52 The Stock Market Crash—dAnd After 
In this remark Senator Nye was merely reflect- 
ing the impression of many in assuming that there 
was only so much credit to go around and that Wall 
Street was making money scarce and dear for busi- 
ness. Those who held this view ignored the fact 
that bank reserves were high and that the “tight 
money” policy of the Federal Reserve System might 
at any time have been revised. 
“Boom” Enthusiasm 
Senator Robinson of Arkansas declared, and with 
some real basis in fact, in a formal statement on 
October 30, 1929, that if the foundation of the 
belief of ruined investors was faith in the strong 
position of American industry, it was also true that 
“no less personalities than a former President of 
the United States, the Secretary of the Treasury, 
and the former Secretary of Commerce, now Presi- 
dent, contributed by unduly and repeated optimistic 
statements to the creation of enthusiastic if not 
frenzied ventures in stocks.” 
No doubt the “Coolidge boom" and the “Hoover 
boom” engendered such public enthusiasm, accom- 
panied as they were by repeated statements of the 
country’s prosperity and expected increases in pros- 
perity. These statements led thousands of investors 
into undue borrowings in order to realize the bene- 
fits of this prosperity for themselves. But I cannot 
entirely agree with Professor Jacob H. Hollander, 
of Johns Hopkins University, in his view, expressed 
before the Academy of Political Science in New