Note 51 — Chapter V
Reading edition
Various writers assert that twenty dollars was the average minimum. In many places, however, the great majority of debts were for less than ten dollars. Thus, for the year ending November 26, 1831, nearly one thousand citizens had been imprisoned for debt in Baltimore. Of this number more than half owed less than ten dollars, and of the whole number, only thirty-four individually had debts exceeding one hundred dollars.—Reports of Committees, First Session, Twenty-fourth Congress, Vol. II, Report No. 732:3.