I’m working on a project that requires 16 stories of companies that survived the Great Depression( like yo-yos!) and are still around today. I’ve been looking on the internet but can’t seem to find any. I’ve looked under “Great Depression economic stories”, “GD success stories” and found nothing. Does anyone have any advice as to what I’m doing wrong? What keywords should I use? 
How about “companies survived Great Depression”?
I’d do this a little differently – getting a list of publicly-traded companies for 1929, then going through it to see which companies are still around. I used to work for one – Zenith Radio – which started the year as the lowest priced stock on the NYSE and ended the year as the highest-priced stock. (Radio was hot that year, despite the Depression.)
Unfortunately Zenith was purchased by Lucky-Goldstar, a Korean company, several years ago. Some companies sure to be on the list are:
Auto companies: Chrysler, Ford, GM
Electronics: RCA, General Electric, AT&T
Utilities: Commonwealth Edison, Consolidated Edison
Oil: the Standard Oil spinoffs, all renamed as Exxon (formerly Esso); Sohio (now part of BP); Amoco (formerly Standard Oil of Indiana); etc.
Retailers: JC Penney, Sears, Woolworth’s
Aha, this all makes much sense. Thank you for your help. I am still new to internet researching.
Sam –
The starting portion I’d try off the 'Net. I’d head over to a library with a NY Times archive and go to the business pages of some 1929 newspaper (earlier than October, 1929) for listed companies.
Several things to be wary of:
- companies may have entered bankruptcy one or more times since 1929.
- name changes and spin offs. International Harvester was originally called McCormick Harvesting Machine company and in later years was purchased by J.I. Case (a unit of Tenneco). It’s one of dozens of examples.
You might even find a rare case of a name that you know having been resurrected by a modern, unrelated corporation. One example might be Packard-Bell, an old radio company that was defunct. Then an electronics distributor in California made PCs under the Packard-Bell name starting in the 1980s.
Coca-Cola, Levis, Anheiser-Busch all spring to mind. I imagine that a railroad was around back then.
I heard that insurance companies made it through.
R.J. Reynolds?
Monopoly (and therefore Parker Bros.) was invented and inspired by the Great Depression, if that helps. Most Monopoly boards talk about that in the instructions, or it’s easy enough to find online.
Check out shipping. I know that Matson Navigation predates the depression. Not sure about American President Lines, but maybe.
are you just looking for companies started in 1929 or can they be earlier Wells Fargo its been around 150 years