Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : AMAT Off-Topic Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: michael97123 who wrote (511)	12/10/2001 8:21:16 PM
From: Gottfried	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 786

Mike, little known NYC history from the IEEE monthly 'The Institute'... spectrum.ieee.org 1920 Wall Street Bombing BY MICHAEL N. GESELOWITZ IEEE History Center Director In the fall of 1920, the United States was in transition. It had emerged from World War I as a global military and economic power. The economy was booming largely due to American technological innovation superiority. Telecommunication was thriving. The telegraph linked the country internally and globally, and the number of telephones exceeded 10 million, up more than 10-fold from a decade earlier. Radio -- developed as a point-to-point communication 20 years earlier by Guglielmo Marconi -- was poised to become the first broadcast mass medium. The AC power grid practically exploded, going from almost nothing to 44 billion kilowatt hours generated annually in little more than two decades. The airplane promised to revolutionize long-distance transportation. Henry Ford already transformed local transportation and the domestic economy by pioneering new mass production techniques. Progressive social forces changed life as well. In 1920, U.S. women were given the right to vote and Prohibition was the law of the land. Workers from all over the world, including many engineers, came to the United States for the economic and political promise of the "New World." However, clouds were on the horizon. The economy began to soften, and it was clear that the war boom disproportionately benefited the wealthy. A foreign, fundamentalist ideology -- communism -- had its first successful revolution in Russia and was seeking to expand. This ideology found some resonance among the U.S. immigrant community. The declining economy also led to rising unemployment and a backlash against immigrant labor. In 1920, the arrest of the immigrant political radicals Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti became the cause celebre in the "First Red Scare." The heated 1920 U.S. presidential election (the first broadcast of election returns from radio station KDKA in Pittsburgh -- an IEEE Milestone), hinged on the Republicans' promised "return to normalcy." Despite these problems, New York City was thriving. It was a center of industry and Wall Street, armed with Thomas Edison's stock ticker, continued its march to become the world's financial capital. Around noon on 16 Sept. 1920, a horse-drawn wagon stopped in front of the J.P. Morgan & Co. building, a leading bank on Wall Street, and exploded. More than 30 people were killed and hundreds were injured. Windows 80 meters away were shattered. Damage was estimated at US$2 million. Although investigators visited more than 5,000 stables in the city, they did not find any evidence and no one was charged with the crime. Many historians, following journalists of the day, believe it was the work of Italian anarchist Luigi Galleani's followers. It was the worst terrorist act on U.S. soil up to that time. Clean-up crews worked through the night, and The New York Times' early edition boasted that by that afternoon, Wall Street would get back to "business as usual." Republican Warren G. Harding won the election two weeks later. The stock market initially declined, and the U.S. economy went into a brief recession the next year, which may have happened regardless of the attack. The market recovered and then went into an economic boom known as "The Roaring Twenties." No monument was erected for the victims, but Wall Street was rebuilt. Curiously, J.P. Morgan and his successors never repaired the external damage to the building, which can be seen by tourists today.