The financial panic that began with the failure of Jay Cooke & Company in 1873 was called the Panic of 1873.
Jay Cooke & Company, a major American investment bank, failed on September 18, 1873. Its collapse followed difficulties financing railroad expansion, especially after the Northern Pacific Railway faced financial trouble. The failure shook confidence in banks, railroads, and securities markets.
The panic helped end the period of rapid post-Civil War railroad expansion in the United States. The resulting depression, often called the Long Depression, was international and lasted for years, although historians differ over its exact duration and severity.
The event is sometimes linked narrowly to the New York financial market, but its effects extended across the Atlantic. Vienna’s stock-market crash earlier in 1873 had already signaled financial stress in Europe, while American railroad failures deepened the transatlantic downturn.