Talk:Long Depression

Expert Attention
It seems to me this article has some contradictory information and doesn't really explain clearly any consensus of what the "Long Depression" actually was, whether it was a Depression at all, and what its effects were. Could someone with knowledge of the economies of this time period possibly clarify and clean up this article?76.110.200.142 (talk) 00:38, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed! It's sort of distracting: check out all the weasel words in the top sentence: "the Long Depression was an alleged depression or recession that supposedly affected much of the world" ?!  come on!  brain (talk) 15:38, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Also agreed. The silver supply was expanding in America in the 1870s because America found tons of silver in the West, but I can only guess that this far outweighs the impact of what the government was doing. JoshNarins (talk) 19:53, 9 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Also agreed. Even a non-expert could help by fixing up the writing. DeepNorth (talk) 17:22, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Causes of the crisis
The crisis is caused both by an abundance of gold and a shortage of gold? If those are competing theories, then the article might be improved by stressing that point.

Long Depression a figment of Hobsbawn's imagination?
I've just read opening chapter of Age of Imperialism and in it H simultaneously talks about the contraction during these years, while on another note he makes the contradictional claim that growth was stronger during these years than in the decades before. I've also studied Paul Kennedy's The Rise an Fall of the Great Powers, which actually shows very robust growth during this era. When googling +"long depression" -medication -psychic -life -canyon -valley the results seem to indicate that the hits are based on H's argument. Prezen 16:05, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Isn't this as much an indictment of the web as a source of information as anything else? Rick lightburn (talk) 21:34, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

While awaiting a response from someone more knowledgeable than me in 19th century Economics I added Paul Kennedy's table. Prezen 18:11, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I was wondering about that, since it doesn't seem to fit the thesis of the rest of the article. Netdance 22:08, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

What did Germany do with the gold?
User:Thetfordian introduced an odd sentence into the "Causes of the crisis section" on 22nd Oct 2007:


 * "Germany went on to gold and the price of silver started to fall causing considerable losses of asset values."

What did Germany do? Why did it cause the price of silver to fall?

210.23.138.171 (talk) 10:16, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Similarity to 2007 credit crunch and 2008 crash
You can read an interesting if brief article suggesting the 2007-08 crisis bears more similarity to the Panic of 1873 and the Long Depression than to the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression on the History News Network: http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/55175.html

There seems to be ne great true answer of what a Long Depression is or could be. My resolve is the distribution of a fundable task, my research reviels it as Money. —Preceding unsigned comment added by D.G.DeL-Dorchester Mass (talk • contribs) 18:05, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

GNP - Hidden comment of User:84.189.193.193
(Text transferred from the article by Bertux (talk) 06:46, 10 April 2010 (UTC))

In this edit of 12 December 2007 User:84.189.193.193 placed a comment under the table in Long Depression:

these figures seem dubious to me - the relation between british and german gnp in 1830 and 1890 is exact the same, while the classical historical view is, that in 1830 britain made half the world gnp and fell to one quarter by the end of the century being overtaken by germany. also, russia appears to stagnate and even regress 1870-1890, although it is well-known, that this was russias fastest growing period before stalin. however, i dont have the exact figures here, so i wont change it

Compare this comment with the introduction of the current version which states: "The United Kingdom is often considered to have been the hardest hit; during this period it lost some of its large industrial lead over the economies of Continental Europe. "

Having no no knowledge of economics to speak of, I will not comment on this issue. I will remove the comment from the article however, and hope the issue will be resolved by knowledgable users. Bertux (talk) 06:46, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Real wages and Friedman/Schwartz series
As this book notes, the Friedman/Schwartz data series is NNP not GDP (although it's often misrepresented as GDP).

