ABSTRACT
In order to validate our approach, we must look closely at major sectors of the American economy. Existing aggregate-level analyses act as if the Depression left all sectors equally prostrate. Even if a different approach were taken to the Depression, the different effects felt by different agents would seem a natural focus for study. 1 Yet these are virtually ignored. “The differential effects of the slump on regions, on industries, and on classes of income recipients, are but a few of the missing parts in the received scenario” (Bernstein, 1987:48). “Given the overwhelming importance of the Great Depression in the economic history of the United States, one might suspect the microeconomics of interwar unemployment to be old hat, but the opposite is true: the issues have scarcely been addressed” (Margo, 1987:327). Some of the lack of interest in disaggregation is due to the belief that a limited number of factors should be at work in any plausible explanation of the Depression. Brunner has criticized non-monetarists for coming up with a number of little factors to explain the autonomous fall in spending rather than one big one (see Warsh, 1984). While it is extreme to argue that there should only be one cause of the Great Depression, it is nevertheless true that a large number of independent causes would be unsatisfactory. We have outlined above an approach that can potentially explain much of the technological experience of the period. We have also suggested a rationale for market saturation. We will, in what follows, attempt to show that these forces were of key importance across sectors. We will not, though, refrain from pointing out other forces at work at the industry level which served to exacerbate the Depression experience.
