Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression

In the summer of 1932, as nationwide unemployment approached 25%, tens of thousands of World War I veterans marched on Washington, DC in hopes of pressuring the federal government to pay them their promised bonuses several years early. The US Army’s 12th Infantry, commanded by Douglas MacArthur, used tear gas and bayonets to disperse the crowds and drive the marchers out of the capital by force. Accounts of the Bonus March appear in Book 1, Chapter 1.

The US stock market crash of October 24th and 29th, 1929, wiped out billions of dollars of market value in the worst financial panic of all time. Studs Terkel’s interviewees refer to it as simply “The Crash.” The event looms large in the memories of Depression-era survivors, for it is the one dramatic moment they associate with the start of the Depression. In reality, the market recovered some of its value until the spring of 1930, when stock prices again plummeted before bottoming out in the summer of 1932. Whether the Crash triggered the Depression, symbolized it, or merely paralleled other destructive events, such as bank failures, remains an open question.