260 The Stock Market Crash—And After 
abnormal swelling of brokers’ loans. People who 
were eager to profit went into debt for this purpose, 
erecting a great credit structure more topheavy than 
had previously been erected. Mr. Carl Snyder is 
right in saying that the structure was a house of 
cards. But this house of cards was built on a solid 
mountain, the height of which dwarfed the house 
of cards on its top. 
After the tremendous fall in the stock market it 
has become the fashion to decry the phrase “the 
new era,” which so many were using and believing 
in. That phrase may perhaps be exaggerated in its 
implications. Mr. Snyder has pointed out that the 
general rate of growth of production has been fairly 
constant over long periods, and that it was inter- 
rupted by diminishment in the rate of production 
per worket during the war and immediately after 
the war. But from 1899 to 1922, the product per 
worker hardly increased at all, and since 1922 it 
has increased in a steeply ascending line to the high- 
est rate of production known in history. For this 
reason I believe that the Hoover Committee on 
Recent Economic Changes was right when it reported 
that “production per man hour of effort has risen to 
new heights,” with “higher per capita income in 
1922-1927 than ever before.” 
Even a slightly increased “tempo” of production 
finds a great magnification in the stock market. That 
is because, as pointed out in the chapter on “The 
Flight from Bonds to Stocks,” the rate of rise of 
common stocks is much faster than that of fixed or