Seventy years ago, America's 12-year Great Depression began with
a crash. The bottom fell out of the stock market on October 24,
1929, signaling the start of the longest and deepest economic
decline in the nation's history. Everyone today wants to know if
it could ever happen again.  "Black Thursday," as October 24 was
called, shook Michigan harder than almost any other state.
Stocks of auto and mining companies were hammered. Auto
production in 1929 reached an all-time high of slightly more
than five million vehicles, then quickly slumped by two million
in 1930. By 1932, near the deepest point of the Depression, they
had fallen by another two million to just 1,331,860—down an
astonishing 75 percent from the 1929 peak.  For the most part,
economists now know that the stock market did not cause the 1929
crash. It was itself a symptom of the Federal Reserve System's
wildly erratic shifts in the nation's money supply.  Smaller
auto companies, especially those outside of Michigan,
disappeared by the dozens in the