Wall Street in the Roaring Twenties
Karen Reams
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During the 1920's Wall Street experienced its worst and finest hours. Beginning on a sour note the decade experienced a boom and then disintegrated into chaos. All of this happened within a s 
pan of just nine years.
The war caused the economy to slump into a recession until 1921 then there began a turn a round. It was the age of jazz, flappers and illegal booze.
There were many new products and many consumers started to benefit from postwar prosperity. People began buying new cars, homes and of course radios and the economy prospered. Thanks to the new technological development not only did people purchase radios more and more had access to the telephone. Interestingly enough one of their usual calls was to their stock broker.......
It didn't take Wall Street long to notice the new trend. Brokers began placing advertisemens in magazines and newpapers advertizing their skills. In fact never before had brokers marketed themselves to the public in such a way on such a scale. Many people wanted to participate in the boom and bought brokers. The brokers were mostly local as large broker houses were still in their infancy. The Bank of New York opened hundreds of branches connected by almost 12,000 miles of communications wire. Their belief was if customers cannot come to you, open a branch and go to them. This was the beginning of the stock market boom.
The investing public were discovering stocks for the first time on a large scale which of course made the stockbrokers happy. There were many willing brokers ready to accomdate people who wished to speculate and get rich quick.
During the 1920's Wall Street became more and more sophisticated. The markets handled greater turnover in stocks and bonds, the number of people employed by brokers increased and new investment products were developed.
This was truly the decade of excess. Articles in magazines extolled the virtues of getting rich quick, Get rich schemes were widespread and it became the American thing to do.
The war caused the economy to slump into a recession until 1921 then there began a turn a round. It was the age of jazz, flappers and illegal booze.
There were many new products and many consumers started to benefit from postwar prosperity. People began buying new cars, homes and of course radios and the economy prospered. Thanks to the new technological development not only did people purchase radios more and more had access to the telephone. Interestingly enough one of their usual calls was to their stock broker.......
It didn't take Wall Street long to notice the new trend. Brokers began placing advertisemens in magazines and newpapers advertizing their skills. In fact never before had brokers marketed themselves to the public in such a way on such a scale. Many people wanted to participate in the boom and bought brokers. The brokers were mostly local as large broker houses were still in their infancy. The Bank of New York opened hundreds of branches connected by almost 12,000 miles of communications wire. Their belief was if customers cannot come to you, open a branch and go to them. This was the beginning of the stock market boom.
The investing public were discovering stocks for the first time on a large scale which of course made the stockbrokers happy. There were many willing brokers ready to accomdate people who wished to speculate and get rich quick.
During the 1920's Wall Street became more and more sophisticated. The markets handled greater turnover in stocks and bonds, the number of people employed by brokers increased and new investment products were developed.
This was truly the decade of excess. Articles in magazines extolled the virtues of getting rich quick, Get rich schemes were widespread and it became the American thing to do.