the high grade stocks suffered in the depression very few of them were wiped out and will probably come back.
AT&T is still paying its $9 dividend and has proven to be an outstanding stock.
Many Youngstown millionaires have been hard hit by the failure of Youngstown Sheet & Tube to pay its dividend. In a great many cases these families have over a million tied up in Sheet & Tube and Republic Steel and depended entirely on these stocks for their income.
I feel more and more convinced that the time to buy stocks has not yet arrived because the blue chip stocks have not yet come down even tho the depression is already two years old.
8/29/36
AT&T paid its usual dividend thru the depression. Other high grade stocks did not but practically all of them have come back again and the holder who did not sell will lose nothing except the unpaid dividends.
SEPTEMBER 13, 1931
We bought peaches yesterday at 75¢ a bushel. The trees are still loaded to the ground and will go to waste because the fruit cannot be sold. In the meanwhile thousands are starving. It is hard to understand. There is no sign of a pick-up this fall. If anything things are worse. There is simply no money in circulation. This scarcity of money is what makes people think if more money were printed business would be better. This is a false and vicious theory.
SEPTEMBER 15, 1931
I talked to a very prominent real estate man today who developed one of the best residential plots in Youngstown but went broke with the coming of the depression because everything he had was heavily mortgaged and people stopped paying on the property they had bought. He tells me his wife is working in a millinery store and he is in Detroit selling Whiffle Boards (a 5¢ marble gambling game sold to drug stores, beer parlors, etc.). He owns many fine pieces of real estate, mostly vacant lots but cannot give them away. He says he waited too long—hoping the depression would be short—in the meanwhile spending all his liquid cash on taxes, etc.—and now it is too late to unload. Many investors would have been better to unload their real estate and stock investments during the first year of the depression rather than to have waited. They would at least have salvaged something rather than to have lost everything.
8/31/36
An interesting side light of the depression was that unemployed people became interested in small gambling games and the inventors of these games made considerable money. Some of the more popular games were the Whiffle board—a marble game charging 1¢ or 5¢; the “Bug” racket in which people bet from 1 cent up on what numbers would represent stock sales or bank clearings for the day—this is still going strong and is a million dollar racket; the dime chain letter game which offered a return of $200 or $300 for a dime plus a chain letter sent to 10 friends—the crossword puzzle game—Monopoly—finance—politics, etc.
People lost all confidence in the old virtues of saving. They were willing to bet small amounts in the hope of getting large returns. They wanted something to occupy their minds and they wanted some gamble to buoy their hopes.
SEPTEMBER 28, 1931
A great deal of bad news came out in the past week. England, Denmark and Norway go off the gold standard and their currency values drop. The pound goes to $3.50. On top of this, Japan starts a war in China and hopes to grab off some land—knowing the other nations are too much involved in their own troubles to interfere.
There is no fall pickup in business and conditions are worse. During the past week 10 banks in Pittsburgh closed—and one in Alliance.
Following England’s abandonment of the gold standard the U.S. market had a bad break and for the first time since 1929 the blue chip stocks are sliding down. AT&T is now 136—G.E. 30 and Consol Gas 70. The second-rate stocks are certainly low enough—Sheet & Tube 25
AT&T is still paying its $9 dividend and has proven to be an outstanding stock.
Many Youngstown millionaires have been hard hit by the failure of Youngstown Sheet & Tube to pay its dividend. In a great many cases these families have over a million tied up in Sheet & Tube and Republic Steel and depended entirely on these stocks for their income.
I feel more and more convinced that the time to buy stocks has not yet arrived because the blue chip stocks have not yet come down even tho the depression is already two years old.
8/29/36
AT&T paid its usual dividend thru the depression. Other high grade stocks did not but practically all of them have come back again and the holder who did not sell will lose nothing except the unpaid dividends.
SEPTEMBER 13, 1931
We bought peaches yesterday at 75¢ a bushel. The trees are still loaded to the ground and will go to waste because the fruit cannot be sold. In the meanwhile thousands are starving. It is hard to understand. There is no sign of a pick-up this fall. If anything things are worse. There is simply no money in circulation. This scarcity of money is what makes people think if more money were printed business would be better. This is a false and vicious theory.
SEPTEMBER 15, 1931
I talked to a very prominent real estate man today who developed one of the best residential plots in Youngstown but went broke with the coming of the depression because everything he had was heavily mortgaged and people stopped paying on the property they had bought. He tells me his wife is working in a millinery store and he is in Detroit selling Whiffle Boards (a 5¢ marble gambling game sold to drug stores, beer parlors, etc.). He owns many fine pieces of real estate, mostly vacant lots but cannot give them away. He says he waited too long—hoping the depression would be short—in the meanwhile spending all his liquid cash on taxes, etc.—and now it is too late to unload. Many investors would have been better to unload their real estate and stock investments during the first year of the depression rather than to have waited. They would at least have salvaged something rather than to have lost everything.
8/31/36
An interesting side light of the depression was that unemployed people became interested in small gambling games and the inventors of these games made considerable money. Some of the more popular games were the Whiffle board—a marble game charging 1¢ or 5¢; the “Bug” racket in which people bet from 1 cent up on what numbers would represent stock sales or bank clearings for the day—this is still going strong and is a million dollar racket; the dime chain letter game which offered a return of $200 or $300 for a dime plus a chain letter sent to 10 friends—the crossword puzzle game—Monopoly—finance—politics, etc.
People lost all confidence in the old virtues of saving. They were willing to bet small amounts in the hope of getting large returns. They wanted something to occupy their minds and they wanted some gamble to buoy their hopes.
SEPTEMBER 28, 1931
A great deal of bad news came out in the past week. England, Denmark and Norway go off the gold standard and their currency values drop. The pound goes to $3.50. On top of this, Japan starts a war in China and hopes to grab off some land—knowing the other nations are too much involved in their own troubles to interfere.
There is no fall pickup in business and conditions are worse. During the past week 10 banks in Pittsburgh closed—and one in Alliance.
Following England’s abandonment of the gold standard the U.S. market had a bad break and for the first time since 1929 the blue chip stocks are sliding down. AT&T is now 136—G.E. 30 and Consol Gas 70. The second-rate stocks are certainly low enough—Sheet & Tube 25
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