The years were 1929 – 1939

• The Great Stock Market Crash occurs in 1929
• The movie Tarzan the Ape Man opens in 1932, starring Johnny Weissmuller
• Howard Hughes sets a new air record, flying from Los Angeles to New York City in about 7-1/2 hours
• War drums beat loudly in Europe; German invades Poland; World War II (WWII) begins in 1939

Meanwhile . . .

It was called The Great Depression and it still stands today as one of the bleakest economic periods that the United States – and the rest of the world – has ever experienced.

Historians date its beginnings to the American stock market crash of Oct. 29, 1929, “Black Tuesday,” and its end to the outbreak of hostilities in Europe that ignited World War II some 10 years later, on Sept. 1, 1939.

In between those years was a dramatic, worldwide economic downturn of enormous proportion, brought on by a tremendous disparity of wealth between the rich and the working class, overproduction of goods and an unhealthy dependency upon installment credit that unrealistically extended consumer reach.

When the stock market crashed, investors were crushed. And without financial investment, economies collapse. The crash broadly undermined economic confidence. The rich stopped spending and others stopped buying.

Devastating after-effects rippled across most industrialized countries. In the United States, thousands of banks closed between 1930-1933 as depositors, en masse, demanded their currency. A national bank holiday was called for several days by the Franklin Roosevelt administration as legislators worked to return solvency and public confidence to the nation’s banking system. Many banks never reopened.

International trade plummeted, personal incomes fell, tax revenues declined, the price of goods dropped and company profits tanked. New construction nearly stopped altogether. Farming, mining and logging were all hit hard. Crop prices were down anywhere from 40-60 percent. The wealthy lost personal fortunes, the middle class its savings, and the poor grew poorer still. Jobs, homes, savings – gone.

Unemployment surged and led to the formation of bread lines and soup kitchens along the streets of American cities. Later, massive federally funded public works programs were begun to try and get the nation moving again. But not until America and much of the rest of the world turned to a war-time footing did many of society’s economic problems dissipate.

It was against this backdrop that Diebold pondered its future, so tightly joined to the fate of the financial industry. Bank customers accounted for 85 percent of the company’s business then. By May 1932, only 152 men worked in the company factory serving only three or four-day weeks. Wages were cut by 15 percent and salaries by 10 percent to keep the business going. In July, another 10 percent wage cut went into effect. Product was selling at 25 percent discounts. And, still, the company was losing $15,000 to $35,000 a month.

Asset value declined from $3.5 million in 1928 to $1.6 million in 1933. At its low point during the depression, the few men who remained on the job would report for work on Mondays, clean up whatever work there was to be done in a couple of hours, then go home until the following Monday.

The depression era outlook appeared hopeless. But in an utterance that rekindled confidence and signaled a brighter day to come, then Board Chairman Harry K. Rex proclaimed, “I have made my money with the boys. I am willing to lose it with them if I must.”

A flicker of hope appeared when the company began producing a tear gas defensive system for banks to protect themselves from armed robbers. The flicker turned into a beam as Diebold made use of the 2,000 time lock movements it held in inventory and used them to create the delayed control time lock, combined with an alarm. Sales were good, particularly on the east coast.

The sun poked through again in 1930 when the company received a giant order from Kroger Foods for 5,600 cashguard chest units. The safes were cast steel units, encased in concrete, complete with a change fund compartment. The sky really turned blue again when Diebold received its armor-plate contracts from the U.S. Army in the mid 1930s, followed in 1941 by a huge, $500,000 order to produce 117,000 door frames and 21,000 steel doors for the Parkchester Apartments in the Bronx, New York, for a metropolitan housing project.

While the Depression moved into history, a world war was waiting in the wings.