The Long Depression began in 1873 after the Vienna Stock Exchange crash.
The Vienna crash occurred in May 1873 and is commonly called the Gründerkrach. It followed a period of speculative investment and rapid railway expansion in Austria-Hungary. When confidence broke, share prices collapsed and the financial shock spread across Europe.
The crisis soon reached the United States, where the failure of the banking firm Jay Cooke & Company in September 1873 helped trigger a major panic. The New York Stock Exchange closed temporarily, and the disruption contributed to a prolonged worldwide downturn.
Historians debate whether the period should be described as a depression because prices often fell while industrial output continued to grow in some regions. The term Long Depression distinguishes it from the more severe Great Depression of the 1930s. It lasted roughly until 1879 in Britain and into the 1890s in parts of Europe and North America.