What Was Safe Money During The Depression
When the Swell Depression hit its lowest ebb in 1933, the unemployment rate exceeded 20 percent and America's gross domestic product had plummeted past 30 percent. Not everyone, however, lost money during the worst economic downturn in American history.
Business titans such every bit William Boeing and Walter Chrysler actually grew their fortunes during the Great Depression. Equally the aviation manufacture took flying in the 1930s with the advent of regular passenger service, Boeing built a vertically integrated empire that manufactured aircraft and operated airlines until the federal authorities forced its breakup.
Carmaker Chrysler responded to the fiscal freefall by cutting costs, boosting efficiency and improving rider condolement in his visitor'due south vehicles. While sales of expensive cars plunged, those of Chrysler'south cheaper Plymouth brand soared. According toAutomotive News, Chrysler's market share rose from 9 percent in 1929 to 24 percentage in 1933 every bit it surpassed Ford as America'southward second largest motorcar visitor.
Thanks to shrewd investments, fortuitous timing and entrepreneurial vision, the following Americans besides profited during the Smashing Low.
Joseph Kennedy, Sr.: Stocks, Movies and Spirits
A portrait of the Kennedy family, pictured in Hyannis, Massachusetts, c. 1930s. Seated from left, Robert Kennedy, Edward Kennedy, Joseph P Kennedy Sr, Eunice Kennedy, Rosemary Kennedy, and Kathleen Kennedy; standing from left, Joseph P Kennedy Jr, John F Kennedy, Rose Kennedy, Jean Kennedy, and Patricia Kennedy.
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Joseph Kennedy, Sr. made millions in the unregulated stock market of the 1920s, in part due to insider trading and market manipulation. The Kennedy family unit patriarch and then used his Wall Street earnings to become a movie mogul. Later purchasing a failing Hollywood studio in 1926, he consolidated pic companies that churned out low-upkeep movies, made them more efficient and sold them for big profits. Past the time he exited Hollywood in 1931, Kennedy had earned $v million in the film industry, according to the National Park Service.
While most investors watched their fortunes evaporate during the 1929 stock market crash, Kennedy emerged from it wealthier than e'er. Believing Wall Street to be overvalued, he sold most of his stock holdings before the crash and made even more money past selling short, betting on stock prices to autumn.
Kennedy biographer David Nasaw said he institute no truth to the rumors that the 35th president's father was a bootlegger during Prohibition. However, the lucrative contract Kennedy signed in Prohibition's waning days to be the sole American importer of Scotch whiskey and gin produced by British distillers such as Dewar's and Gordon'south contributed to the growth of Kennedy'southward wealth from $iv million in 1929 to $180 million by 1935.
J. Paul Getty: Oil Stocks and Existent Manor
Jean Paul Getty, pictured 1939.
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Oil tycoon J. Paul Getty abided by a uncomplicated business organisation formula: "Buy when everyone else is selling, and hold on until anybody else is buying." Having already made his first 1000000 dollars in the oil industry more than than a decade earlier, Getty skipped a commemoration of his parents' golden wedding anniversary during the 1929 stock market crash to commiserate with Wall Street brokers, investors and speculators.
With companies desperate for cash, Getty took what he had learned and acquired undervalued oil stocks and real estate. "It is the opportunity of a lifetime to get oil companies for practically nothing," he wrote. Aiming to build an oil empire to rival that of John D. Rockefeller, Getty purchased Pacific Western Oil Visitor and shares of Tide Water Associated Oil Visitor, the land's ninth-largest oil company. Five years after buying Tide H2o shares for $2.12, they were worth more than than $20.
Mae West: Movie Stardom
Paramount starMae West in her Hollywood dwelling house, c. 1930.
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As demand for inexpensive amusement and interest in new talking pictures kept the movie business afloat during the Great Depression, Mae W emerged equally 1 of the era'southward biggest box-office stars. Earlier jumping to the silvery screen in 1932 at the age of 39, Westward starred in vaudeville and burlesque shows and Broadway plays that she wrote.
