Long Depression
Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman, author of "A Monetary History of the United States", on the other hand, blamed this prolonged economic crisis on the imposition of a new gold standard, part of which he referred to by its traditional name, The Crime of 1873. This forced shift into a currency whose supply was limited by nature, unable to expand with demand, caused a series of economic and monetary contractions that plagued the entire period of the Long Depression. Murray Rothbard, in his book "History of Money and Banking of the United States", argues that the long depression was only a misunderstood recession since real wages and production were actually increasing throughout the period. Like Friedman, he attributes falling prices to the resumption of a deflationary gold standard in the U.S. after the Civil War.
Scranton general strike
The Long Depression, sparked in the US by the Panic of 1873, had far reaching implications for US industry, shuttering more than a hundred railroads in the first year and cutting construction of new rail lines from 7,500 miles of track in 1872 to 1,600 miles in 1875. Approximately 18,000 businesses failed between 1873, and in 1875, production in iron and steel alone dropped as much as 45%, and a million or more lost their jobs. In 1876 alone, 76 railroad companies went bankrupt or entered receivership.