To Suit the Times: Advertisement and the Panic of 1857

In the closing days of 1857, the Independent, a Congregationalist weekly paper reflected on the year in economics. "The year," the paper writes, "may be divided into two parts-... this first ending in August, when bank expansion reached its height; and the latter part ending now, when the weakness natural to the experience of so severe a reverse from the breaking of the bubble expansion of all credits is still severely felt.[1]" The second part to which the article refers is the Panic of 1857. Beginning in August of that year with the failure of an Ohio investment house, the crisis spread rapidly over new telegraph wires and led to worldwide "business failures and slowdowns that threw thousands out of work.[2]" The Panic is vividly demonstrated in the advertisement section of the Independent, a weekly Congregationalist paper published in New York. The advertisements change not only in number, but also in type and tactic.

The paper was initially reluctant to officially recognize the presence of an economic Panic, editorializing on August 27^th, 1857 that "[3]" The sheer numbers of business failures before and after the Panic strongly suggest otherwise. Between August 13^th and 20^th, there are listed only 51 business closures and suspensions[4]. The next week's edition which breaks the news of "the failure of the Ohio Life and Trust Company, announced on Monday" lists 56 of the same[5]. News articles appear in this month citing first a "much depressed' stock market[6] and then "about six thousand... cotton looms that have been stopped in New England.[7]" Around this time, advertisements begin appearing from lawyers assuring readers that "the insolvent of 1847 [8]" The panic was in full-swing.