Paramount Studios, which was teetering on the border of bankruptcy, signed West to star in the 1933 filmShe Done Him Incorrect, an accommodation of her hit Broadway playDiamond Lil. The flick'southward success changed Paramount'south fortunes—also as Due west'due south. By the mid-1930s, she earned $300,000 per function and $100,000 per screenplay, making her Hollywood's highest-paid entertainer and the country's highest-paid woman. West's strong female leads that combined wit, grit and sexuality connected with her audiences, merely her star faded when her performances proved too risqué for Hollywood censors in the latter 1930s.
Charles Clinton Spaulding: Insurance
During the Great Depression, Charles Clinton Spaulding presided over America's largest Black-owned business: the N Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. Founded in 1898, the company struggled to survive before hiring Spaulding. Utilizing his sales and marketing expertise, the company expanded into burn insurance, banking and mortgage lines. The company, which operated out of rented desk space in the corner of a physician'south part when Spaulding started, grew into a six-story office building that anchored "Blackness Wall Street" in Durham, North Carolina.
As African Americans suffered the highest unemployment rates during the Smashing Depression, Spaulding was widely seen as the state's leading Black businessman. He oversaw his company's expansion into Pennsylvania while advising President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the composition of his "Blackness Cabinet." According toThe Consummate Encyclopedia of African American History, "Spaulding was the living blackness symbol of the New South."
Michael Cullen: Groceries
Exterior view of a King Kullen grocery store, in Rockville Middle, Long Island, New York, c. 1940s.
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Prior to the 1930s, consumers shopped for groceries in corner stores with express inventories of items that clerks retrieved from shelves. When the Groovy Depression struck, Kroger Grocery employee Michael Cullen proposed that the company launch self-service stores with big selections, discount prices and parking lots to cater to the growing number of automobiles. "I would convince the public that I would be able to save them from $1 to $3 on their food bills," he wrote. "I would be the 'miracle human' of the grocery business organization."
When Kroger ignored his concern plan, Cullen in 1930 opened what the The Food Industry Association considers America'due south first supermarket in the New York City borough of Queens. Advertising itself as "The World'south Greatest Toll Wrecker," King Kullen appealed to cost-conscious shoppers with its small markups and large inventory.
In 1933, Cullen purchased a competing Queens grocery store from Fred Trump, father of President Donald Trump, who used the money to bolster his real estate investments. Past the time of Cullen's death in 1936, King Kullen had 15 locations and a loyal customer base of operations. Publix Super Markets also sprouted during the Great Depression when George Jenkins opened his beginning store in Winter Haven, Florida, in 1930. According toSupermarket News, the number of American supermarkets grew from 300 in 1932 to 4,500 by 1939.
Howard Hughes: Oil, Aviation, Movies
Howard Hughes in his pilot'southward uniform, c. 1932.
Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
Howard Hughes was a millionaire by the age of 18 after inheriting a fortune from his father, who had developed a drill chip that revolutionized the oil industry. Before he became known as an aviator, Hughes grew his wealth as a Hollywood picture show producer. His 1927 filmTen Arabian Knights earned Lewis Milestone an Oscar every bit all-time comedy director at the inaugural Academy Awards. He spent upward of $4 1000000 to produce 1930'sHell's Angels, at the fourth dimension the most expensive movie ever fabricated, and followed that with box-office hitsThe Front Page andScarface.
In the midst of the Neat Depression, he turned his attention to aviation and in 1932 formed the Hughes Aircraft Company, which became one of the world's most profitable aircraft manufacturers. His company converted military aircraft into air racers, and Hughes garnered headlines in the 1930s by setting new speed records. In 1936, he bankrupt the transcontinental speed tape by flying from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey, in under x hours, and ii years later, he joined a crew that flew around the globe in a tape 91 hours.
This originally appeared at history.com
Source: https://factsandhistory.com/6-people-who-made-big-money-during-the-great-depression/
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