All language subtitles for 1929.S01E01.WEBRip.x264-ION10

(somber music)

(jazz music)

- [Voiceover] Between 1921
and 1929, the image conveyed

by the United States was
of a population living

in the best possible society
despite the Prohibition

and the rise of gangsterism.

The industrial growth of
the main economic power

had never been so strong
before, unashamed even.

What a contrast with the previous decade

marked by the Great War.

The political and financial
authorities drummed out

the same message about
confidence, durable prosperity,

and well-being.

Toward the end of the decade, the economic

boom turned to general euphoria.

The Roaring Twenties
were also the days of the

first Miss America elections,
the first Oscar ceremonies,

the first musicals, all
set to a jazz background.

- To call the 1920s the
period before the Depression,

to call that the age of
jazz, the age of prosperity,

the Roaring Twenties, was
to distort the picture.

- So it was not, you might
say, a boom in which everybody

was enjoying prosperity.

People at the top were,
but most Americans,

most Americans, were
not doing well at all.

- We hit a new stage of affluence.

Suddenly, most American
families owned an automobile.

Only 10 years before, they didn't.

They owned electric washing machines,

electric refrigerators,

electric record players.

The Talkies, sound movies,

started in 1927.

So it looked like a new age.

I think people were
warning it couldn't last

but for the most part, America believed

maybe there would be a
little pull back, a slowdown,

but we were in a new time, a new economy.

- The 1920s marks the
beginning of the automobile

moving to the center of American culture.

And it meant that even
working class people were

eager to buy a car.

(speaking French)

- Credit becomes something
that people can rely on.

Credit for consumer
purchasers such as buying

a Model-T Ford or buying a
car, comes in as a phenomenon.

(upbeat twenties music)

- [Voiceover] In 1919, there
were six million automobiles

in the US.

10 years later, 27 million,
one for every five Americans.

- Consumer culture blossoms in America.

Installment credit buying
blossoms in America.

It's the age of the flapper,

of bootleg gin, of jazz.

It's also a period of
enormous excitement about the

stock market where all
kinds of ordinary people,

not just the stock market
professionals who'd always

participated in Wall
Street, but ordinary folk,

began to see Wall Street
as a place to play,

to grow rich quickly,

a place that was largely risk free.

And therefore, the twenties
in America is a period

in which Wall Street, for the
first time in its history,

is associated with play culture,

with getting drunk, with sexual abandon,

with consumer delights.

Wall Street becomes a part
of that larger way of life.

(jazz music)

- [Voiceover] America discovered a passion

for stock exchange dabbling.

In five years, stock market
prices were multiplied by four.

The Dow Jones Index went
from 100 to nearly 400.

Such a rise seemed
incomprehensibly enormous

in view of the actual economic situation.

Dazzled and fascinated by
the promise of easy money

on the New York Stock
Exchange, or Wall Street

as it is known, Americans
turned out their pockets.

In 1929, two billion dollars were invested

on the stock market.

- More people than ever
before were buying stocks.

This was really the first
time in American history

that the stock market sort
of moved to the center

of the culture.

- The prosperity is so
great and so widespread

and so sustained, going on
for many years in a row,

that the average citizen
who would never otherwise

think of starting a business,
who would never otherwise

think of getting into the stock market,

actually considers doing so.

(speaking French)

- People, particularly Americans,
have always been trying

to get rich fast.

The difference is that in
the 1920s, it seemed like

there were more ways than
ever before to try to do that

and the stock market
was one of those ways.

It was a new kind of wealth to people.

You'd go in and you'd buy
a stock, let's say at 20.

And you didn't know anything
about the stock market.

So the next day the stock is
23, and the next day it's 27.

And you haven't lifted a finger.

And, boy, that was easy.

If I just keep doing this,
I'll make a lot of money,

and I won't have to do anything.

And it got to the point where people

became addicted to the market.

- The stock exchanges in
Europe were aristocratic

that only a few people
engaged in the stock exchange,

whereas the stock exchanges
in the United States

were democratic.

- And they're ordinary people.

They're salaried workers,
they're middle class folks,

they're shoe shine boys,
they're housewives.

They're ordinary folk like you and me.

This is a extraordinary new phenomenon,

and they are giddy about it.

(speaking French)

- People would feel foolish not

participating in the money
that was almost there

to pick off the ground.

