@OldDeckHand: I noted earlier today while reading some history essays that a lot of Americans, even since the 1960s when rural and urban poverty was still commonly widely known of and seen daily, that 19th-century white people were either wealthy or "middle-class", especially in the southern and midwestern US.

Same phenomenon as how a lot of "frontier living" and pop "survivalist" types think they'd somehow survive well and for long living Old West or pioneer style, especially w/o medicine.