The banker who caused the 1929 stock crash
Around noon on one of the worst days in the history of Wall Street, Charles E. Mitchell hurried up the steps of the House of Morgan, a two-story gray building across from the New York Stock Exchange.
It was Oct. 24, 1929, and disaster had struck. When the market opened, stocks plummeted so fast the exchange’s ticker tape couldn’t keep up with the frenzy.
The news was particularly dismaying to Mitchell. Renowned as the “ideal modern banking executive,” he had reshaped the very idea of American banking as head of National City Bank and helped fuel the 1920s bull market, which was now in jeopardy.
Inside the House of Morgan, Mitchell and bankers J.P. Morgan Jr., Thomas Lamont, and Albert Wiggin decided to go on a stock-buying spree to inject confidence into investors. The momentum spread at the exchange and, miraculously, the market stabilized.
But that day was Black Thursday, and the next week brought Black Monday and Black Tuesday, the defining days of the 1929 stock crash, an event that signaled the beginning of the Great Depression.
