21st Century Schizoid Boy

The U.S. became the largest economy in the world (total GDP) in the late 1870s and caught up to the U.K. in GDP-per-capita in the 1880s, before the Federal Reserve and the growth of government:

Angus Maddison, Professor of Economics, The University of Groningen, Netherlands, 2006, http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/Historical_Statistics/horizontal-file_02-2010.xls (methodology).