The Panic of 1873 began after the failure of the Vienna stock exchange and helped start the Long Depression.
On May 9, 1873, the Vienna stock market crashed in an event known as the Gründerkrach. Speculative investment in railways, property, and industrial companies had expanded rapidly, especially in the years after the Franco-Prussian War. When confidence reversed, financial failures spread beyond Austria-Hungary.
The panic reached Germany and the United States, where the failure of the banking firm Jay Cooke & Company in September 1873 contributed to a suspension of trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The resulting downturn was international and lasted for years. It is commonly called the Long Depression, although the timing and severity differed among countries.