The fierce battle to break down the "sales resistance" has led to a new expansion of installment payments for cars, clothes, washing machines, refrigerators, furniture, jewelry. In effect, it is a loan from producers to consumers, who are short of money and who are in dire need of selling their products, and who prefer to pay in installments rather than by raising their purchasing power by lowering prices and increasing wages. By 1929, the good fortune of installments attracted thousands of people to it. Under this bright light, certain aspects of the system, such as inflated prices, exorbitant interest on instalments, and distortions of products, will become clearer. The laws of some states, such as New York and Kentucky, set an even more vicious trap by which a debtor's entire wages could be withheld until his debt was settled.

At the same time, important business enterprises are concentrated in the hands of fewer people. The creation of chain stores throughout the country is no less important than the recent great merger of the automobile industry. The centralization of the industry has made each metropolis the center of a regional network, each of which is suitable for a national model of manufacturing, selling and distributing products. The mainland's economy has never been so highly integrated, and its equilibrium has never been so sensitive. Frontiers, farms, villages, and central market towns were eventually swallowed up by the rise of cities. Urban industrialism calls the shots, which has never been done before. In 1870, wage earners made up about half of the working population, and today they make up four-fifths.

These wide-ranging changes have barely entered the consciousness of ordinary people. Nowhere in their minds was the fidelity to the creed of individualism and unhindered personal struggle than in 1929. The conflict between theory and practice, like the latent friction between the working and the capitalist, remains almost imperceptible as long as the economic apparatus of the state runs on the fuel of prosperity.

In fact, the prosperity of the 20s of the 20th century was not consistently healthy. Later on, it resembled a red face and ears from a fever, rather than a healthy flushed complexion. Agriculture is still groaning over its puffy overexpansion of 1917-1918. Along with coal mines and textiles, it also belongs to the clinical wards known as the "sick industry". The upheaval in the industry is indeed very large, and a sense of insecurity about the job bowl has been present for several years. Even as early as 1926, it was estimated that there were 150,000 unemployed people in the United States; By 1929, that number had increased to more than 1.8 million. Optimists fail to notice that unemployment and poverty have become long-standing social problems in the United States – neither a short-lived crisis, nor an easy response to through the efforts of individual philanthropy. The proportion of individual and public funds raised for this purpose is gradually decreasing as public relief expenditures rise. The 16 major cities spent $1.5 million on public charity in 1911 and $20 million a year by 1928.

Deficiencies in banking in the United States also raise suspicions. For six years before October 1929, bank bankruptcies occurred at a rate of nearly two per day, but there was a lack of publicity because the violators were smaller institutions (mainly in small towns). Exports of goods are disproportionate to production capacity. At least 20 per cent of the country's resources are not being utilized, resulting in a loss of about $15 billion in national revenue, or a quarter of the goods and services it is producing.

Needless to say, however, the main weakness of the US economy lies not in production, but in consumption. In the early autumn of 1929, the financial pages of the newspapers were already wrying over the "heaviness" of automobiles and radios, the recession of the construction industry, the disappointment spreading along the new frontier of aviation. Many of America's production efforts have recently moved into luxury goods and durable goods, and if there is no urgent demand for them, their purchases will be delayed. After the earliest storm warnings, these goods pile up in warehouses, causing machines to stop and an army of unemployed.

By 1929, Americans' purchasing power was already showing a serious imbalance, and revenues from consumer goods were far less than the influx into investment channels and short-term lending markets, into the purchase of new fixed equipment for future production, and into the pockets of the rich. Never before has there been a time when such a large share of national income has been saved for investment, and never before has current production so spectacularly exceeded current consumption. Two-thirds of the nation's savings are saved by households earning more than $10,000 a year. Households with an annual income of less than $1,500, which make up 40 per cent of the population, are actually living beyond their means. Six million households, or one fifth of the nation, have an annual income of less than $1,000. American households earning less than $5,000 a year spend the vast majority of their income to make ends meet. As a result, 9 out of 10 households that "do not have access to adequate food" can hardly expect to have significant savings.

