The Panic of 1873 and the Long Depression seem to directly contradict you on that. The crashes were maybe not as large but that's because the economy of 1873 was an order of magnitude smaller than the economy of 1929.
No, they were smaller in relative terms too (as a percentage of GDP). The Long Depression wasn't even a real depression in modern terms because GDP kept growing throughout it.
> they were smaller in relative terms too (as a percentage of GDP)
Where are you getting your GDP numbers from? (Our economic metrics for 19th century America are notoriously shoddy. What with the civil war and frontier and all.)
You're correct if we look at GNP. But by that standard, we haven't had a real depression since 1971 [1]. Certainly not one that reduced e.g. steel production by 45% [2][3].
