Black History
U.S. CENSUS BUREAU ERROR?
U.S. CENSUS BUREAU ERROR?
Our Research Reveals Flaw in Methodology
When researchers cite the U.S. Census, they expect to feel confidence in their source. However, in our research into the 1850’s, we were surprised to find that in the table on Per Capita Income of the United States for 1850 and 1860, the Bureau of the Census included slaves in the total population. The dictionary definition of per capita is in two parts. The first, “Per unit of population, per person income per capita” is applicable. The second, “Equally to each individual” is not. The slaves were not legal persons to the state or the owners. They were property with a taxable value that could no more profit financially from their work than a mule. The per capita earnings of the slave were zero.
TRUE FIGURES
WOULD HAVE HELPED POPULIST MOVEMENT
When we computed a corrected table of the assessed per capita value on real estate and property for the 8th Census (1860) in the slaveholding states and put them in ranking order, an interesting pattern emerges. [See OTP State Rank in Per Capita Wealth (excluding the slave as part of the population)]. Looking at the ranking, we see that the slave states vary as much as 400% above the national average of $384.
These kind of figures of extraordinarily high per capita incomes in states with a lot of poor whites would have highlighted the fact that the United States was not as egalitarian as professed. This would have been fodder for the Populist Movement that was afoot at the time the census table was compiled in the mid-1880’s. Then nonrich whites and former slaves were being urged to come together and unite against a common enemy, the monied classes.
In American Populism – A Social History (1877-1898) Robert McGrath writes about two grassroot farmers organizations as a sample of the concerns of the times. “These two short-lived organizations, like scores and even hundreds of other community-based movements, were called into being by the transformation of American Capitalism amidst the economic and social trauma of the 1870’s….Participants in both organizations understood, if only dimly, that old rules and values were crumbling, and that powerful new economic institutions, buttressed by the state, threatened their independence….In another moment of crisis for the new industrial and financial order a decade later, groups like these two scattered throughout the island communities of the American heartland would coalesce and grow into a grand crusade.”
A correct ranking list by per capita wealth like the one shown here could have been used by the populist forces to confirm their fear of an existing economic aristocracy. DG
State Rank by Per Capita Assessed Value
of Real Estate and Personal Property (1860)
OUR TIME PRESS RANKING
(NOT including the slave population)
1. South Carolina $1,624
2. Mississippi 1,436
3. Louisiana 1,158
4. Georgia 1,039
5. Florida 876
6. Alabama 819
7. Connecticut 742
8. Rhode Island 716
9. Texas 635
10. Massachusetts 631
11. Virginia 594
12. Kentucky 568
13. Arkansas 556
14. District of Columbia 547
15. North Carolina 536
16. Maryland 495
17. Tennessee 459
18. New Jersey 441
19. Ohio 410
20. New Hampshire 380
21. Washington 379
22. California 368
23. Oregon 363
24. Delaware 360
25. New York 358
26. Indiana 304
27. Iowa 304
28. Vermont 269
29. Nebraska 258
30. Pennsylvania 247
31. Maine 246
32. Wisconsin 240
33. Illinois 227
34. Missouri 226
35. New Mexico 223
36. Michigan 218
37. Kansas 210
38. Minnesota 186
39. Utah 103
U.S. CENSUS BUREAU
(Including the slave population)
1. Connecticut $742
2. Rhode Island 716
3. South Carolina 695
4. Mississippi 644
5. Massachusetts 631
6. Louisiana 616
7. Georgia 585
8. District of Columbia 547
9. Florida 491
10. Kentucky 457
11. Alabama 448
12. Texas 443
13. New Jersey 441
14. Maryland 432
15. Arkansas 414
16. Virginia 412
17. Ohio 410
18. New Hampshire 380
19. Washington 379
20. California 368
21. Oregon 363
22. New York 358
23. Delaware 354
24. Tennessee 345
25. Indiana 304
