World War I had marked a break in business as usual within the American mathematical research community. In its aftermath, there was a strong sense of entering into "a new era in the development of our science." And then the stock market crashed. Would it be possible in such newly straitened times to sustain into the 1930s the momentum that American mathematicians had managed to build in the 1920s? This talk will explore the contours of an answer to that question. Speaker(s): Karen Parshall (University of Virginia)