American Experience

Original Sources

Read excerpts of people’s own personal memories of the Roaring 1920s, and the stock market crash that followed. Explore headlines and clippings from three New York City newspapers.

• “Carried away by the illusion of ever-increasing wealth,” John Kenneth Galbraith, economist
• “Everything was worth practically nothing,” Arthur Marx, son of Groucho Marx
• “Oh, they lived. They really lived,” Patricia Livermore, daughter-in-law of Jesse Livermore
• “Everybody commuted by yacht,” Craig Mitchell, son of Charles E. Mitchell
• “It was a period of high hope,” Robert Sobel, historian
• “They’d be drinking the gin … we’d be doing the bookkeeping,” Tom McCormick, stock sales clerk, 1929
• “You couldn’t hardly believe it fell,” Reuben L. Cain, stock salesman, 1929
• “A fistful of red orders,” Horace Silverstone, New York Stock Exchange telephone clerk, 1929
• “All of this was legal in the Twenties and none of this behavior is legal today,” Michael Nesbitt, grandson of Michael Meehan
• Headlines and articles from The New York Times, The New York Herald Tribune, and The World.