AFTER THE CRASH.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 288, 5 December 1929, Page 28

AFTER THE CRASH.

WALL STREET'S CONDITION. SUICIDE OF BIG BANKER. EFFORTS TO AVERT SLUMP. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SAN FRANCISCO, November 11. Wall Street's afsasbcarried many little people to destruction. Thousands are broken-hearted, cursing their folly; some, unimportant, killed themselves, while others disappeared.In the sequels to the financial crash came the first "big"'.victim of 'the stock collapse, when J. Eiordan, head of the important County Trust Company in New York, thought to bo enormously wealthy and able to give 500,000 dollars to a national campaign, shot himself to death. News of the sensational suicide was withheld for nearly a day to prevent an unwarranted run on the bank of which the deceased banker was president. ■ Riordan, who was -a personal friend of ex-Governor Al. Smith, was found dead in the -.bedroom of: his mansion, with a ,38 calibre Colt revolver, with one chamber discharged. Physicians stated that Riordan had been on the verge of a mental breakdown for days, during .the height of the stock crash on Wall Street. -Stock losses were supposed to have unsettled his mind. In Canden, New Jersey, a bank clerk, 28 years old, with a- email salary of 35 dollars a week, gave himself up to the police, saying lie had stolen 7*3,000 dollars for stock gambling, meaning to return it. Ho could not isleep °and wanted to go to gaol. Included in Wall Street was Miss Margaret Shotwell, a talented young pianist. She inherited 900J000 dollars in Reynolds Tobacco stock, as good as gold in the estimation of American financiers. She used her Reynolds stock as margin for stock gambling, and it is all gone, wiped out, and she owes her broker 50,000 dollars besides. Being a philosopher the young lady says: "I am through playing the market, and am going to play the piano to repay my broker the 50,000 dollars I owe him." Emerging From Debris. With the Stock Exchange in New York comparatively quiet and operating only three hours a day, some 50,000 men and women, boys and girls, who coinprise the daytimo population of Wall Street, were slowly 'but valiantly digging their Avay out of the debris of the

fateful stock crash, and its subsequent bargain buying of 'millions of hysterical speculators all over the world. It was stated officially that it will take some of the -workers on Wall Street months to get caught tip with the work of selling over sixteen, million shares of etock in one day. One typical clerk laid: "It isn't so tough if you can sloep At home now and 'then and have dinner with the family every other night or 60." And some of them were attacking the job of straightening things out with the impetus inspired by genorous financial reward from their employers, who had reaped, fortunes in commissions in handling : hundreds of thousands of shares daily when the craze for bargains was at its height. One firm granted all its employees a fortnight's extra pay for overtime during the rush. For years to como old-timers in the hanka and brokerage houses of the financial district will be telling youngsters about these last two weeks—an entire fortnight during which some of them never got home at all. In one big office there was an order clerk Avho worked 72 hours straight without sleep. That was during the week of the "Wild Thursday." He .said: "Sleepy? I didn't dare to get eleepy. I'd have been 'sunk' if I had. But it's lightening up now. I only had to work until 3 o'clock yesterday morning, and to-day being a holiday, I ought to he out of here by 9.30 to-night." They tell the story of another clerk who, one night during the rush, after working 42 hours at a stretch, fainted away. They stretched him out in a beach chair —office managors resorted to beach chairs after the supply of cots and hotel rooms on Brooklyn Heights had given out —called a doctor from the Stock. Exchange medical department, which had stayed open all aiight for

just such emergencies, and proscntly brought ihim to. "Now get your hat and coat and beat it home and get some rest," the office manager told him. "The heck I will!" retorted the young man. And he went right back to work. Special Sales of Cars. It is evident that the leading bankers of the country are extremely nervous that the outside world should nurture the idea that America's period of prosperity has.come to an abrupt end. These bankers and other financiers of the United States sound loudly almost daily statements that "American conditions are fundamentally sound." There cannot ibe any slump, they declare, but in the face of their declamations the fact remains that some of the industries have slowed up in. manufactures, and have ceased to place their usual large orders for raw material. The automobile industry has been badly affected, and the usual ■ cry of the automobile .dealer that, he is una-ble to get his supplies from the factory to meet ordens, is being laughed at all over the country, fpr the very fact that the people are extremely slow in ordering new motor oars. Furthermore, the manufacturers are also slow in bringing out their ■ new models. Some of the dealers are. having special sales, whore the present models are being offered to a listless public at reductions of from 1.0 to 20 .per cent off standard prices. The action of radio companies in reducing the prices of their sets to a very large degree has brought about talk of further reductions jn prices of luxuries, Wall Street has heard that makers of high-priced motor cars will cut their prices. Stiff competition lias had little to do with this, and it is believed the public have been warned by the etock crash to save their money for the expected impending lean times in the country. In order to force sales of automobiles and radio sets the manufac* iturers evidently are 'trying to tempt prospective purchasers by attractive

.pneee. Many believe that bedrock has been reached in the slump on the Exchange for all stocks, but the wiseacres among the brokerage houses are diffident to venture .any opinion, in view of the many wrong guesses, they .have made of recent weeks. : \ :.. ':. .