I also corrected a statement that said real wages rose 75% from 1869 to 1879. I don't know how that come from Rothbard's numbers - from 1869 to 1879 he says "Both consumer prices and nominal wages fell 30% in the last decade of greenbacks" - i.e, 1869-1879, so prices fell and wages fell at the same rate and real wages stagnated. He does go on to point out that nominal wages rose 23% in the 1880s and prices fell 4.2% (which I noted) but that's not nearly 75%. Equilibrium007 (talk) 04:50, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I misinterpeted the statement to say that wages rose while prices fell during the 1870's. Was a little to quick. But shouldn't we tell the reader what NNP is (GDP minus depreciation, so the growth was actually higher)?Teeninvestor (talk) 14:50, 20 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Sure, we can mention the difference between net product and gross product, but that doesn't mean that the growth was greater. Gross product and net product are pretty correlated. Equilibrium007 (talk) 01:44, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

New research
New research (as well as a look at the on Long Depression indicates that this was actually a time of prosperity and not a depression at all. How can this be incorporated into the article? If sources that claim certain facts are proven wrong, are they to be removed? Sources:, , , .--Metallurgist (talk) 04:07, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Just include the info. I'm not sure the best way to do this. Probably mention it in the lede, and then go over all the detail in "interpretations" Byelf2007 (talk) 21 February 2012

"Great Depression" confusion
The sentence "Though a period of general deflation and low growth, it did not have the severe economic retrogression of the Great Depression." in the first paragraph needs clarification - is the sentence saying that the depression that is the topic of the article was not as bad as the 1930's depression, or the opposite? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rikeus (talk • contribs) 15:20, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
 * It's saying it wasn't as bad as the Great Depression.108.211.37.125 (talk) 08:53, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Broken link
A reference in the fifth paragraph of the lead (currently reference #7), "http://www.nber.org/~wbuiter/cr2.pdf The Forgotten History of Domestic Debt, Carmen M. Reinhart" points to a dead link with a vague redirect to http://www.willembuiter.com/public.htm, and needs to point to the specific reference to the material Otr500 (talk) 03:26, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Absurd monetarism-Keynesianism
The return to gold after the monetary excesses of the Civil War led to the Gilded Age and the greatest real growth this country has ever known, while prices declined and purchasing power rose. There's no way for monetarists and Keynesians to get around these facts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.18.232.11 (talk) 02:23, 31 October 2013 (UTC)


 * It is also worth mentioning that this was the period of the largest expansion of railroad track mileage by the U.S. of any nation in any period in history. Also, the huge growth in steel production that dramatically lowered prices meant heavier steel rails that lasted 10 times longer than iron rails and could carry powerful locomotives that could pull longer trains.  Rail car sizes increased so that the ratio of freight to rail car weight increased from 1:1 to 2:1.  Financing the railroad expansion put tremendous strains on the financial system, perhaps the heaviest capital investment burden in history, however, interest rates were low.Phmoreno (talk)

Oh, what a mess!
The article focuses far too closely on the U.S. with brief and rather random comments on other 'great powers'; there is confusion about the dates and - here on the talk page, there is even a suggestion that the Long Depression is a 'figment of the imagination'!

My understanding is that the Long Depression is generally reckoned to have lasted from 1873-9 in the U.S. and from 1873 till some time in the 1890s in Europe (with 1896 as the preferred end-year for those who want a specific year):


 * '... until as late as the 1950s the term 'Great Depression' in economic history generally referred to the period between 1873 and 1879 (in the US) or 1873 and 1896 (in the UK and much of Europe).
 * http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/lessons-from-the-%E2%80%98long-depression%E2%80%99


 * It appears that the position in Europe and the U.S. after 1879 was fundamenatlly different and this needs acknowledging in the article. We could also do with a section on Germany, which embarked on the road to economic 'top dog' in this period. Also, those figures on GDP need comment. Taken in isolation, they suggest that Russia was the leading economic power (well ahead of Britain) until 1850, but it really needs to be pointed out that (1) Russia's GDP was largely agricultural and (2) that at the time the population of Russia was much higher than that of any other European country. Norvo (talk) 01:50, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Keynesian hogwash
The assumption here is that it was all due to contraction of the money supply. In fact the exact opposite can be shown, that all of the turmoil was due to the expansion of banking, as in later periods, and that was in fact the understanding of economists at the time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.66.247.53 (talk) 14:50, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

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Graph of US GNP per capita?
What is the sourcing for the GNP per capita graph? The details say "Equilibrium007 - Own work," but other sources seem to have very different-looking numbers. For instance, this has the GDP per capita (in 2012 dollars) hovering around $4000 until just before 1879, and certainly doesn't show a sharp upswing after 1875. Mwphil (talk) 19:01, 30 January 2023 (UTC)