There was this kind of
collective herding mentality.

- John Jacob Raskob,
head of General Motors,

assures everybody that the
economy is safe, sound,

and guaranteed to be prosperous.

In fact, he writes a very
famous article that appears

in the Ladies Home Journal.

"Everybody ought to be rich",
he says in this article,

and he tells them how.

And this appears one year
before the great crash of 1929.

- [Voiceover] John Raskob wrote,

"If a person saved $15
a month and invested it

"in good common stocks,
within one or two years,

"given the rapid growth of stock prices,

"would have $80,000."

The financial press
hailed him as visionary.

It was like the gold rush on Wall Street.

- Millions of people wanted
to be in on the action,

wanted to buy stock and
all over the country

there were offices with ticker
tape bringing the results

from Wall Street.

- There are ticker
tapes in beauty parlors.

There are ticker tapes on railroad trains.

There are ticker tapes in barrooms.

There are ticker tapes on ocean liners.

So that for the first time
speculating in the market

becomes a kind of part of everyday life.

It had never been that before.

So you have brokerages
springing up in small towns,

in villages, in small
cities all across America,

toggled together by electronic
wire to the headquarters

on Wall Street encouraging people

to participate in the street.

It becomes a kind of sport that people

are all playing together.

- It wasn't the lower class
that was buying stock,

it was the middle class.

Because one of the things
that happens in the 1920s

as part of this whole pattern
of the new consumer culture

is banks are more willing
to loan to make relatively

small loans to individuals
on no real collateral.

That had never been done before.

(jazz music)

- [Voiceover] One American in
three entrusted his savings

to the magicians on Wall Street,

especially as it wasn't
even necessary to have

the available capital.

The stockbrokers gave credit,

and the banks loaned cash
and made their capital work.

The brokers pocketed tidy commissions,

and everybody made a fortune.

People bought today to sell the next day.

Investment companies
multiplied and prospered.

A new firm was set up every day.

(jazz music)

- People speculate by
borrowing the money on margin.

That is they put up a
very small percentage

of their own money to purchase a stock,

maybe 10%, maybe 20%,

maybe even less than 10%,

and credit is so available
and everybody is so

super confident, overconfident,
that these speculations

will pay off in the end, that
people are taking enormous

credit risks in investing in the market.

- As long as the price
of the stock went up,

your collateral in the
loan was always covered

and it looked like the
easiest thing in the world

and you get twice the bang for your buck.

But, once it starts to fall,

the stock price start to fall,

then you have to put in more cash to cover

what's called the margin,

the difference between
the amount you borrowed

and what the stock is now worth.

- [Voiceover] Prosperity
is just around the corner.

- [Voiceover] The new
president of the United States,

Herbert Hoover, based his
whole campaign on one slogan,

"Prosperity is just around the corner."

They even turned it into a song.

Like him, the best economists
considered that the rise

in the stock market was perfectly
justified by the general

stability of prices, the
prosperity, and the favorable

perspectives of the US economy.

- He had a golden opportunity
in his inaugurals to say,

"Stock is too high.

"We need to do something
about the market."

But as a politician, if he
does that, and the market

then goes down as it
probably would and should,

everybody would blame him
for causing the crash.

So he didn't do that.

- [Voiceover] The election
has again confirmed

the determination of the American people

and opportunity must be
given for the expression

of popular will and we should keep it so.

(cheering)

- When Hoover said that,
the market took off again.

During the summer of 1929,
June, July, and August,

when normally the market's
slow because it's summer,

people are on vacation and so forth,

the market went crazy.

- Political and financial
leaders celebrated this euphoria

and this reckless speculation.

This is everybody from
President Herbert Hoover

and includes the nation's chief bankers

and the country is so overcome
by this sense of confidence.

And they're being encouraged
in this confidence

by apparently the most prudent,

savvy people in the country.

The country's financial elite
is saying everything's fine.

- There was no reason to think that

anything else would happen.

People really imagined
that this would go on

and even the most famous economists.

- It drove stock prices up to irrational,

even silly, levels.

Despite those crazy levels,
as in all speculative booms,

there were people who said,

"The stock market is right.

"Those high levels are deserved."

- There was a Novel Prize
winner named Edward Prescott

in the US who argues that
the stock market was not

especially high in 1929.

