On Oct. 29, 1929 — Black Tuesday — jittery Wall Street investors saw 16 million shares change hands and $14 billion in value evaporate. One day later, the Minneapolis Star published this reassuring, glass-is-more-than-half-full editorial. Nothing to worry about here, folks. But there was plenty to worry about.

Someone Is Buying That Stock

More than 16,000,000 shares of stock were bought on the New York stock exchange yesterday. Strange how different that sounds than the headlines’ scream that more than 16,000,000 shares were sold. Yet nobody could sell unless someone was willing to buy. Whose guess is best, the buyer’s or the seller’s?

Most of the selling was done by speculators who could not hang on any longer. Probably little stock was sold by people who owned it as a bona fide investment.

Stock market fluctuations do not change the earning power of the corporations in which the stock represents ownership. The man who bought and held stock for what it really is – a part interest in a business concern – has suffered no cut in income from the slump in stock quotations.

While their stocks slipped in price on the exchanges these corporations have been piling up earnings, to be turned over to their stockholders in the form of dividends.

America is richer today than it was when the stock market debacle started a week ago. Hundreds of good stocks are worth more than they were at the peak of the speculative bull market and are being bought for less than they were bought for last week.

If the money that has been loaned at high rates for stock market operations is now put to work at legitimate business and industry at reasonable rates it will be a tremendous power for prosperity and constructive progress.

If the hard luck of the speculators is not misunderstood by the public and construed as a business reversal the collapse of the stock market bubble may well inaugurate a new era of manufacturing, building and investment.

Nov. 15, 1929: A view of downtown Minneapolis looking south and west toward the three-month-old Foshay Tower, a grand structure built on paper profits lost in the stock market crash. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org)

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