Long Depression
In the United States, economists typically refer to the Long Depression as the Depression of 1873–1879, kicked off by the Panic of 1873, and followed by the Panic of 1893, book-ending the entire period of the wider Long Depression. The National Bureau of Economic Research dates the contraction following the panic as lasting from October 1873 to March 1879. At 65 months, it is the longest-lasting contraction identified by the NBER, eclipsing the Great Depression's 43 months of contraction. In the United States, from 1873 to 1879, 18,000 businesses went bankrupt, including 89 railroads. Ten states and hundreds of banks went bankrupt. Unemployment peaked in 1878, long after the initial financial panic of 1873 had ended. Different sources peg the peak U.S. unemployment rate anywhere from 8.25% to 14%.
Bank run
Banking panics began in the Upper-South in November 1930, one year after the stock market crash, triggered by the collapse of a string of banks in Tennessee and Kentucky, which brought down their correspondent networks. In December, New York City experienced massive bank runs that were contained to the many branches of a single bank. Philadelphia was hit a week later by bank runs that affected several banks, but were successfully contained by quick action by the leading city banks and the Federal Reserve Bank. Withdrawals became worse after financial conglomerates in New York and Los Angeles failed in prominently-covered scandals. Much of the US Depression's economic damage was caused directly by bank runs, though Canada had no bank runs during this same era due to different banking regulations.
Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz argued that steady withdrawals from banks by nervous depositors ("hoarding") were inspired by news of the fall 1930 bank runs and forced banks to liquidate loans, which directly caused a decrease in the money supply, shrinking the economy. Bank runs continued to plague the United States for the next several years. Citywide runs hit Boston (Dec. 1931), Chicago (June 1931 and June 1932), Toledo (June 1931), and St. Louis (Jan. 1933), among others. Institutions put into place during the Depression have prevented runs on U.S. commercial banks since the 1930s, even under conditions such as the U.S. savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s.