End of a World

It was a preposterously wonderful world. "I am firm in my belief," wrote Millionaire John J. Raskob in the Ladies' Home Journal for August 1929, "that anyone not only can be rich, but ought to be rich." All anybody needed to do, said Raskob, was save $15 a month, put it into "good common stocks." At the end of 20 years it would have swelled to $80,000 and be yielding $400 a month in income. It was such an easy way to get rich that messenger boys stopped to read the stock-tickers in offices, chauffeurs drove with ears...

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