I remember the 29th well. Everything worked out (not for me, but for the majority). I remember the drugged and happy faces of people who made fortunes in stocks they would never have made. “I made ten thousand in ten minutes today! Estimate - that's eighty thousand in a week. " In our wilderness, bank presidents and railroad workers have cut off telephones by calling brokers. Everyone was a broker. At lunchtime, clerks and stenographers chewed sandwiches, followed the quotes and calculated their winnings, growing like a pyramid. Their eyes were like those of casino players.

Then came the panic. And the panic gave way to a dull shock. When the market collapsed, factories, mines, workshops ... Everything was closed. Nobody could buy anything. Even food. People looked like they had been muzzled. The newspapers talked about the broken lives of those who threw themselves out of the window. On the sidewalk, they literally crashed ... Then people rushed to withdraw money. Riots and clashes with the police broke out. Frightened and furious stormed the bank offices until the doors were closed tightly. As in the days of Marie Antoinette, President Hoover invited the unemployed to sell apples. Businessmen panicked, banks panicked, workers demanded to open factories, but no one needed the goods. People began to stock up on food - as before the invasion. Local power passed to the gangsters.

John Steinbeck