The 1873 financial crisis and stock-market collapse in the United States and Europe was called the Panic of 1873.
The panic began in Vienna in May 1873 and spread to other European markets. In the United States, the failure of the banking firm Jay Cooke & Company in September caused the New York Stock Exchange to close temporarily. Jay Cooke had heavily promoted bonds for the Northern Pacific Railway, and railway speculation had become a major source of financial risk.
The resulting downturn contributed to a long period of weak prices, bankruptcies, and unemployment often called the Long Depression. In the United States, it lasted for much of the 1870s and into the 1880s, although historians differ about the exact end date and severity.
The Panic of 1873 is separate from the Panic of 1893, another major U.S. financial crisis linked to railroad failures and banking stress.