Born Then
1893–1897

Life during the Panic of 1893

Be born in a place it hit, a few years before it began, and see what it did to five ordinary lives.

What it meant for ordinary people

Railroad failures and a run on gold set off the worst US depression before the 1930s. Unemployment reached perhaps a sixth of workers, hundreds of banks failed, and the Pullman strike was broken by federal troops.

How hard it hits each person in the game (risk of death, of being conscripted, of leaving) comes from our model, estimated from the sources.

Around the same time