JF Ptak Scienec Books post 2511 Part of the series on the Graphic Display of Information
This is a good example of relatively-though-not-really graphic representations of data for popular consumption. (I have to apologize straight-away for the uneven color here--my scanner had a very tough time with the deep blue of this pamphlet...)
The case being made here was for changing tariffs which at this time in 1884 were seen by the author as harmful to the common producer. Here's the cover of the pamphlet with its provocative title::
And the back cover, where the graphic displays live, including the unusual smei-pyramid at bottom left:
The proportion of classes of the U.S. drawn here is probably relatively correct though some of the numbers may be wrong--granted they are for the upper classes and I think even with revision doesn't change the structure of the graphic part of the display too much at all. Here there are listed 59 individuals in the U.S. making $1 million per year, which seems to be a little low. I have seen a number of references that by the end of the 1890's there were around 4,000 people who could be called landed millionaires though so far as I have seen they all were not making $1 million per year. I am unsure at this point--it is possible that in, say, the 3,000 millionaires in the U.S. in 1880-1884 that 1.5% of them would be making a million/year--it seems plausible that if there were 4,000 people making a million in a year that there would be another superclass of 1% making ten times that a year...so maybe that 59 number is correct, after all. In any event, I don not think that the correct would alter the shape of the pyramid by any measurable difference.
The real purpose of the pamphlet seems to have been for the wealthy to pay more than the average working person. The subtitle being "Who Pays? The Tax Payer and the Tax Eater Compared. Every Farmer Should read This", which seems to mean that the author found farmers to be paying more than their fair share--and considering that of the 50 million people living in the U.S. (1880 census figures here and following) more than 22 million lived on farms, the issue was addressed to a near-majority of U.S. citizens.
I haven't read the pamphlet--I'm just passing along the data.
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