashed and I think a lot of people thought the country was broken beyond repair then, too.