[On September 20th, 1873, the New York Stock Exchange closed for ten days, a key moment in the developing economic crisis that came to be known as the Panic of 1873. So for the 150th anniversary of that moment this week I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of Panic contexts, leading up to this weekend post on 2023 echoes of those histories!]
On one overt
and two subtle (but perhaps even more important) echoes of the 1870s.
1)
Downturn: As I’ve traced throughout the week’s
posts, the Panic and subsequent crash of 1873 spawned many years of intense
economic downturn and depression. That era came to be known as the Long
Depression, but we’ve had plenty longer since, including the recession that
followed the 2008 crash. There’s a lot about 2008 that feels eerily similar to
1873, including the central role of speculation in creating the circumstances
for both crashes. And just as (it seems to me) we’ve downplayed the 1870s
depression in our collective memories, making it harder to engage with the
various contexts I’ve highlighted across this series, I’d argue that we haven’t
yet fully grappled with how significant and lasting (perhaps even into our own
moment, despite narratives
that it ended in 2009) the post-2008 downturn has been. Neither was quite
the Great Depression, but that doesn’t mean these weren’t defining downturns in
their own right.
2)
Prejudice: One of the most fraught debates of
the last decade in American politics and society has been whether “economic
anxiety” or white supremacy lies at the root of Donald Trump’s 2016
electoral victory and the broader Trump/MAGA movement. But I would argue that the
1870s reveal quite strikingly that this is a false choice: that in times of
economic downturn, white supremacist prejudice and hate toward Americans of
color and other minorities simply gain significantly greater purchase over far
too many Americans (not that it’s ever far from us, but nonetheless that it
becomes even more dominant in these moments). The anti-Chinese American
movement had been present before the Panic of 1873 (see the 1871
Los Angeles Chinatown Massacre for one telling piece of evidence), but I honestly
don’t know if it would have reached the level of national prominence required
to produce the Chinese Exclusion Act without the decade’s economic crisis.
3)
Labor: As I wrote in Thursday’s post, I don’t
believe there’s nearly enough connection drawn (including by me until I was
researching this week’s series) between the first genuinely national labor
action, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, and the Panic of 1873 and its
aftermaths. There would be various important effects of thinking through those
interconnected histories, but an important one would be to recognize the influential
and inspiring role that organized labor can play in responding to economic
crises and offering workers and all Americans an alternative vision of
solidarity and community. Which makes it anything but a coincidence that we’re
in the midst of the most significant
series of labor actions that the nation has seen in a long time, if not
indeed since the late 19th century. Given the hugely meaningful successes
and progress which that late 19th century labor movement achieved,
it’s fair to say that this 2023 echo offers some real hope amidst so many more
painful such parallels.
Next
series starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What
do you think?
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