> the US dollar was worth as much at 1900 as it was at 1800
Uh, no it wasn't. From the very first search result I got on Google, a rough CPI measure of inflation would indicate that the US dollar was worth twice as much in 1900 as at 1800, a total inflation of -50% [1].
Now, that's not the most accurate assessment of inflation because the very concept of a single number for "inflation" doesn't work out well when you start trying to compare monetary amounts across decades, and it especially breaks down when you're bracketing the Industrial Revolution. But the broader point here is that the US dollar wasn't some mythically stable thing during the 19th century that somehow galloped out of control in the 20th century.
> and there weren't any financial collapses in the 1800s comparable in magnitude to the Great Depression or Global Financial Crisis.
This is "never-cracked-a-history-book" levels of incorrect. Severe depressions recurred about every other decade, and practically every decade had some sort of Global Financial Crisis-esque financial meltdown. Back then, most of these were called "Panic of <year>" instead of "depression" or "recession", until you got to the Long Depression, which was called the Great Depression before the Great Depression itself actually existed.
If you're familiar with US economic history, far from being a century of economic stability, 19th century American history was an economic roller coaster of soaring heights and terrifying crashes and the transitions between them being sharp, sudden, jarring, and without warning; by those standards, 20th and 21st American economic history is tame. (Indeed, commodity money is one of the causes of the rollercoaster nature of the economy, far from being a moderating force.)
[1] Yes, the sign is right. Because, again, bracketing the Industrial Revolution.
> This is "never-cracked-a-history-book" levels of incorrect. Severe depressions recurred about every other decade, and practically every decade had some sort of Global Financial Crisis-esque financial meltdown. Back then, most of these were called "Panic of <year>" instead of "depression" or "recession", until you got to the Long Depression, which was called the Great Depression before the Great Depression itself actually existed.
This is all true. However, average economic growth rates for the American economy were dramatically higher in the 1800s than they have been in the last 50 years.
> a rough CPI measure of inflation would indicate that the US dollar was worth twice as much in 1900 as at 1800, a total inflation of -50%
Nitpick: you're comparing two currencies that happen to both have been called the dollar.
A dollar in 1800 referred to "371+4⁄16 grain (24.1 g) pure or 416 grain (27.0 g) standard silver" [1]. (To drive home how confusing commodity money is, $2.50, $5 and $10 were defined in gold; cents and half cents in copper.) Because "silver prices rose relative to gold as a reaction to the California Gold Rush" [2], in 1873, the silver dollar was redefined at "371.25 grains" and the gold dollar at "23.22 grains" [3].
None of this, of course, has anything to do with the fiat greenbacks we printed during the Civil War [4] and the ensuing nonsense we had to deal with getting that to play with our metal standards [5], all of which culminated in the Gold Standard Act of 1900 defining a dollar at "25.8 grains of 90% pure gold" [6]. (94% the amount of pure gold per dollar as was in a 1792 Half Eagle per dollar. But again, we're comparing pre- and post-Gold Rush gold. And early industrial versus well industrialised economies.)
Uh, no it wasn't. From the very first search result I got on Google, a rough CPI measure of inflation would indicate that the US dollar was worth twice as much in 1900 as at 1800, a total inflation of -50% [1].
Now, that's not the most accurate assessment of inflation because the very concept of a single number for "inflation" doesn't work out well when you start trying to compare monetary amounts across decades, and it especially breaks down when you're bracketing the Industrial Revolution. But the broader point here is that the US dollar wasn't some mythically stable thing during the 19th century that somehow galloped out of control in the 20th century.
> and there weren't any financial collapses in the 1800s comparable in magnitude to the Great Depression or Global Financial Crisis.
This is "never-cracked-a-history-book" levels of incorrect. Severe depressions recurred about every other decade, and practically every decade had some sort of Global Financial Crisis-esque financial meltdown. Back then, most of these were called "Panic of <year>" instead of "depression" or "recession", until you got to the Long Depression, which was called the Great Depression before the Great Depression itself actually existed.
If you're familiar with US economic history, far from being a century of economic stability, 19th century American history was an economic roller coaster of soaring heights and terrifying crashes and the transitions between them being sharp, sudden, jarring, and without warning; by those standards, 20th and 21st American economic history is tame. (Indeed, commodity money is one of the causes of the rollercoaster nature of the economy, far from being a moderating force.)
[1] Yes, the sign is right. Because, again, bracketing the Industrial Revolution.