No, you’re right. Actually in some ways it was far worse. But those were days when Wall Street and popular ownership of stocks wasn’t so developed.
In earlier generations land was cheap, the frontier still open, and small farms and rural towns and simple artisanship & private business was widespread, taxation low or non-existent … and often there were “panics” and currency chaos. Life was harder.
Guess I just mean there were periods when optimism about capitalism was widespread and utopian dreamers believed that in the future popular stock ownership by common people could become so prevalent that the rich would own only a small minority of stock … and we could build a “democratic people‘s capitalism.”
Jeffersonians earlier had similar hopes for the future but tended to distrust all kinds of corporations, stock markets, urban-centered credit issuers & banks, as well as government itself. At least they were against them until they actually had to govern and develop or defend the country.
I guess some people still dream of returning to those simpler times.