Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.1 | The History Cooperative

Securing the Fruits of Labor: The American Concept of Wealth Distribution, 1765-1900. By James L. Huston. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998. xxiv, 482 pp. $65.00, isbn 0-8071-2206-8.)

This challenging book deserves a broad audience of readers. In the course of his careful analysis of the "American concept of wealth distribution," James L. Huston boldly reconceptualizes the long nineteenth century, from the American Revolution through the Gilded Age. 1

Huston's central claim is that the Founders placed far more emphasis than has been recognized on egalitarian wealth distribution and that throughout the nineteenth century most politicians and thinkers continued to agree that egalitarianism was vital to the success of the Republic. Drawing on an immense array of primary and secondary sources, he shows that underpinning discussions of wealth division and motivating the egalitarianism was a theory of political economy that reigned for more than a century. The keys to this now-forgotten theory included what Huston calls "the labor theory of property/value"; a belief that politics, specifically the aristocratic politics of state favoritism toward elites, skewed the distribution of wealth; a critique of the laws of primogeniture and entail; and a fear of population growth. . . .

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