The “suicide wave” that followed the United States stock market crash of October 1929 is more legend than fact.
Conclusion
The "suicide wave" that supposedly followed the 1929 stock market crash is more legend than fact.
rephrase: the 1929 stock market crash didn't cause a big wave of suicides.
Evidence
October and November 1929 had comparatively low monthly suicide totals; only three other months were lower. The summer months, when the market was flourishing, had substantially higher monthly counts.
Evaluate
This is an Anti-Causal conclusion. As the defense lawyer, we're arguing that the stock market crash did cause a wave of suicides.
The author's saying,
Goal
We need to make some excuse for why the summer months had higher suicide rates, or make an excuse for why Oct / Nov had comparatively lower rates.
Or maybe we just need to argue that the wave of suicides caused by the crash wasn't immediate. It took a few months for economic desperation to set in, so we should really be looking at months like Dec / Jan to observe the wave of suicides.