Today in Labor History October 24, 1929: The NY Stock Exchange lost 11% of its value in one of the most devastating stock market crashes in the history of the US. It marked the beginning of the Great Depression, which saw unemployment in the U.S. rise to 25% and as high as 33% in other countries. Farming communities were particularly hard hit, with crop prices falling by 60%. The depression coincided with the Dust Bowl, further exacerbating the loan defaults and suffering in the Midwest. Hundreds of thousands of Americans became homeless, and began congregating in shanty towns that were known as "Hoovervilles." In 1933, Congress passed the Glass–Steagall Act mandating a separation between commercial banks and investment banks, in hopes of averting another similar crash. However, there have since been two stock market crashes worse than Black Thursday: The Black Monday of October 19, 1987, when the Dow Jones fell 22.6%, and the Black Monday of March 16, 2020, when the stock market fell by 12.9%. Both saw bigger percentage drops than any single day of the 1929 crash.
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