Archive for the 'Economics' Category

Introduction of 40 Hour Working Week

THAT man should earn his bread by the sweat of his brow is a dictum of the Scriptures that has been pretty well abolished in America, where, in the main, he now acquires, not bread, but canned goods and package foods, by the oil on a machine. Mr. Thomas A. Edison is on record as [...]

War Bread in Peace Time

BELGIUM and France might have been encouraged by the good news from
the nutrition chemists at Williamstown about the prospect of food from the air and sun, and also by the black case they made out against white bread. For the Belgian and French people have gone back on the war basis of “black bread” as [...]

Wall Street 1929 Part 12

Another and fascinating phenomenon has arisen on the American scene. I refer to the investment trusts. People too timid to risk their own judgment and money in the stock market can now buy brains to invest and speculate for them. At this writing there are more than 450 investment trusts in the market, with a [...]

Wall Street 1929 Part 11

The desire to make money is not limited to minds trained in making it. The easier money can be made, and the more quickly, the better it attracts the public. Just now the most fabulous money-making machine in the country seems to be the stock market; so the public has enthusiastically gone shopping there.
Savings banks [...]

Wall Street 1929 Part 10

Since the beginning of 1929, the United Press has thrice revamped its financial news system in quest of greater speed. Two years ago, a single Morse wire, with a capacity of thirty words a minute, provided member newspapers with all the financial news they wanted. Most of them wanted only Curb and bond reports. Local [...]

Wall Street 1929 Part 9

All this has had a most striking influence upon the country’s press. From the doubtful prestige of being “too technical” for the average reader’s mind, financial news has risen—or fallen—to the persuasive estate of being front page news, when, as and if issued. Ten years ago the financial department of even the greatest newspapers consisted [...]

Wall Street 1929 Part 8

Not even the lifting of marginal deposits from ten points to thirty points per par value share has diminished the public’s activity. The professionals are bearish. The public never.
“The higher the market goes, the deeper the public is in it.” He reached for his customers’ book. Just after the last debacle, the number of customers [...]

Wall Street 1929 Part 7

Three great houses on Wall Street concentrate on filling these “odd lot” demands alone. These houses are dealers to the millions, they are their key to Wall Street.
When Tom, Dick and Harry go to their brokers to buy 10-25-50 shares of Prosperity, common, their brokers notify their men on the floor, who seek out the [...]

Wall Street 1929 Part 6

On a 5,000,000 share day on the Big Board, nearly $200,000,000 worth of buying and selling pulses through these steel highways. This is not the total business. Merely the 30 per cent that the citizenry removed from Wall Street contributes to the day’s volume as a rule.
By itself this fact impresses as to the extent [...]

Wall Street 1929 Part 5

IF ONE REALLY needed proof of the enormous participation of the public in the stock market, there is no end to the statistics that may be conjured up. Let us contemplate the physical membership of the Stock Exchange itself. In 1895, out of the 112 branch offices which its 1, 100 members then maintained, only [...]