The first major U.S. stock-market panic of the 20th century was the Panic of 1907.
The crisis began after an attempt to corner the stock of United Copper Company failed in October 1907. Depositors then rushed to withdraw money from banks and trust companies connected to the speculators. The panic spread through New York’s financial system and threatened wider economic disruption.
J. Pierpont Morgan organized emergency lending and persuaded financiers to support vulnerable institutions. The episode showed that the United States lacked a permanent central bank capable of acting as a lender of last resort. That institutional weakness helped inspire the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913.
The Panic of 1907 is sometimes confused with the Panic of 1893, which was an earlier and severe U.S. financial crisis. It also differed from the 1929 Wall Street Crash because it centered heavily on bank runs and trust-company failures rather than a single dramatic collapse in share prices.