THE THREE GREAT QUESTIONS

Alexis de Tocqueville, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Simon Kuznets have set out the fundamental questions that dominate consideration of inequality in the nineteenth century. Their questions, posed in 1835, 1893, and 1955 respectively, have not yet been definitively answered. Nor are answers close at hand, for these questions pose difficult methodological issues, relate to changing values concerning inequality and economic opportunity, and require quantitative evidence on poorly measured distributions of income and wealth as well as information about economic opportunity. Yet each of the questions retains its interest and relevance to judgments today about economic equality in the nineteenth century.

From May 1831 to February 1832 Alexis de Tocqueville, in the company of Gustave de Beaumont, made his epic journey through North America, traveling west across New York to the frontier in Michigan, then northeast into Canada, down to Boston, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, west to Cincinnati, Nashville, and Memphis, down the Mississippi to New Orleans, overland to Washington, and back to New York City. Tocqueville and Beaumont were entertained by various levels of society, which they interviewed extensively, and observed with dispassion and insight the structure of this strange new democracy.