The Great Depression of 1929 was not the first economic crash in the U.S., but it was the most sweeping and some of its effects continue to resonate. The 1929 stock market crash on “Black Friday,” Oct. 29, 1929, is often thought of as starting the Great Depression, but in fact it was a symptom of larger problems stretching back to the early 1920s. By the mid-1920s, the farming regions of the West began to suffer economically, and in the latter part of the “Roaring Twenties” U.S. industry wildly overexpanded. The banking industry extended far too many high-risk loans, and many corporations chose to make profits by manipulating stock prices rather than increasing bottom-line profits. These factors and others combined, adding a thunderous resonance to the crash. People everywhere felt the effects (including in small, remote communities like Monroe, Massachusetts, in the state’s northwest corner, where twenty workers at Deerfield Glassine company were fired in July 1930 after striking to protest wage cuts). By mid-1932, millions had lost their jobs. Banks were in collapse, and towns, cities, and states were faced with unprecedented unemployment and mass bankruptcy. In the 1932 presidential election campaign, Democratic challenger Franklin D. Roosevelt successfully tarred Republican President Herbert Hoover as being indifferent to people’s suffering. When the newly-elected Roosevelt took office in January 1933, he instituted his New Deal, a dramatic reorganization of government priorities and outlays. The government’s efforts improved the depression’s harshest aspects. Hardships still remained, though, as Clara Alquist of Deerfield, Massachusetts, recorded in her diary for November 16, 1934, shown here. She described herself as “a poor ant that works all day” and lamented having to stay home from church, as she couldn’t afford to give her “halfadollar” coin but had no other, smaller coin to give. It was not until the country mobilized for war in 1940 that it shook off the last, lingering signs of the Great Depression.