258 The Stock Market Crash—And After 
eagerness to invest, and people had tried more and 
more to do business on borrowed money. 
Too many had speculated with margin accounts 
and had thus made the market vulnerable to bear 
raiders, despite the fact that margins were large. 
The raids caught thousands of small holders of 
stocks who had to sell at a sacrifice. After the 
general level had been reduced, a new crop of forced 
sales was harvested; and then, with still lower prices, 
the same thing happened, through successive layers, 
over and over again. 
This book has presented reasons for believing 
that the long bull market could not be explained by 
the simple formula that it “went up because it went 
up.” But the fall in the market was very largely 
due to that psychology by which it went down 
because it went down. It was a case of forced 
liquidation, of distress selling. 
At the end of the panic the prices in the stock 
market were absurdly low, inviting the entry of new 
funds as the general public in this country woke up 
to the fact that the Stock Exchange presented one 
of the most wonderful bargain-counters ever known 
to investors. 
Rich Nations Suffer Crises 
M. Clement Juglar, the French financial writer, 
says in Des Crises Commerciales (1889, pages 44- 
45): “Paradoxical as it may seem, the riches of 
nations can be measured by the violence of the 
crises which they experience.” Similarly, in his book,