Ireland.com

New York City,  24 October 1929

• The show-busines weekly Variety  summed it up in a headline.   WALL STREET LAYS AN EGG,  it proclaimed as millions of shares became worhless in a matter of hours,  and panic stricken brokers fought each other at the Stockexchange counters.   Their orders were to "sell at any price" - but there were few prepared to buy worthless pieces of paper to-day.
• President Hoover's belief that the particapation by millions of small investore - farmers, bus drivers, road-sweepers, chorus girls and housewives among them - was "the final triumph over poverty" has been proved disastrously wrong.   Soon after Wall St. opened
• for trade this morning, brisk selling caused value of shares to fall.    With the ticker tapes unable to cope with the volumn of traffic,
• they fell further,  and as worried investors throughout the country add orders to sell,  the market plummeted until at 11.30 in was
• in total chaos.
• As leading bankers held an emergencu meeting to-day at the offices of J.P. Morgan & Co., the market rallied at the hope of intervention.    The bankers injection of $25 million into the market did ease matters,  but not for the thousands of small investors
• who fought with riot police as they struggled to get to their brokers and sell.
• The bankers tried hard to sooth and smooth things over ..."A minor adjustment" said one  ""A little distress selling" said another.
• Elenven suicides in New York alone tell another story.
• This happened 80 years ago,  almost on this day..........................Baldy Man