"Cities obeyed the impersonal law of progress..cities expanded relentlessly year by year; fortunes grew larger; more and more automobiles appeared in the streets; people were wiser and better read than their ancestors – eventually, by automatic stages, we should reach an intolerable utopia of dull citizens, without crime or suffering or drama." - Malcolm Cowley.
In America in the 1920s, there was the illusion of prosperity. Everyone was getting in on it, and there was the very real feeling of having to keep up, or you were a total loser. It didn't help that there were success stories seemingly everywhere. When Ladies Home Journal prints the article 'Everybody ought to be rich", by Jakob Ruskob (in January 1929, just when everybody still in the game was about to lose all their money), you know that the greed has gotten to everybody. No wonder it was called the great depression – for a decade, everyone's hopes were risen, and then brought crashing down. For many, they must have taken it as a sign of personal failure.
Back in the '80s, there was minor obsession with stocks and shares, but this was nothing compared to the 1920s, when it became incredibly fashionable; shares have always been seen as easy money, and never more so than in the '20s. Really bad songs were lapped up (gramaphones, a sign of the times), lucky investors were watched like hawks by the public. The crooked ones weren't, they were too busy manipulating the prices from behind the scenes. A few rich guys got absurdly rich, everything collapsed, people starved, there was global social unrest, and some of the key figures played a huge role in dealing with the economic aftermath.
I know that it's a cliche that should be avoided at all costs, but history really does repeat itself. On the one hand, this is very depressing. On the other hand, a good historian can see through the mania that's happening around them.
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