FAITH LAPIDUS: But the prices went still higher. Buyers fought with each other to pay more and more for company stocks. The average price of all stocks almost doubled in just one year.

It seemed everybody was buying stocks, even people with little money or economic training.

A clothing salesman got advice from a stock trader visiting his store and made two hundred thousand dollars. A nurse learned of a good company from someone in the hospital. She made thirty thousand dollars. There were thousands of such stories.

By early September, the stock market reached its high point of the past eighteen months. Shares of the Westinghouse company had climbed from ninety-one dollars to three hundred thirteen. The Anaconda Copper company had risen from fifty-four dollars to one hundred sixty-two. Union Carbide jumped from one hundred forty-five to four hundred thirteen.

Life was like a dream. But like any dream, it could not last forever.

(MUSIC)

BOB DOUGHTY: In September, nineteen twenty-nine, stock prices stopped rising.

During the next month and a half, stock prices fell, but only slowly. Then suddenly, at the end of October, the market crashed. Prices dropped wildly. Leading stocks fell five, ten, twenty dollars in a single day. Everyone tried to sell their stocks. But no one was buying. Fear washed across the stock market. People were losing money even faster than they had made it.