Heather Cox Richardson - echoes from the Republican financial disaster in 1929 into the 30s

[erronis]

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-28-2025

Sounds like a repeat performance with even some of the Mellon family members having leading roles.

In the election of 1920, Americans handed a landslide victory to the Republicans and their presidential candidate Warren G. Harding, giving them control of both Congress and the White House. After the moralizing of the Progressive Era and the horrors of World War I and the Spanish flu epidemic that followed it, Americans looked forward to an era of “normalcy.”

Once in charge, Republicans rejected the Progressive Era notion that the government should regulate business and protect workers and consumers. Instead they turned the government over to businessmen, believing they alone truly knew what was best for the country.

Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon—one of the richest men in America—cut taxes on the wealthy to spur investment in industry. He also gave rebates and tax abatements: between 1921 and 1929 he returned $3.5 billion to wealthy men.

. . .

Black Tuesday began a slide that seemingly would not end. Within two years, manufacturing output dropped to levels lower than those of 1913. The production of pig iron fell to what it had been in the 1890s. Foreign trade fell from $10 billion to $3 billion. The price of wheat fell from $1.05 a bushel to 39 cents; corn dropped from 81 cents a bushel to 33 cents or lower; cotton fell from 17 to 6 cents a pound. Prices dropped so low that selling crops meant taking a loss, so struggling farmers simply let them rot in the fields.

By 1932, over a million people in New York City were unemployed. By 1933 the number of unemployed across the nation rose to 13 million people—one out of every four American workers. Unable to afford rent or pay mortgages, people lived in shelters made of packing boxes.

Republican leaders blamed poor Americans for the Great Depression, saying they drained the economy because they refused to work hard enough. “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate,” Treasury Secretary Mellon told Hoover. “It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.”

. . .

[sop]

1. Get to work!

[Lovie777]

2. Rinse and repeat........................

[Deep State Witch]

3. Andrew W. Mellon

My Alma Mater, Chatham University, uses Mellon's former home as their student center/administrative offices. In my opinion, that's the only good thing that old Andy did was to give his home to the college.

[Mr.Bee]

4. The Only Way Out

Is a 90% tax on income over a million dollars.