During the Great Depression...

To set Wilford's journals in their proper historical framework, we quote from History's Timeline: "A great financial crisis swept the world in the early 1930's, causing appalling unemployment. It was triggered off in October 1929 by the New York stock market 'crash'...The effect of the selling was that many lost all their money, banks and businesses closed, and by the end of 1931 more than 12 million Americans were out of work...Drastic government intervention in the United States helped gradually to restore business confidence, and the world's economies were recovering by the late 1930's."