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Digital History ID 3840

Economic Growth and Stratification of Wealth
Year	Population in millions	Nonfarm Labor Force	Per Capita Wealth	Wealth Owned By Top l0 Percent
1800	5.3	21.0	64.4	4 percent
1820	17.4	17.1	67.7	50 percent
1840	9.6	36.6	100.0	55 percent
1860	31.4	46.8	137.0	60 percent

Distribution of Wealth
City	Year	Proportion of wealth owned by:
		Richest 1 Percent	Richest 3 Percent
Boston	1848	42 percent	64 percent
Brooklyn	1841	37	--
New York	1845	40	66 percent

Per Capita Wealth: 1840 = 100.0

Concentration of Wealth in Farming Areas, 1860
Place	Proportion of Property Held by Richest 10 Percent of Farmowners
Southern black belt counties	64
Trempealeau County, Wisconsin	39
11 Vermont counties	38

Concentration of Wealth in a northeastern and a western town, 1860
Place	Proportion of adult males	Proportion of real property
Jacksonville, Illinois	69	80
Northampton, Massachusetts	68	72

With no real estate held by richest 10 percent

Questions To Think About

1. Did the distribution of income and wealth grow more or less equal during the decades before the Civil War?

2. A famous Frenchman named Alexis de Tocqueville said that the defining characteristic of pre-Civil War America was "equality of condition." Others have called this era the "age of the common man." Do statistics on the distribution of wealth support or contradict these views? In what sense, if any, might these observers have been correct?