Locator: 44553THEROARINGTWENTIES.
Note: The Great Gatsy was published April 10, 1925.
This might be as good a time as any to re-read a Reader's Digest version of the US economic boom, 1922 to 1929; and, then re-read The Great Gatsby (or watch the movie).
For me, one rendition of the Reader's Digest version of the US economic boom in the 20s:
The postwar recession that had rocked [William Randolph] Hearst's business empire and made life so difficult for [his accountant] Jim Moore, who had to pay the bills -- was as short-lived as it had been severe.
By 1922, the American economy had embarked upon an extraordinary seven-year growth cycle.
The business boom was stimulated by the beneficent tax policy that President Warren Harding's secretary of the treasury, the Pittsburgh industrialist Andrew Mellon, shepherded through a Republican-dominated Congress.
Maximum tax rates for individuals were reduced from a wartime high of 77 percent to 24 percent, excess profits taxes were abolished, and lower rates were set for capital gains. Hearst benefited additionally when Secretary Mellon's appointees at the Income Tax Bureau reduced his tax liabilities for the war by by $1,737,097.
Taking full advantage of the economic boom and Republican tax policies, Hearst went on a buying spree... two evening papers and a morning paper ... another evening paper in 1922 ... and then started three new dailies ...
Hearst, who never paid cash for anything, borrowed recklessly to make each of these purchases. by the end of 1922, he had exhausted his working capital to pay off existing debt obligations and was still a half million dollars short of meeting them all.
If you had not guessed, that was from The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst, David Nasaw, c.2000, p. 315.
