1920 Read Online Free Page A

six years after the Panama Canal had opened, passersby might have noticed something unusual about the horse in front of the Morgan Bank, and not just that he was old, tired, and sagging: he was also extraordinarily calm despite the din around him. “Wall Street seemed to be one great construction site,” Yale University’s Beverly Gage reports in her definitive study of the day’s tragic occurence,
The Day Wall Street Exploded
. “Blasting and hammering echoed through the district’s canyons, and shipments of marble, wood and machinery blocked the already congested streets.” The new buildings would not just be plentiful, then; they would be elegant, made of the finest materials and designed by the finest architects in the world.
    It was more good economic news, of course. In fact, as the
Wall Street Journal
had reported the previous year, and as was still true, “Sales and re-sales of property in the Wall Street district are greater than ever before.”
    The horse, however, oblivious to real estate values, also seemed oblivious to the commotion around him, remaining still in its midst.
    As for the cart, the more it remained in place, the more it seemed out of place. The paint on the sides was peeling, the sideboards were warped, and the wheels were slightly misshapen, no longer perfect circles. Thecart might have been red; it might not have been. It might have had a sign on the side; it might not have. The sign might have advertised one of the great companies in all of American industry; it might have named a one-wagon firm. Few people would agree on details when it was time to ask about them.
    Regardless, the cart was not the kind of vehicle to be parked, however briefly, in front of a place like the Morgan Bank. There was something wrong with this picture. If only someone had noticed in time.
    As the morning’s end approached, there was no sign of rain, which the morning papers had predicted. The sky was clear, and the temperature, sixty-nine degrees at midday, also defied predictions; it was not supposed to be this warm. Humidity was virtually non-existent, almost perfect end-of-summer weather.
    Suddenly, the Trinity Church bells added to the noise, beginning to ring twelve times, as they did every day at noon. It was the signal for employees of the various financial institutions surrounding the church to begin their mad rush out of the buildings, hundreds of men and women on their way to eat and drink their lunches. Journalist Mark Sullivan writes that “the sidewalks were as usual thronged with stock-exchange traders, brokers, clerks, bank messengers, stenographers—all … jostling each other as they sought to make headway.”
    Some of them ran. The rest walked quickly, heels clicking on the sidewalks making a clatter so constant, it was like the sound of marimbas shaking. Most of the people had only a half-hour break, and by the time they got outside, the bells had almost finished striking; close to a minute of meal time was already gone.
    AS FOR THE FUEL THAT was needed to power America’s extraordinary growth, quantities seemed inexhaustible. When the nineteenth century came to a close, Philip McFarland points out, Thomas Edison’s “aggregation of ingenuity, imagination, and wealth adopted the corporate name General Electric,” properly suggestive of the company’s stature. McFarland also wrote that at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, Edison’s competitor, Westinghouse Electric, had “powered the unprecedented display of 92,000 incandescent lamps all simultaneously and safely alight,along with an electric sidewalk in motion and the first modern electric kitchen.”
    By 1920, the United States was able to electrify a family’s entire home: thirty-five percent of American homes, in fact. Ten years later, the figure had almost doubled. Similar growth was visible in the workplace, where industrial innovation became a