The U.S. financial crisis that followed the 1893 bankruptcy of Philadelphia and Reading Railroad was the Panic of 1893.
The railroad failure undermined confidence in heavily indebted rail companies and contributed to a broader run on banks. Investors sold securities, businesses failed, and unemployment rose sharply across the United States. The crisis became one of the deepest depressions in the country before the twentieth century.
The panic also placed pressure on the U.S. Treasury’s gold reserves. President Grover Cleveland later supported a controversial bond sale arranged with financier J. P. Morgan to replenish the reserve and calm financial markets.
The event is sometimes mixed up with the Panic of 1873, another railroad-centered crisis, or the Panic of 1907, which was resolved through private intervention led by Morgan. The Panic of 1893 was closely associated with the insolvency of railroads and weak banking confidence.