1873-1879 жылдардағы әлемдік экономикалық дағдарыс

Worldwide economic recession from 1873 to 1879

The Long Depression was a worldwide price and economic recession, beginning in 1873 and running either through March 1879, or 1896, depending on the metrics used. It was most severe in Europe and the United States, which had been experiencing strong economic growth fueled by the Second Industrial Revolution in the decade following the American Civil War. The episode was labeled the "Great Depression" at the time, and it held that designation until the Great Depression of the 1930s. Though it marked a period of general deflation and a general contraction, it did not have the severe economic retrogression of the Great Depression. Great Britain was the hardest hit; during this period it lost some of its large industrial lead over the economies of continental Europe. While it was occurring, the view was prominent that British economy had been in continuous depression from 1873 to as late as 1896 and some texts refer to the period as the Great Depression of 1873–1896, with financial and manufacturing losses reinforced by a long recession in the agricultural sector. In the United States, historians refer to the Depression of 1873–1879, kicked off by the Panic of 1873, and followed by the Panic of 1893, book ending an era of prosperity. The U. S. 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. Unemployment peaked in 1878 at 8.25%.

The period preceding the depression was dominated by several major military conflicts and a period of economic expansion. In Europe, the end of the Franco Prussian War yielded a new political order in Germany, and the £200 million indemnity imposed on France led to an inflationary investment boom in Germany and Central Europe. New technologies in industry such as the Bessemer converter were being rapidly applied; railroads were booming. In the United States, the end of the Civil War and a brief post war recession (1865–1867) gave way to an investment boom, focused especially on railroads on public lands in the Western United States – an expansion funded largely by foreign investors.

The global economic crisis first erupted in Austria Hungary, where in May 1873 the Vienna Stock Exchange crashed. Income from silver mining in Chile also dropped.

France's experience was somewhat unusual. Having been defeated in the Franco Prussian War, the country was required to pay £200 million in reparations to the Germans and was already reeling when the 1873 crash occurred. The French adopted a policy of deliberate deflation while paying off the reparations. The Union Générale, a French bank, failed in 1882, prompting the French to withdraw three million pounds from the Bank of England and triggering a collapse in French stock prices. After a boom in new investment banks after the end of the Franco Prussian War, the destruction of the French banking industry wrought by the crash cast a pall over the financial sector that lasted until the dawn of the 20th century. The French net national product declined over the ten years from 1882 to 1892.

A ten year tariff war broke out between France and Italy after 1887, damaging Franco Italian relations which had prospered during Italian unification. As France was Italy's biggest investor, the liquidation of French assets in the country was especially damaging.

The period preceding the Long Depression had been one of increasing economic internationalism, championed by efforts such as the Latin Monetary Union, many of which then were derailed or stunted by the impacts of economic uncertainty. The extraordinary collapse of farm prices Germany's agrarian Junker aristocracy, under attack by cheap, imported grain, successfully agitated for a protective tariff in 1879 in Otto von Bismarck's Germany over the protests of his National Liberal Party allies. In the United States, Benjamin Harrison won the 1888 US presidential election on a protectionist pledge. As a result of the protectionist policies enacted by the world's major trading nations, the global merchant marine fleet posted no significant growth from 1870 to 1890 before it nearly doubled in tonnage in the prewar economic boom that followed. Only the United Kingdom and the Netherlands remained committed to low tariffs. Under pressure from business interests, President Ulysses S. Grant vetoed the measure.

The Long Depression contributed to the revival of colonialism leading to the New Imperialism period, symbolized by the scramble for Africa, as the western powers sought new markets for their surplus accumulated capital. According to Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), the "unlimited expansion of power" followed the "unlimited expansion of capital". In the United States, beginning in 1878, the rebuilding, extending, and refinancing of the western railways, commensurate with the wholesale giveaway of water, timber, fish, minerals in what had previously been Indian territory, characterized a rising market. This led to the expansion of markets and industry, together with the robber barons of railroad owners, which culminated in the genteel 1880s and 1890s. The Gilded Age was the outcome for the few rich. The cycle repeated itself with the Panic of 1893, another huge market crash.

In the United States, the National Bureau of Economic Analysis dates the recession through March 1879. In January 1879, the United States returned to the gold standard which it had abandoned during the Civil War; according to economist Rendigs Fels, the gold standard put a floor to the deflation, and this was further boosted by especially good agricultural production in 1879. The view that a single recession lasted from 1873 to 1896 or 1897 is not supported by most modern reviews of the period. It has even been suggested that the trough of this business cycle may have occurred as early as 1875. In fact, from 1869 to 1879, the US economy grew at a rate of 6.8% for real net national product (NNP) and 4.5% for real NNP per capita. Real wages were flat from 1869 to 1879, while from 1879 to 1896, nominal wages rose 23% and prices fell 4.2%.

Most economic historians see this period as negative for the most industrial nations. Many argue that most of the stagnation was caused by a monetary contraction caused by abandonment of the bimetallic standard, in favor of a new fiat gold standard, starting with the Coinage Act of 1873. Other economic historians have complained about the characterization of this period as a "depression" because of conflicting economic statistics that cast doubt on this interpretation. They note it saw a relatively large expansion of industry, of railroads, of physical output, of net national product, and of real per capita income. As economists Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz have noted, the decade from 1869 to 1879 saw a growth of 3 percent per year in money national product, an outstanding real national product growth of 6.8 percent per year, and a rise of 4.5 percent per year in real product per capita. Even the alleged "monetary contraction" never took place, the money supply increasing by 2.7 percent per year. From 1873 through 1878, before another spurt of monetary expansion, the total supply of bank money rose from $1.964 billion to $2.221 billion, a rise of 13.1 percent, or 2.6 percent per year. In short, it was a modest but definite rise, not a contraction. Although per capita nominal income declined very gradually from 1873 to 1879, that decline was more than offset by a gradual increase over the course of the next 17 years. Furthermore, real per capita income either stayed approximately constant (1873–1880; 1883–1885) or rose (1881–1882; 1886–1896), so the average consumer appears to have been considerably better off at the end of the "depression" than before. Studies of other countries where prices also tumbled, including the United States, Germany, France, and Italy, reported more markedly positive trends in both nominal and real per capita income figures. Profits generally were also not adversely affected by deflation, although they declined (particularly in Britain) in industries struggling against superior, foreign competition. Furthermore, some economists argue a falling general price level is not inherently harmful to an economy and cite the economic growth of the period as evidence. As economist Murray Rothbard has stated:

Unfortunately, most historians and economists are conditioned to believe that steadily and sharply falling prices must result in depression: hence their amazement at the obvious prosperity and economic growth during this era. For they have overlooked the fact that in the natural course of events, when government and the banking system do not increase the money supply very rapidly, freemarket capitalism will result in an increase of production and economic growth so great as to swamp the increase of money supply. Prices will fall, and the consequences will be not depression or stagnation, but prosperity (since costs are falling, too), economic growth, and the spread of the increased living standard to all the consumers. A large part at least of the deflation commencing in the 1870s was a reflection of unprecedented advances in factor productivity. Real unit production costs for most final goods dropped steadily throughout the 19th century and especially from 1873 to 1896. At no previous time had there been an equivalent "harvest of technological advances so general in their application and so radical in their implications". That is why, notwithstanding the dire predictions of many eminent economists, Britain did not end up paralyzed by strikes and lockouts. Falling prices did not mean falling money wages. Instead of inspiring large numbers of workers to go on strike, falling prices were inspiring them to go shopping.