- The best experts, the
risk experts, saying,

"Don't worry, it will
never happen, and besides

"you can diversify, and
if goes down on one place,

"it'll only be one place,
the other places it won't."

That's absurd.

- In 1929 you had a stock
market that had been going

up, up, up and as it kept going up,

it sort of cut loose from
its moorings by which I mean,

instead of being based on
real values of the underlying

companies, it was a speculator's
market in which people

bought and sold stock thinking
that if they bought it now,

they could sell it later for more money.

- Investment pools were
conspiracies really of insiders.

Top investment bankers,
sometimes politicians,

who wanted to speculate
in a particular stock

and so they would buy up
huge amounts of that stock,

send its price therefore
skyrocketing, then quickly

and secretly dump the stock
so that they could realize

the profits, while all those
ordinary folk who had been

encouraged to buy that
same stock because they

were watching its escalation,
were left with the losings.

(speaking French)

- You can make more and
more by taking bigger

and bigger risks.

Taking bigger and bigger risks
led to a higher and higher

prices for stocks and willingness

to borrow excessively in order to do that.

And that created a structure
that, once it cracked,

came apart completely.

- The supposed stock prices quadruple

and go from 100 to 400, even
over the course of a decade.

A lot of people would
look at that and say,

"That is crazy, you would
not trust a stock market

"to have prices going up like that."

- There were people who saw that the

economy's growth was
based on false premises,

and warned that a problem would arise.

- There were a handful of
Wall Street investment bankers

who say that the economy
and the market itself

is way over extended,

that speculation on margin is dangerous,

that the values in the stock
market are grossly inflated,

warning that there are danger signs.

There are some people like the
statistician, Roger Babson,

and they are systematically ignored.

- [Voiceover] Roger Babson
declared in September,

one month before the collapse,

"Sooner or later a crash is coming.

"It will be terrific, colossal even.

"The stock market will
fall by its own weight

"and they'll be a mad rush beyond anything

"we've ever seen."

- The higher the market
got, the more other people

shouted down those who
warned that the market

was getting out of control

because, if people started
taking them seriously,

they'd start to sell their
stock and the stock market

would go down.

- There were signs
before the market crashed

that the economy was
starting to go down again.

Short term signs of economic recession

can never be trusted.

We always have pauses and
sometimes economies come back

but there were signs of over speculation

all over the place, in
particular the high level

of stock prices which
were very hard to justify

on any historical basis.

But there was all kinds,
there were investment trusts

that average people were
putting their money in.

Investment trusts were able
to borrow a lot of money

to invest in stocks.

Average people, typical
people, were borrowing money

on their own to buy individual
stocks, margin borrowing,

so there were all kinds of signs

that there was trouble to come.

- It began to sort of
vacillate through September

and then in October it began to fall.

And then in about the
third week in October

the bottom started to fall out.

- And that's usually a sign
when the bubble will burst

and burst it did in October of 1929.

- The crash of 1929 was
like a perfect storm

in which all of these
improbably things came togther

at the wrong time in the wrong way.

(yelling and shouting)

(ominous music)

- 200, 300. What?

- [Voiceover] And on
Thursday, October 24th,

Black Thursday, collective
insanity put in an appearance.

In just a few hours, 13
million stocks were suddenly

dumped on the market by
panic-stricken shareholders

who didn't even know at what
price they sold their shares.

After three years of intense speculation,

Wall Street crashed.

And no one was in a
position to decide to close

the stock market.

The president of Wall Street
was on vacation in Hawaii.

(rumbling explosion)

The speculative bubble burst
causing financial panic.

Through a domino effect, the whole

of the stock market collapsed.

The cumulative losses
amounted to $30 billion,

ten times the US Federal Reserve budget

and more than the United States had spent

during the whole of World War I.

In six days, average prices went down 50%

and kept falling.

And what was even more unusual,

the stock market crash carried on.

- The crash was inevitable.

It was just a matter of time.

It was inevitable.

And then people realized

that they had been assuming

that prices would never fall

and that assumption was wrong. (laughs)

So their whole life had
been based on an assumption

that prices could go only one way.

Of course, if they had read
history, they would know

that that was a stupid idea.

They know that prices
come and prices come down.

- People had been putting
their hand in the till at work,

taking the money,
putting it in the market,

figuring it's gonna go up, so it'll go up,

I'll cash in, put the
money back in the till,

and no one will be the wiser.

