By the end of the nineteenth century, our country was in the throes of a colossal societal shift. In the span of just a few decades, the steam boiler, fabricated steel, the incandescent lightbulb, the automobile and the electric streetcar were invented. The American urban population doubled as people flocked from farms to cities, and 25 million immigrants had arrived on our shores seeking better lives.

Walter Lippman, one of America’s foremost journalists and social commentators, captured the resulting feeling of national disorientation: “We are unsettled to the very roots of our being. . . . We live in great cities without knowing our neighbors, the loyalties of place have broken down, and our associations are stretched over large territories, cemented by very little direct contact.” Some questioned whether American democracy—designed by the Founders at a time when everyone lived in tight-knit, self-governing rural communities—could survive in an industrialized America for which our institutions were not built.