Which 1873 financial panic helped trigger the period called the Long Depression?

The financial panic that helped trigger the period called the Long Depression was the Panic of 1873. It began with failures in railway finance and banking, especially in the United States and Europe, and contributed to a prolonged international downturn.

In the United States, the collapse of the investment firm Jay Cooke & Company in September 1873 was a major immediate shock. Jay Cooke had heavily promoted bonds for the Northern Pacific Railway, and doubts about railway profitability made investors withdraw funds. The New York Stock Exchange closed temporarily for the first time in its history, remaining shut for ten days.

The term Long Depression is used for the extended period of weak prices, business failures, and slow growth that followed. Its duration and severity differed by country, so it was not a uniform worldwide depression in the same sense as the 1930s Great Depression. The panic is also called the Great Depression in some older sources.