Stock market crashes, leads to Depression

To mark our 175th anniversary year, we feature a different front page each week from past Ottawa Citizens. Today: Oct. 29, 1929

Between Oct. 24 and 29, 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered three of its worst days in history: Black Thursday, Black Monday and Black Tuesday.

The stock market lost approximately one-quarter of its value in that period as more than 44 million shares were traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

The crash capped off a 40 per cent drop in the Dow since the market's peak on Sept. 3 of that year, a height Wall Street wouldn't reach again for more than 25 years.

Billions of dollars were lost.

The crash ended the Roaring Twenties and triggered a panic that led to the Great Depression.

The Citizen's front-page headline on Black Tuesday contained a note of optimism: “TERRIFIC SELLING WAVE ENDS: N.Y. STOCKS REBOUND,” while assuring readers that “Nothing Wrong With Situation In Canada to Justify Any Panic, Is View of Finance Dept. Men.”

“`Conditions are thoroughly sound,' it was stated,” said the Citizen report, quoting anonymous Finance Department officials.

“`Business is exceptionally good and if it only reverts to normal everything will be satisfactory.'

“`The intrinsic value of Canadian stocks today is just as high as it was a week or a fortnight ago … The conditions do not warrant any panic whatever.' ”

Yet in Ottawa's brokerage houses and speculative circles, the Citizen noted, “the huge murky cloud of impending trouble that blocked out the promise of sunshine after yesterday's startling decline on the stock exchanges brought about a condition never before seen in the Capital.

“Although warned by expert advice, foreign or at least transatlantic in origin, that the worst was not yet over, the local markets and the great Ottawa body of investors and speculators in stocks were unprepared for the ferocity of the attack which set in immediately (after) the tickers opened this morning.”