For many Americans of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, social anxiety and economic vulnerability were the most tangible fruits of industrial-capitalist modernization. “We are unsettled to the very roots of our being,” wrote Walter Lippman in 1914, crystallizing this turmoil and so much more. Several transformations seemed to be taking place at once. The penetration of competitive markets into once remote “island communities” strained social bonds and overturned established ways of life; while laissez-faire, with its cycles of boom and bust, aggravated economic uncertainty and militated against efforts at rational planning. As well, the passage of American capitalism from “proprietary-competitive” to “corporate-administered” stages brought forth indictments against the monopolistic practices of economic Goliaths; while, on a different foot, new forms of social organization and the spread of science and technology reordered basic human relationships.

Such crises occasioned searching critiques of the American political economy. Alternative visions of America's programmatic future, rooted in differences of interest and ideology, were devised and fiercely contested. Populism, progressivism, and socialism challenged the hegemony of nineteenth-century liberalism.