The Crash of 1929: New York In Crisis

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Society & Culture, History, Documentary, Places & Travel

4.8 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 1 September 2017

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

EPISODE 235 Something so giddy and wild as New York City in the Jazz Age would have to burn out at some point but nobody expected the double catastrophe of a paralyzing financial crash and a wide-ranging government corruption scandal. Mayor Jimmy Walker, in a race for a second term against a rising congressman named Fiorello La Guardia, might have had a few cocktails at the Central Park Casino after hearing of the pandemonium on Wall Street in late October 1929. The irresponsible speculation fueling the stock market of the Roaring 20's suddenly fell apart, turning princes into paupers overnight. Rumors spread among gathering crowds in front of the New York Stock Exchange of distraught traders throwing themselves out windows. And yet a more immediately crisis was awaiting the party mayor of New York -- the investigations of Judge Samuel Seabury, steering a crackdown authorized by governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt to rid New York City of its deep-ceded, Tammany Hall-fueled corruption. With the American economy in free fall and hundreds of New York politicians, police officers and judges falling to corruption revelations, the world needed a drink! Counting down to the last days of Prohibition.... PLUS: The fate of the fabulous Texas Guinan, the movie star turned Prohibition hostess who hit the road with a bawdy new burlesque -- that led to a tragic end. This is the final part of our three-part NEW YORK IN THE JAZZ AGE podcast series. Check out our two prior episode #233 The Roaring '20s: The King of the Jazz Age and #234 Queen of the Speakeasies: A Tale of Prohibition New York boweryboyshistory.com Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Bowry Boys Episode 235, the Wall Street Crash of 1929, New York City in crisis.
0:08.1	Hey, it's The Bowry Boys!
0:09.7	Hey!
0:11.0	Support for The Bowry Boys is provided by our listeners.
0:14.4	Join us for as little as $1 a month by visiting patreon.com slash Bowry Boys.
0:23.4	Hi there, welcome to The Bowry Boys. This is Greg Young.
0:26.0	And this is Tom Myers.
0:27.6	And we are here with Part 3, the final part of our summer series on the roaring 20s.
0:33.2	We made it Greg. We made it. We have already this summer or this month covered the wild
0:38.2	politics at City Hall with a story of Jimmy Walker.
0:42.2	Then we ducked into the speakeasy scene and examined the causes and implications of prohibition
0:48.6	in New York City, with of course on the arm of our pearl draped hostess extraordinaire,
0:55.4	Texas Geinen.
0:57.1	So those are the last two episodes. If you have missed either of those, we certainly recommend
1:02.6	listening to those as soon as you can. Because now here we are for episode 3, worked up in a frenzy.
1:08.7	At the end of the decade, the city is bumping and the money is flowing.
1:13.2	Oh yes, there's money everywhere all over the city. In fact, another aspect of the 20s that we've
1:19.7	been alluding to is all the fast cash that fueled this boom in the first place.
1:25.0	Right. Because during the 1920s, for the first time really in American history, seemingly everyone
1:31.2	had started investing on Wall Street. Even banks were loaning cash to investors to invest in the
1:37.8	market, which was driving the market higher and higher and creating great fortunes and a major
1:43.8	financial bubble, which of course would pop in late 1929, when the market that made the economy
	...

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