But when the market
crashed, there was no way

to get the money back out.

- All of a sudden, they
realized the model that had been

in their mind was totally wrong.

And realizing that they were wrong,

they panic.

But as they panic, what do they see?

Their neighbor panic.

- On the market itself,
of course, the brokers

are going crazy, their
tearing their hair out.

They can't keep up with
the dissent of the market.

Many people lose their
money because the trades

they tried to make,
couldn't be made in time

at the prices they were
trying to make them because

the capacity to handle those trades

wasn't there anymore.

The wires are burning up

- The ticker tape which
recorded all the sales

couldn't keep up and it would
fall several hours behind.

And when it fell that
far behind, it means that

if you were at two o'clock
and you only knew what

the market was doing at
10:30, you were in big trouble

'cause you didn't know what had happened.

- And as it was going
down, those who were slower

said, "Oh, I made a mistake.

"I wish I'd been faster."

And the process accelerates
and you'll get this

sense of free fall.

- What precipitates that,
I don't think to this day

anybody really knows what
precipitates Black Tuesday

or Black Thursday, why
that particular day.

(speaking French )

It was something fundamentally
wrong with this economy.

Not only with the stock market,

not only that stocks
were grossly overvalued,

but there were underlying
problems with the economy

that that illusion of prosperity
that had so captivated

people for nearly a decade
was indeed an illusion.

And that the panic was
a kind of inarticulate,

emotional recognition of that fact.

Because, in other words, it
was grounded in something real.

It wasn't pure hysteria.

(people clamoring)

- [Voiceover] "Inside it's like
a rail station at the start

"of the vacation", the
Wall Street Journal wrote,

"a Niagara of liquidation."

Men and women jostled each
other to try to understand

what was going on.

These figures and letters
were incomprehensible

to a layman but they spelt ruin.

"On the floor there were
thousands of discarded

"stock exchange orders,

"like empty cartridges
on the battlefield",

wrote the New York Times.

- The Great Crash is supposed
to have produced mass

suicides on Wall Street and elsewhere.

It became the object of a
kind of a gallows humor.

There were cartoons about Wall Street,

bankers jumping out of windows, and so on.

It's a grossly exaggerated legend.

(screaming)

(siren wailing)

- [Voiceover] The wildest
rumors were going around.

11 speculators were said
to have committed suicide.

It is alleged that the
manager of the Ritz required

customers to pay for their room in advance

asking if they wanted a
room to spend the night

or to jump.

- There were indeed some suicides.

Not very many.

One of the most notable,
however, was witnessed

by Winston Churchill.

Churchill was visiting New
York at the time of the crash.

He first visited the stock
market and was struck by,

not the panic on the market floor,

but by a kind of dazed somnambulism

of brokers walking around
almost as if they were

in a kind of semi-comatose state.

And then he went back to his hotel and,

while he was in his hotel, someone indeed

did jump out the window
of the hotel he was

staying with who turned out
to be a Wall Street broker

who had been ruined.

(speaking French)

- [Voiceover] On Black
Thursday, Herbert Hoover

refused to go to Wall
Street, choosing to take tea

with Marie Curie who was
visiting the White House.

He reminded her that he had
been Secretary of Commerce

before being elected President,

and that America was sure of herself

and would enjoy endless prosperity.

At the same moment, outside
deserted stock exchange

ruined businessmen tried to
sell their luxury automobiles

for next to nothing.

- The reaction, the official
reaction to the crash

of the market, is a sense
of shock, disbelief,

and hubris.

A sense that if they act and
simply assure people that

everything is alright, the
market will immediately recover.

John D. Rockefeller goes and
buys some stock in a very

public way to show that
he too is confident

that the economy is sound
and the market is sound.

- [Voiceover] John
Rockefeller, the richest man

in the world, saw his fortune melt by 80%.

- In the 93 years of my
life, depressions have come

and gone.

Prosperity has always
returned and will again.

- He tries to assure everybody
that the market is sound,

that this is a temporary
lull, and this act

of buying up stock is a display
of confidence in the market.

And it doesn't work.

Herbert Hoover, the
President of the country,

issues pronouncements that
the underlying stucture

of the economy is sound,

that people need not fear or panic,

but everybody does indeed panic.

And the panic is irreversible.

It's extraordinary.

It even has a sound to it.

10,000 people gather outside
the New York Stock Exchange.

