unemployment and falling prices in the Great Depression were instead seen
through the lens of other narratives that were of epidemic proportions in the
1930s, the confidence narratives (chapter 10 above), the frugality narrative
(chapter 11 above), the technological unemployment narrative (chapter 13
above), and the 1929 stock market crash narrative (chapter 16 above).

Boycotts and Profiteers during the Great Depression of the
1930s
References to the 1920–21 depression began during the October 28–29, 1929,
stock market crash.28 The last big crisis always has a special place in people’s
minds, especially if it was the biggest crisis ever, because such stories rely on
people’s memories to enhance contagion. Though one narrative at the beginning
of the Great Depression held that the current situation was essentially a repeat of
the 1920–21 event, the larger Great Depression narrative had to differ in some
fundamental ways. The narrative of the 1920s emphasized the recent suffering
from World War I, but that narrative was less intense a decade later, in the 1930s.
However, the deflation observed was much the same. The consumer price
declines in 1920–21 looked like the sharpest ever. Because many people after
1929 expected prices to fall, as they had in 1920–21, they chose to delay their
purchases until the price decline was complete.
A month or so after the October 28–29, 1929, stock market crash, the news
paid much attention to the signs of weakening retail sales during the annual
Christmas shopping season in the United States. News articles described
Christmas buying as normal, but weak in luxury items. However, buying was
normal only because of price cutting, with the changes attributed to “the
psychological effects of the stock market crash.”29
Economists expected the contraction to be as short-lived as that of 1920–21,
which helps explain why President Hoover and others confidently stated in 1930
that the depression that had started in 1929 would soon be over. But the public
didn’t generally believe President Hoover. Near the bottom of the Great
Depression in 1932, the narrative persisted that consumer prices would
eventually fall to 1913 or 1914 levels, which would have meant another 20%
decline in prices beyond what we know was the bottom level of consumer prices,
in 1933.30 This narrative justified postponing purchases of consumption goods.
Catherine Hackett wrote in 1932:
I have read enough predictions by economists to convince me that my guess
is as good as anyone’s on the future trend of prices. A housewife plays the
falling commodity market just as an investor plays the falling stock market;
she sits tight and waits for prices to settle before buying anything but actual

necessities. But I do not need to be an economist to realize that if all the
twenty million housewives do that, business recovery will be indefinitely
delayed.31
This quote illustrates some important aspects of consumer behavior. Hackett
compares consumer behavior to the behavior of stock market speculators, who
do not trust experts and who put emotional energy into forming their own
personal forecasts for individual stock prices. She also notes the high contagion
of narratives about such speculation. Women must have been talking like
speculators, telling stories about some smart decisions and some mistakes with
their shopping successes and failures among the unpredictable variability of
consumer price changes. Even if the average shopper expected some
(nonnegative) inflation, the result could be a significant net decrease in
consumer spending if there was a higher contagion rate for emotionally laden
narratives about likely price declines.
It is curious that economists haven’t looked more at the testimonies of women
to understand buying patterns in the depressions of the 1920s and 1930s. Given
the sex roles of the era, in which men were likely to play the stock market and
women to manage the shopping, women must have been talking extensively
about strategizing their shopping based on their hunches. The men who wrote
the history attributed everything to important decisions made by male presidents,
bankers, and business leaders, but the critical decisions that brought on the
depression (that is, the postponement of purchases) may have come more from
women. In fact, in 1932, during the depths of the Great Depression, a Mrs.
Charles E. Foster reportedly told a women’s group:
One of the most effective weapons in the hands of American women today is
their tremendous purchasing power. We are told that they spend eighty-five
percent of the incomes of the United States. How could they better create
public opinion in favor of spending as usual than by setting the example
themselves?32
Meanwhile, like the depression of 1920–21, the Great Depression of the
1930s saw many boycotts: against German and Japanese goods, as well as
against goods associated with Jewish people. Germans began boycotting
Western goods. All of these boycotts must have had economic effects.