The 1873 financial panic that helped trigger the Long Depression was the Panic of 1873.
The crisis began in Austria-Hungary and spread to Germany and the United States. In the United States, the failure of the investment firm Jay Cooke & Company in September 1873 helped set off a banking panic and forced the New York Stock Exchange to close temporarily.
The panic followed years of railway speculation, excessive borrowing, and overbuilding. Falling railway profits undermined heavily financed companies and damaged banks that had lent to them. The resulting downturn became known in the United States as the Long Depression, although historians debate its exact dates and severity.
It is sometimes confused with the Panic of 1893, another major American financial crisis. The 1873 panic is especially notable because its effects extended across the Atlantic and because it marked a turning point in nineteenth-century financial history.