t prosperity of the 1920’s produced the contagious feeling that everyone was meant to get rich. The decade witnessed a series of speculative orgies from “get-rich-quick” schemes to. . .the Great Bull Market. Before the war (World War I), stock investment had been almost wholly a preserve of the wealthy. . .No one can explain what caused the wave of 1928. There was no single cause of the crash and ensuing depression; (however) management had siphoned off gains in high profits. . .thus the farmer and the worker did not have the purchasing power to sustain prosperity.
The policies of the federal government were disastrous. Its tax policies made the maldistribution of income by the rich still more serious. The market crash played a major role in precipitating the Great Depression. The farmer, who had seen little of the prosperity of the 1920’s was devastated by the depression. The depression touched every area of American life.
