The
Long Depression was a worldwide price
recession, beginning in 1873 and running through the spring of 1879. It was the 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 a period of general
deflation and
a general contraction, it did not have the severe economic retrogression of the Great Depression.