The Growing Divide: A 1889 Look at Wealth Inequality
A century before modern debates on income disparity, a Seattle newspaper reflected on a New York attorney's grim statistics concerning the extreme concentration of American wealth.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
An article in the September Forum, contributed by Mr. Thomas G. Shearman, a distinguished attorney of Brooklyn, New York, contains some startling figures as to the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few in this country. According to this authority, there are in the United States less than twenty-five thousand persons who own more than one-half of the whole national wealth. From this is drawn the assumption that the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer, and that the latter is a consequence of the former. But it is not a necessary conclusion that because the rich grow richer, they are made so at the expense of others. The affirmation of this is a very popular one, yet full of fallacy. Wealth is not a fixed quantity. It is something which increases as the community grows. If a man by his own industry creates wealth where there was none before, he does not take it from his neighbor. He adds to the general stock. The problem of today is whether the increase of wealth will be shared by all or remain in the hands of the few.
“The consequences of this election will reach forward and affect the welfare not only of those who take part in it, but the welfare of their children and their children’s children.”
This piece from 1889 captures the exact moment America transitioned into the Gilded Age, mirroring today's anxieties about the 'vanishing middle class' and the concentration of capital. While the author attempted to debunk the idea that wealth is a zero-sum game, the core tension—how progress affects the welfare of the 'children and children's children'—remains a central theme in Seattle's ongoing struggles with housing and economic displacement.
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