42 The Stock Market Crash—And After 
prices too high or that it materially diminished the 
availability of credit in commercial and industrial 
business, as that investors were overextending them- 
selves on margins. True, overextension of credit 
raised prices somewhat. Without any overextension, 
however, such prices might still have risen nearly 
though not quite so high. 
[t should be added that up to the time of the 
panic there had been no great complaint from busi- 
ness circles on account of lack of credits, except in 
the case of the building industry. It has seemed 
to me an open question how far such building reces- 
sion as we have had in 1929 was caused by curtail- 
ment of credits, and how far by overbuilding. But 
funds had been withdrawn from building and loan 
associations and from banks and other sources of 
mortgage loans, attracted by the higher rates of 
call and time loans for financing stock exchange 
transactions. Even so, it would seem that means 
might have been devised, from the ample credit 
resources of the Federal Reserve System, to accom- 
modate the building industry as well as the stock 
market without curtailing the upward course of 
stock prices. The efforts of the Federal Reserve 
System to make money dear in the stock market 
tended to make it dear in the real estate market as 
well, despite their desire to avoid such effects. 
Stock Market Loans by Others Than Banks 
The American Bankers’ Association in its resolu- 
ion demanding an inquiry into the whole subject of