A recognition of economic discrimination began in the British Railway Clauses Consolidation Act of 1845, which prohibited a common carrier from charging one person more for carrying freight than was charged to another customer for the same service.
It was not until 1941, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order forbidding discrimination in employment by a company working under a government defense contract, that economic discrimination took on the overtones it has today, which is discrimination against minorities.