The Industrial Revolution. Too much corporateinfluence in politics; the specter of socialist policiesundermining capitalism and individual freedoms; a middle class inapparent decline; waves of immigration which threatened to alterthe character of American society; new technologies whichintroduced new social problems as well as offering newopportunities; and a general sense that the common people had lostcontrol of their government: To a sometimes surprising degree theissues which troubled Americans in the last quarter of thenineteenth century resembled our own. The past often loses much ofits vigor and tumult as it becomes codified as history and it canbe difficult at times to understand how trulyrevolutionarytranformative disruptive unprecedented anddivisivean event such as the Industrial Revolution was for thepeople who lived through it.