In the summer of 1787 a sweaty group of politicians was debating the clauses of a proposed constitution in humid Philadelphia. Endless problems reared their ugly heads: the distribution of power between large states and small states; slavery; the size of a standing army; the powers of the Presidency. The framers solved—or postponed—most of these dilemmas with their famous genius for compromise. But one quandary was solved differently.

A rich young South Carolinian named Charles Pinckney proposed that the Presidency should be limited to people worth $100,000—well over a million dollars in today’s money—and the federal judiciary and Congress to those worth half that sum. Pinckney did not get this idea out of thin air. In South Carolina a man had to have $10,000 to be elected to the state senate.

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