Business & Finance: Bankers v. Panic

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Any person who once paid $50,000 for a hundred shares of Auburn Motors would have been lucky to get $15,000 for his stock on October 29th. Goldman-Sachs' famed Blue Ridge investment trust which was to share in the entire sweep of U. S. prosperity was sold at $3 per share. Dozens of stocks of huge companies sold for less than half of what somebody had once said they were worth. So nonsensical did all this seem that some brokers refused to sell out their customers even when technically they might have. But the awful expected began to happen when one brokerage house, John J. Bell & Co., was suspended. What failures loomed, none could say. Would the nightmare, to many tragically cruel, never end? As shades of Tuesday evening fell, it seemed again that the worst was past. A belated ticker recorded gains in significant stocks. New York Central was three points above Monday's close. Hysteria, it was hoped, had met its master in the Banking Power of the U. S., which appeared to have bought a good proportion of U. S. Industry.