12 The Stock Market Crash—And After 
vent the stock market panic from developing into 
industrial crisis and depression. 
From them all, from the President; from Thomas 
W. Lamont, of J. P. Morgan & Company, leader 
of the group of bankers meeting at the offices of the 
House of Morgan, whose powerful support was 
given to the rallying of the market; from Dr. Julius 
Klein, Assistant Secretary of Commerce, who an- 
nounced that the “stock market is not a major 
barometer of business”; from every outstanding 
leader competent to speak there came the reassuring 
note that the commercial structure of the nation con- 
tinued sound. By the banking group and other finan- 
cial leaders, including John D. Rockefeller and John 
D. Rockefeller, Jr., the level of stock prices was re- 
garded as having swung too low during the panic, 
and these rushed to the rescue of the market not only 
with words but with huge buying orders. But these 
orders arrived rather late to check the steep declines. 
The Record of November 
The sixty-day decline up to November 1 3th, when 
“bottom” was touched, was without parallel in the 
annals of Wall Street. There was the slaughter of 
prices of November 7th, when United States Steel 
opened off $7, General Electric off $6, Westinghouse 
off $9, American Telephone off $5.25, American and 
Foreign Power off $6, followed by a recovery and 
turnover of 7,878,000 shares, at the rate of more 
than 13,000,000 for a normal full-time session and