The city is very afraid.

They order mounted police.

They think there's going to
be a Storming of the Bastille

that is a storming of the
New York Stock Exchange,

and that crowd gathers there
and stays there for weeks.

And there's a kind of a low hum that

is emitted from the crowd,
a kind of dull roar.

It's like the sound of
panic, the sound of anxiety.

(rumbling hum)

(high pitched squealing)

- [Voiceover] The tremendous
crowd you can see gathered

outside the stock exchange
are due to the greatest crash

in the history of the New York
Stock Exchange market prices.

- Herbert Hoover very, very
quickly once the crash hits,

loses credibility in the
eyes of the American people.

He's doing nothing.

He's making constant false
assurances that always turn

out to be untrue.

- He did not recognize the
crisis when it occurred.

He tried to say, "It's
not so bad, you know.

"We will recover quickly."

- His statements about prosperity
being around the corner

were an attempt to give
confidence to the market.

No president is going to say
we're about to have a disaster.

(laughs) But because
they were false promises,

when the reality showed
them to be inconsistent

with they had said, it
actually discredited Hoover.

- The Congress and the President together

could have appeared on the
Capitol steps easily and said,

"We realize that what we're
doing is destructive."

But they didn't, and the
President did not look back

on the crash, apologize
for having caused it,

and express any regret for its policies.

It continued its policies
as it had before.

- He himself, I think, is so
stunned by what has happened.

So confident that the market will recover.

- The Federal Reserve was
saying that the stock market

crash was no great deal, no great concern,

nothing to worry about,
and that it was not

presaging any kind of economic downturn.

Well, of course, that was
a dead wrong assumption.

- The crash was not the event of one day.

It really spread out across
a week, and sort of the fall

went on for almost three weeks,

from late October into middle November.

After that, the market began
to recover and it actually

gained back during the
winter something like a third

of what it had lost.

And it looked like
recovery was on the way.

Everybody was looking not at the market,

but at the economy, what
was going to happen.

(speaking French)

- The crash on a particular day in 1929

was something like 24, 25%,

But actually from 1929

to the bottom of the stock market,

the entire decline was 80%.

- [Voiceover] In fact, Wall
Street had already started

its long interminable dissent into hell,

and the whole of America's
economic activity

followed this downward
slope until it reached

the depths of the abyss.

- It really snowballs after 1929.

More and more banks failed.

If you have money in a
bank and the bank fails,

you've lost it all.

So that means there's a run on the bank.

And there is literally a financial crisis.

- [Voiceover] American opinion
was shocked by the collapse

of what was once the
indestructible bastion

of triumphant capitalism, the banks.

- People are desperate
and the banking system

is collapsed.

It is an enormous liquidity crunch.

There is no credit available
to restart the engines

of the economy.

- One of the controversies of '29

was what role did the central bank play?

Would it have been able to reverse it

if it provided more money

to the banking system?

- The complete evaporation of confidence

in the economy and in the
financial sector particularly,

means there's no credit available.

- So it was a period of decline

in economic activity that finally led

to a financial crisis
that then, of course,

continued the downward
spiral of the economy.

- Suddenly, a banking
community will not be able

to lend money.

People will not be able to buy houses.

That feeds on itself and
that's how recessions work.

Businesses start to layoff workers.

They can't get loans
to meet their payroll.

They can't get loans to
keep their businesses going.

Businesses go out of business.

More people are let go.

Other people are afraid
they will be let go.

They stop spending.

You spend less money.

Business makes even less profit.

More business go under.

And all of this feeds on itself

and the economy sinks into
this sort of death spiral

or at least a coma spiral, let's call it.

But that takes time.

Markets can collapse in a few days

but the economy sinking takes time.

- When the economy collapsed, there was no

reservoir of consumer purchasing power

to buoy it up again.

- And people began to lose jobs.

Then you get this shift.

And once that mood shift starts,

it's very, very hard to reverse again.

- And so you get this escalating crisis

that begins as a banking crisis

but becomes a general economic crisis.

(speaking French)

- People stopped buying things.

They start worrying about the future

whereas the future looked
like nothing but bright

because the market was going up,

they had money.

But as soon as the market crashes and

the underlying causes start to seep in,

like the housing market.

(speaking French)

- And once the house
prices stopped growing,

the whole house of cards collapsed.

