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Like an earthquake, the stock market crash of October, 1929 cracked startlingly across the United States, the herald of a crisis that was to shake the American way of life to its foundations.  The events of the ensuing decade opened a fissure across the landscape of American history no less gaping that that opened by the volley on Lexington Common in April 1775 or by the bombardment of Sumter on another April four score and six years later.
-David M. Kennedy,  Freedom From Fear:  The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945