by ROBERT SOBEL

In the mid 1930s the New York Stock Exchange appeared doomed. Trading volume, the key to Wall Street's own profit and loss, frequently dipped below one million shares a day. Brokers and specialists who had purchased $200 suits and picked up the tab for $100 lunches in 1929 barely bothered to conceal their frayed cuffs while sharing sandwiches on the steps of the Subtreasury Building. To a generation stuned by depression, Wall street in general and the NYSE in praticular seemed the symbol of all that had gone wrong.

Published in 1975 by Weybright and Talley