Orthodox economists insist that savings lead to more fixtures and higher efficiency, which in turn leads to lower production costs, lower prices, and greater purchasing power for most people. By 1929, however, it had become clear that this causal chain had developed a weak link. The purchasing power of the masses was not able to absorb the country's output, not only because of the relatively small increase in wages, but also because retail prices did not actually fall between 1922 and 1929. The savings achieved by technological advances are not passed on to consumers in the form of lower prices. They are translated into bonuses, stock, and higher salaries and bonuses. Monopolies of all kinds, such as the disguised trusts, syndications, and mergers in mining and manufacturing, helped to keep prices high, and even though new machines, better production methods, and the services of "efficiency experts" increased the labor output of the United States by more than a third in the decade after World War I, the average consumer reaped only marginal crumbs, and even the producers reaped only a fraction of the immediate benefits. Profit should be calculated not on a daily or quarterly basis, but on a broad and long-term basis of purchasing power.

Others tend to condemn engineers more than praise them. There are accusations that their creative genius has allowed machines to replace people. Of course, the role of invention in upsetting the balance of groups is not new. In the past, management was sometimes reluctant to replace equipment with new ones; More often, laborers are afraid of these "iron man immigrants." Naturally, the machine was accused of the threat posed by the earliest widespread unemployment, because this generation was less likely than their predecessors to believe that all disasters were mysterious "curses". The basic balance of the vast industrial civilization is being unbalanced, and the relationship between wages and prices, production and consumption, machines and manpower is becoming more and more unstable.

The first storm struck this anxious and prosperous world at the end of October. Like the rumbling of an avalanche in the Alps, a small panic on the New York Stock Exchange began with 23 stocks that were pushed to sky-high heights by speculators. The real collapse began on October 23, 1929. After the opening of the day, the trading volume was rapidly enlarged, and there were constantly large sell orders, and the Dow Jones index easily broke through the "double bottom" of 320 points, and then continued to decline, and did not encounter any decent rebound in the intraday. In the last hour, the volume reached a staggering 2.6 million shares, almost the same as the previous trading day. The total volume for the day was 6.37 million shares, down 21 points for the day. It recorded the largest single decline since the current round of bull market.

Countless shareholders could not sleep that night, and they all waited for tomorrow with trepidation, hoping for a miracle. All newspapers are ready to print the next day's newspaper with a reluctance to look forward to a good era that is about to pass away.

The New York Stock Exchange opened at 10 a.m. sharp. The stock price was flat at the beginning of the session, and some stocks even rose slightly, but the volume was high. Someone suddenly sold 20,000 shares each of General Motors and Copper. Brokers usually do not sell large stocks as soon as the stock market opens, they will divide into several small sell orders, and choose to sell gradually when the trading is busy, in order not to attract the attention of buyers and cause the stock price to fall. In this way, the seller can sell the stock at a better price. Affected by yesterday's market, many people are also ready to sell stocks at any time, they are just waiting for a favorable moment. But the sell-off of these two large orders has made them more and more noisy. Then someone threw out a whole bunch of other stocks: 15,000 shares of Sinclair Petroleum, 13,000 shares of Hewlett-Packard, and so on. The stock price fell rapidly and soon broke through the psychological barrier of 300 points.

More and more people are desperate to sell their stocks, leading to even greater panic. Since a large number of margin speculators did not replenish their accounts, brokers had to forcibly sell the shares of these speculators to repay the loans in order to avoid losses, thus triggering a huge amount of "passive selling". The consequence of suppressing the stock price is that more margin accounts are forced to liquidate, followed by more "passive surname selling", and the cycle of evil surnames appears. At this time, the automatic quotation machine also came to join in the fun. There is a lag of about 1 hour until noon, and about 2 hours at the end of the afternoon.

In this way, when the stock market plummets, investors have no idea what the price of their stock is now, let alone whether they have gone bankrupt or are about to go bankrupt. This uncertainty greatly exacerbated the panic, and nervous breakdowns and heavily indebted speculators began to sell stocks frantically without considering the price. The Dow Jones fell to 272 at 11:30 p.m., down 33 points, or more than 10%. At this time, the stock market has completely lost its rational surname, and is completely at the mercy of blind and relentless panic. This is a veritable crash.

The agents howled and ripped off their collars in an attempt to keep up with the selling orders; Sightseers crowded Wall Quarter, watching the big bankers arrive in their limousines to the front of the Morgan Building, rumors of their mass suicide.