(speaking French)

- As business failed,

they couldn't repay the loans.

The only way they could do it
by borrowing more and more.

But that process had to come to an end.

(speaking French)

- They thought that
they had made their life

and then suddenly the floor
dropped out from under them

and they started to lose it all again.

I mean who's hurt by a Depression?

The poor have always been poor.

You know this is not anything
particularly new to them.

It's a little harder.

The rich, if you've got $20
million dollars and you lose

10 or 12 million, you can
still scrape by on that other

eight million.

It's the middle class.

The ones who are new to that lifestyle.

And the middle class on
that level, as I said,

because of the consumer economy,

was grounded in the
possession of material things

whether it was an automobile,
whether it was clothes,

whether it was your house or whatever.

And all of that is one by
one taken away from them.

- And so the economy continues to descend

and descend and descend,
no matter what Hoover

is prepared to do, and he's
prepared to do not very much.

- The kinds of views
that Hoover advocated,

were the kinds of policies
that made the Great Depression

as bad as it was.

- He refused to really
have the kind of stimulus

that the country needed.

There was really a lack of comprehension

of the depth of the problems

and the appropriate
policies to respond to it.

(crowd cheering)

- As a result of the World
War and its aftermath--

- [Voiceover] To boost the
confidence of the financial

world, Hoover decided to
urgently repatriate to the US

capital loan to Germany.

This was a devastating measure
and a monumental mistake.

Germany, which was barely
recovering from the war,

was hit hard by the withdrawal
of American capital.

- The effect was simply to cut

the flows of money that had previously,

in the middle of the 1920s, moved from

the United States to Europe

and had fed an economic boom.

- World War I was not forgotten in 1929.

There was still a lot of
anger and the Depression

gave the Hoover administration

and the Republicans at the time,

the opportunity to vent their
anger among other things.

There is no way it
would have saved the day

by repatriating that money.

(speaking French)

I don't think they were fully
aware of the implications

of what they were doing.

(speaking French)

- [Voiceover] The very first
credit transfer spelled

disaster for the German economy.

The amount of the US loans was staggering.

The Reichsbank had to
send 14 billion marks

to the US in gold and currency.

Investors were ruined.

The empty banks were mobbed.

- The international financial
system, the way it worked,

clearly contributed to
the spread of the crisis

in Germany and that led to

contraction of the economy.

So that was one of the
factors that contributed

to the downward spiral.

- What had been a local affair,

that is a largely American affair,

becomes a European-wide depression

in a continent which
itself has been suffering

almost for a whole decade
from a very weak economy.

Not like United States.

Europe hadn't been booming
during the twenties,

but in fact was suffering
all the consequences

of a devastating World War I,

only was beginning to rebuild its industry

and its agricultural economy and so on.

- Germany had been in an economic mess

all through the 1920s.

Remember the horrendous
mega inflation of the 1920s

had just about wiped out
the German middle class

in the 1920s.

And a lot of that was the
spill over from the horrible

terms of the Versaille Treaty.

- Those debts, war reparation
debts and war loan debts,

hang over the economy
depressing it further

until finally the depression spreads from

the United States to Europe.

(speaking French)

- And when you look at the German deal,

that what Germany got, vis-a-vis, France.

And what France did to
Germany in that period,

and what the UK, along with France, did

and what the US allowed
to happen to Germany,

we hurt Germany in a way that damaged

stable democracy, of course.

(speaking French)

- [Voiceover] In Germany,
industrial production collapsed,

bankruptcies increased,

and the number of unemployed
reached over six million

leading to widespread
disillusionment and anger.

Hunger marches were held in several cities

and soup kitchens sprang up once again.

(speaking French)

- [Voiceover] In the United
States, the shock wave

of the stock exchange
collapse had not subsided

before the effects of the
terrible, irreversible

spiral of recession began to be felt.

American industrial
production dropped by half.

Thousands of families had
to rely on the soup kitchen

for food.

- The economy did not recover,

and by June the spring
was usually the big month

for when the economy begins to perk up

for the coming season.

It didn't happen.

And as a result, the bottom
just sort of fell out

of the market again, and
the country drifted along

until about October.

And it's not until really
about October of '30

that the country begins
to fall into a depression.

(somber music)

- [Voiceover] America's
sturdiest strongholds collapsed

after the Wall Street crash.

It was in stark contrast
to the recent period

of rapid growth.

