Inequality in Late Colonial Philadelphia: A Note on Its Nature and Growth

Abstract

H T ISTORIANS have been interested in the study of economic inequality in British America because of the subject's political implications, particularly for the Revolutionary period, and also because the idea of equality is central to the democratic mythology of American society. During the past two decades, social and economic historians have measured the structure of wealth in selected areas of the colonies, reaching sometimes contradictory conclusions. The subtleties of individual arguments aside, two competing hypotheses have emerged to explain the overall trend in the distribution of wealth for the whole colonial period. The first avers that frontier influences created a rough material equality among the early settlers, but that, as the frontier receded, a smaller proportion of persons gained control of a larger proportion of the wealth. The Revolution only temporarily retarded this growing stratification. Proponents of this theory of progressive inequality rely heavily on evidence not only from older agrarian areas in the northern colonies but, especially, from the cities of Philadelphia, Boston, and New York.1