The Panic of 1893 followed the collapse of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad.
The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad entered receivership in February 1893 after financial problems linked to excessive debt and railroad overexpansion. The failure damaged confidence in U.S. finance. Later that year, the National Cordage Company also collapsed, helping turn financial stress into a broad panic.
Banks failed, credit contracted, and unemployment rose sharply. The crisis became one of the most severe economic downturns in nineteenth-century United States history. It also placed heavy pressure on the government’s gold reserves and intensified political arguments over monetary policy.
The panic is sometimes confused with the Panic of 1873 or the Panic of 1907 because all involved railroad speculation and banking instability. The 1893 crisis was especially important in the political rise of the free-silver movement and William Jennings Bryan’s campaign for a different monetary system.