It took nerves of steel and a fierce sense of conviction to stay aloof from the contagiously giddy investment atmosphere of the late 1920s, but Mr. Noyes, then financial editor of The New York Times, stood steadfast but alone in his unpopular views.
Ten months before the Crash, he warned of "reckless" speculation and continued to drum in the message--a bit too prematurely, some historians think--that a day of reckoning was at hand.
Mr. Noyes graduated from Amherst in 1883, covered the Panic of 1893, the speculative bubble of 1901 and even written the scholarly treatise, "The War Period of American Finance, 1908-25," but that guaranteed him no respect.
As he later wrote: "The speculative mania seemed by 1929 to have neither geographical nor social bounds. There were occasions, even in social conversation, when expression of disapproval or skepticism would provoke the same resentment as if the controversy had to do with politics or religion.
"It was not in all respects an agreeable task to point out in the Times what seemed to me the very visible signs of danger. Expression of such comment had to meet the denunciatory comment hat the writer was trying to discredit or stop American prosperity."