The transformation of capitalist market and property relations, along with the rise of new thinking about those relations and their implications for public policy, gave to the period of 1890–1916 its distinctive character in American history. The property-production system, or the mode of production, passed from the proprietary-competitive stage to the incipient phase of the corporate-administered stage of capitalism.

The transformation of the market and of the form of capitalist property included changes in the organization and management of labor, production processes, finance, distribution, and administration. These changes generated new professional, technical, and managerial functions with their corresponding social strata and, in turn, their values, attitudes, and ideological dispositions. Along with these strata came provision for their training and for the propagation of forms of consciousness appropriate to their functions, provision especially lodged in newly established or reoriented university professional and graduate schools and professional associations. The new market and property relations also generated movements for the alteration of government roles in social and economic affairs, that is, new governmental functions and administrative structures.