Beginning on New York’s Wall Street on October 29, 1929, which would come to be known as ‘Black Tuesday’, the Great Depression was the most intense and protracted global economic crisis of the twentieth century, ending with the outbreak of World War II in 1939. In the United States, ‘Black Tuesday’ saw the sale of 16 million shares, as catastrophic losses shook confidence in the laissez-faire capitalist system. In 1930 the effects of the American market crash spread worldwide; by 1932 there were 30 million unemployed in the industrial world, plunging millions into abject poverty.