6 The Stock Market Crash—And After 
amounted to $6,125,000,000 and, during September 
alone, a total of $1,015,000,000 was added, while 
brokers’ loans rose by $670,000,000. During the 
catastrophic month of October the flood of new 
corporate offerings persisted to the extent of $757,- 
254,000, bringing new corporate issues for the first 
ten months of the year to $9,413,451,000, of which 
common stocks were $6,535,251,000. The financing 
by investment trusts and trading and holding com- 
panies absorbed $2,443,000,000 of the total new 
issues; the investment trust issues were, of course, a 
special type of “refunding” rather than new issues. 
It was largely this tremendous volume of new 
financing that projected the top-heavy market into 
the abyss. 
The Conference of Bankers 
On October 21st, with the market breaking wide 
open, the tape two hours late, and sellers of market 
leaders finding “air pockets” down which their offer- 
ings catapulted, leading bank executives gathered at 
the office of J. P. Morgan & Company. 
The conference included the heads of four of the 
greatest banks, representing in excess of $6,000,000,- 
000 of resources, namely, the National City, Chase 
National, the Bankers’ Trust and the Guaranty 
Trust. Later in the day representatives of thirty 
leading stock exchange houses met in conference. 
Mr. Lamont of the Morgan firm, spokesman for the 
gathering of bankers, stated that the break was a 
“technical” one, not based on anything fundamentally