One worker in five was unemployed.

The population seemed anesthetized.

In New York, where every
month 17,000 families

were put on the streets,
hundreds of thousands

of unemployed including
many white collar workers,

struggled to survive,
trudging through the cold

for hours just to get a bowl
of soup and a piece of bread.

- The government has no safety programs,

no safety net welfare programs.

There is no unemployment insurance.

So as people lose jobs and
they're thrown on the streets,

they have nowhere to go
but to private charities.

And those private charities are
just completely overwhelmed.

- My early memories of the depression was

seeing my mother standing
on one of these lines

to get food, ashamed of being poor,

ashamed of having to ask
somebody for something.

I remember that very vividly
because it was very painful

to see her on this line

waiting to get some food.

As the depression got worse, we moved from

bad tenements to worse tenements.

Of course, another thing I
remember is my own family.

My father was a waiter.

When the Depression
came, there was less work

and so my father had to
do many other things,

and desperately he became

a salesman of ties, neckties.

Because I remember I felt very shamed

walking past down the street to the school

and there was my father
selling ties on the street.

And to this day,

I'm ashamed of my own reaction.

And another time he
became a window cleaner

and he did that until he
fell from one of his window

cleaning jobs and hurt himself.

And I remember my father
doing some cleaning streets

or something like that.

- And that's part of the awful
tragedy of the Depression.

It's literally etched
on the faces of people.

Men get up and they go
out to look for work,

and they know they're not
going to find anything.

And so they're going to spend half the day

sitting on a park bench feeling useless.

- There was a reality
that it was very difficult

to escape from.

I think you couldn't go
anywhere without seeing

the signs of depression.

You couldn't go anywhere without seeing

the boarded up stores, the
factories that were not working,

the people standing on the street.

In the early phases of the Depression,

many men, for instance,
still dressed up as if

they were going to work
because they didn't want

to tell their families.

They were too embarrassed
to tell their famillies

that they were unemployed.

But then they would stand
around in their work clothing

all day in the streets
to be away from home,

to be somewhere else.

(melancholic music)

- [Voiceover] Broken by the recession

and prepared to do anything to survive,

more and more people took part in numerous

dance marathons, a 1930s variant of

ancient circus games.

The rule of these trials was simple.

Couples had to dance
for as long as possible

sometimes for several days

in the hope of winning the $500 awarded

to the last couple standing to the delight

of the audiences who came
to forget their own misery.

The organizers thought of everything,

doctors, beds, and food.

The losers at least got the chance to eat.

- That's one of the
things that I remember.

Of course, another thing
I remember is people

being evicted from their tenements.

Even as low as the rents
were, they could not afford

to pay them and so the police would come

and they'd take their
furniture and put them out

on the street.

And I remember as a
little boy, going by these

scenes of furniture out on the streets.

And you might see the mother

crying, weeping,

because it was not only

that they had lost their home

but it was psychologically
humiliating for them

to have all of their
possessions in full view

of everybody and for
everybody to know that they

could not pay their rent.

(crowd clamoring)

But once or twice I saw
scenes of rebellion,

people organizing to
move the furniture back

to defy the police, and
this happened several times.

- People, as they lost their homes,

had to go somewhere and they went largely

into these makeshift huts
that they put together

with cardboard and tin
and leftover materials.

They slept in caves in Central Park.

- There were tent cities
all over America of homeless

people that are called
Hoovervilles in mocking

disdain for what Hoover has
visited upon the country.

- Central Park in New York City
had a number of Hoovervilles

and Hoovervilles were
for a number of years

the shame of our society.

♫ Once I lived the life of a millionaire

♫ Spending my money Lord I didn't care

♫ I carried my friends
out for a mighty good time

♫ Buying bootleg liquor

♫ Champagne and wine

♫ Then I began

♫ To fall so low

♫ Didn't have no money and no place to go

♫ If I get my hands on a dollar again

♫ I'm gonna hold on to it

♫ Till the eagle grins

♫ Because nobody

♫ Knows you

♫ When you're down and out

♫ In your pockets

♫ Not one penny

♫ And your friends you have not any

♫ But when you get on

♫ Your feet again

♫ Everybody wants to be
your long lost friend

♫ It's mighty strange without a doubt

♫ No man can use you

♫ When you're down and out

♫ Lord I mean when you're down and out ♫