The Panic of 1873 began in Europe and helped trigger a long depression in the United States.
The crisis followed the Vienna Stock Exchange crash in May 1873 and the failure of the investment firm Jay Cooke & Company in the United States in September. Jay Cooke had heavily financed Northern Pacific Railway bonds, and its collapse damaged confidence in railroad securities and banking.
The resulting downturn is often called the Long Depression, although historians debate how closely that label fits different countries and periods. Railroad overbuilding, speculative investment, falling prices, and banking failures all contributed. It is not the same event as the Panic of 1893, which also involved railroad distress but occurred two decades later. The 1873 panic is especially important because it connected European financial instability with a major American contraction.