The crisis soon showed its breadth and depth. Falling incomes and unemployment were soon seen in a constant interaction, forcing the national economy into a downward channel. White-collar workers began to take pay cuts, and workers found dismissal notices in their pay bags. Cities are the first to feel the impact. The first symptoms are not exaggerated: delays in the purchase of a new car or the start of construction on a new home; Young couples hand over their apartments to go live with their parents; Less enjoyable travel and theatre visits; Cleaners, repairmen, and shoemakers have more business, while tailors and garmenters have less business.

Several harsher signs had already appeared, albeit on a modest scale. At the end of February 1930, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Chicago all witnessed small demonstrations by the unemployed. In the same month, the queue for relief in Bowardly District attracted 2,000 people a day. In March, Milwaukee opened the City Alms. As happened throughout the cycle of the Great Depression, the summer of 1930 brought relief. Fresher, more abundant and cheaper food, as well as the availability of clothing, fuel and shelters, make the problem less serious. But the onset of the winter of 1930-1931 began a more difficult period, with New York City allocating $1 million for direct relief and the Lloyd's Insurance Association in London announcing that it had for the first time sold "riot and civil unrest" insurance to American customers.

Outside the city, the harbingers of a crisis are less newsworthy. The peasants knew only the depression that followed the outbreak of the armistice boom, and even if their situation continued to deteriorate, they had the pessimistic satisfaction of the long-term condition. Smaller industrial towns, however, are reluctant to admit the fact that the hard times are, in the eyes of many citizens, either a fiasco for Manhattan gamblers or, just a state of mind. They are glad that their foundation is stronger. Although a quarter of the factory workers in Manci, Indiana—a medium-sized town for sociologists—lost their jobs by the end of 1930, the wealthy people of the neighborhood insisted until the end of 1931 that the Great Depression was "primarily something we read about in the newspapers." They still live on window dressing.

As ordinary citizens themselves can see, working capital and jobs are closely interlocked, and the years of depression are related to the lack of joints between them. What's happening on the income can be shown briefly. National income fell from $81 billion in 1929 to less than $68 billion in 1930, then plummeted to $53 billion in 1931 and bottomed out at $41 billion in 1932. Correspondingly, the valuation of the nation's wealth fell from $365 billion to $239 billion over this time span, a decline that represents a depreciation of real estate, capital, and goods. There are many brick-and-mortar factories across the country, all of which are rusting in idle and deserted. In total, 85,000 businesses went bankrupt in those three years, leaving $4.5 billion in debt and 5,000 banks stopped paying. Nine million savings accounts were written off, and wages were lost to more than $26 billion.

Many industrial enterprises and small businesses have even refused to pay lip service to their pleadings to maintain wages. The headwind of growing unemployment has led some department stores to pay employees as low as $5 to $10 a week. A survey of a group of girls working in Chicago showed that the vast majority were working for less than 25 cents an hour, and a quarter were under 10 cents. Garment workers, confectionery shop employees and cannery workers are among the most exploited classes. The salary of a first-rate stenographer in New York fell from $35 to $45 a week to $16. Domestic servants had to work for $10 a month (plus room and board). As usual, unskilled workers are at the forefront, followed by white-collar workers and technicians. The professional class felt the shock later, and while the salaries of teachers and pastors were cut or reduced to white slips, the business of other professional groups also declined rapidly.

Moving from lower incomes and reduced working capital to the other side of the coin, what you see is the unemployed. In April 1930, U.S. President Herbert Hoover ordered a door-to-door survey of unemployment, the first federal census of unemployment in U.S. history. In total, just over 3 million employable persons have been reported unemployed, compared with 45 million gainfully employed. But the tide rose quickly, and in January 1931, a special census conducted by the Commerce Department based on a sample showed that 6 million people were unemployed. By the end of the year, almost all the evaluators agreed: the number of unemployed had exceeded the 10 million mark, and in 1930 another four or five million were unemployed. Thanks to seasonal factors and local fluctuations in advance and retreat, the picture of the country often changes. The unemployed are often self-referential, and the idle men who drag their families with their families have to compete for any odd jobs that pay little. The depletion of savings and the loss of investments have forced the elderly to join in this frenzied search and be counted.

(To be continued)