The Panic of 1873 was the U.S. financial crisis that followed the failure of the investment firm Jay Cooke and Company.
Jay Cooke and Company declared bankruptcy on September 18, 1873, after it could not sell enough bonds connected with the Northern Pacific Railway. The failure undermined confidence in railroads and helped trigger a broader market panic.
The New York Stock Exchange closed temporarily, and the crisis spread through banks, railroads, and industrial businesses. A prolonged downturn followed in the United States and Europe, commonly called the Long Depression.
The American panic formed part of an international financial crisis. In Europe, the Vienna stock-market crash of May 1873 was an important earlier shock. The events are therefore related but are not identical: one was a U.S. panic and the other an Austrian market crash.