The 1873 financial crisis that began a prolonged worldwide market decline is commonly called the Panic of 1873.
The crisis followed the collapse of the investment bank Jay Cooke & Company in September 1873. The firm had heavily promoted bonds for the Northern Pacific Railway, and investors lost confidence when railway financing became difficult. The failure led to a run on banks and a suspension of trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
In the United States, the panic helped begin a long economic contraction often called the Long Depression. Financial distress also spread to Europe, where the downturn is frequently associated with the collapse of speculative railway and real-estate booms.
The event is not the same as the 1929 Wall Street crash. It was a nineteenth-century banking and investment crisis whose consequences lasted for years, with especially severe effects on railways, construction, and industrial finance.