Imagine one in five Americans out of work, unemployment jumping from 3% to 18% in just two years as machine-replaced Americans went looking for work. Soup kitchens lining the streets of every major city. Whole states even harder hit: over a third of New York workers unemployed, nearly half in Michigan.
That was America in 1893 — not the Great Depression, but the one that came before it. The proximate triggers were financial: a railroad bubble that burst, a run on gold reserves, bank failures cascading across the country. But the kindling had been laid over decades.
