West Baden Springs

     Thursday, October 24: Lillian entered the Logan and Bryan Stock Exchange around noon, just as she had done for more than a week. Only things were dreadfully different on this Thursday the twenty-fourth. A climate of fright shook the brokers’ branch office as never before. Large crowds of tape-watchers stared at the figures on the shining screen as if stunned. Others inundated the brokers at their desk, bombarding the beleaguered men in a roar of panic.

     Lillian observed the large board, covering one wall of the room, on which the day’s prices for the leading stocks were supposed to be recorded. For more than a week she had stared blankly at the board while waiting for Hans, and during this time, she could hardly remember the figures to have moved at all. But now the boys who slapped into place the cards that recorded the last prices shown on the ticker were scrambling about the board like chickens.

     “There’s no point in looking at that board, miss,” a voice sounded behind Lillian. “They lost track of the figures hours ago.”

     Lillian then turned to the shining screen across which ran an uninterrupted procession of figures from the ticker. Even with what little she knew about the stock market, Lillian could see that the stock prices were going down with an altogether unprecedented and amazing violence. Once more, without use of the board, when viewing a run of symbols and figures, she could not be sure whether the price of “6” shown for Radio meant 66 or 56 or 46, whether Westinghouse was sliding from 189 to 187 or from 179 to 177.

     Lillian addressed a man next to her who was mechanically tearing a piece of paper into tiny and still tinier fragments.

     “What on earth could be making the stock prices fall so drastically?” she asked.

The man did not answer right away but stood motionless, as if looking defeat in the face, his eyes fixed blindly upon the moving figures on the screen. Then he uttered in a somber voice, “Forced selling.”...

       …The big bull market was dead. Billions of dollars worth of profits—and paper profits—had vanished. As a result, a new round of terror struck West Baden. Suicides from falling became so commonplace that the top floors and the Byzantine towers had to be closed off. Where only weeks ago laughter had flooded every space of the hotel, now only sobs of grief prevailed. Crowds of people sat in the lobby with backs slouched over and heads bowed. Gradually a mood of despondency and deep depression replaced the hysteria, as poisons gradually seep through the human system after a vital organ has been struck. In a matter of days, those at West Baden had plunged from showy affluence into debt and even destitution. Houses, automobiles, radios, and other symbols of prosperity would have to be repossessed. Those who had dreamed of retiring to live on their fortunes now found themselves back once more at the very beginning of the long road to riches. Life on Easy Street had become normal. It would seem alien to live any other way than in the secure, comfortable world that had suddenly slipped out from under all of them during their stay at West Baden Springs.

     As Lillian looked about the languishing faces throughout the hotel, she knew that the big bull market had been more than the climax of a business cycle. It had been the climax of a cycle in mass thinking and mass emotion. There was not one of them there at West Baden, nor hardly a man or woman in the entire country, whose attitude toward life had not been affected by the stock market in some degree and was not now affected by the sudden and brutal shattering of hope.