The United States experienced the Panic of 1873 in 1873, after Jay Cooke & Company failed.
Jay Cooke & Company was a major American investment bank that had helped finance the Northern Pacific Railway. When confidence in the railway’s financing weakened, the firm could not meet its obligations and suspended operations on September 18, 1873.
The failure helped trigger a financial crisis in the United States. The New York Stock Exchange temporarily closed, credit contracted, and a long economic downturn followed. The panic was part of an international crisis that also affected Europe.
The event is sometimes remembered mainly as a railroad crash, but its consequences reached banks, investors, businesses, and workers. It also helped end the speculative boom associated with post-Civil War railroad expansion.