Brief Description

Using The Bond Buyer’s 1931 Directory, “Mapping Collapse” raises novel questions about how capitalism’s greatest crisis—the Great Depression—affected the municipal bond business.

Its dynamism operates at two scales. At one scale (cluster location), we see the national distribution of banking firms who participated in the business of municipal debt. At the city-level scale, each dot represents one firm (main- and/or branch-offices) listed in the 1931 Directory. At this level, users can also identify banking personnel, their professional titles, and, in some case, branch office locations and area of specialization. Users may move between these two scales. They may also scroll through the list of more than 800 individual entries of firms. 

 What this Map Reveals

For starters, this map reveals the density of municipal bond firms in the Northeast, and parts of the Midwest, and the dearth of such firms in middle America.

We can also begin to use these data points to tell a fuller story about the Great Depression. Each of the six ($) data points provides additional primary source information for the firms: Lane, Piper & Jaffray, Inc.; Carleton D. Beh Co.; Burns, Potter & Co.; Commerce Trust Company; Merchants Bank & Trust Co.; and the Atlantic National Company. Taken together, the Directory and additional primary sources reveal how, in absence of robust state and federal relief, cities and counties attempted to borrow from investment banks such as Carleton D. Beh of Des Moines, Iowa. Users may examine the Atlantic National Company’s balance sheet, read about the Merchants Bank & Trust’s attempts to help Mississippi “avert default,” or consider the efforts by the State of Arkansas to finance its highways.