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In October 1929, only weeks after Yale economist (and investment trust director) Irving Fisher publicly announced that "stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau," and virtually on the day that J. P. Morgan partner Thomas W. Lamont reassured President Herbert Hoover that "there is nothing in the present situation to suggest that the normal economic forces ... are not still operative and adequate," the New York Stock Exchange crashed.' Over the next few months the market continued dropping, and a general economic decline took hold.2 As sales plummeted, industry after industry laid off workers and cut wages. Farm and commodity prices tumbled, outpacing price declines in other parts of the economy. A tidal wave of bankruptcies engulfed businessmen, farmers, and a middle class that had only recently awakened to the joys of installment buying.