Abstract

Being Right with Babson

This article presents the author's views on the researcher Roger W. Babson made his most famous prediction on Thursday, September 5, 1929, that a drop in stock prices of sixty to eighty points. It was not, of course, Babson's first prophecy, for his principal business for many years has been to read the future for business men. It was not, by some hundreds, his first statement on the future of stock prices. In fact, it was not, by some scores, even his first prediction that stock prices were going to decline. For some reason, however, the statement was given a most unusual amount of publicity for a Babson prediction. The telegraphic news services rushed it all over the country, and the newspapers shortly were giving it even more space than they normally accorded, statement by U.S. Secretary of Treasury Andrew William Mellon on the fundamental soundness of American business.