Economic opportunity on the urban frontier: Wealth and nativity in early San Francisco

Contemporary historians described mid-19th-century San Francisco as a place of high economic opportunity. A recent school, the New Western Historians, have argued that economic opportunity in San Francisco was low, especially for blue-collar workers. Using quantile regression analysis of wealth data from the 1860 Federal census manuscripts, I show that the New Western Historians are incorrect. Blue-collar Irish and English men fared better in San Francisco than men in eastern and midwestern cities. German men had a pattern of wealth holding that has not been observed elsewhere, which has implications for our view of how frontier regions were settled. (C) 2000 Academic Press.