What are you talking about. Do you know the definition of 'free market'?
"an economic system in which prices are determined by *unrestricted* competition between privately owned businesses."
The United States is not, and never has been, a free market economy. Using 'perfect' and 'imperfect' is you simply trying to bend a definition to support an argument you want to make. The US market has always been highly regulated.
>Somehow that didn't seem to have any effect on life expectancy or poverty statistics.
Ah, so you're just throwing reality all the way out the window then?
>Do you really think that the enormous movement in the 19th century US of people out of poverty into the middle class came from government wealth transfer programs?
Why are you talking about wealth transfer programs? What are you talking about?
Your knowledge on this subject seems to be realllly skewed towards what someone who consumes a lot of right-wing media content would think. I encourage you to do some actual reading on the subject.