After the Great Crash came the decade long Great Depression. The economic environment that could generate such a massive crash was caused by massive speculation. Significant individual savings and an ingrained belief in the political and economic leaders of the time allowed the construction of such a huge stock market bubble. This bubble, when popped, proved the catalyst for the already incipient recession that the country was moving into and ushered in a new era of unemployment and poverty. Why the economy didn’t recover from the shock is another matter all together, and raises interesting questions regarding the nature of the 10-year depression that at times had as much as 25 percent of the labor force unemployed. On the whole, the great stock market crash can be more readily explained by the depression that followed it.
