Depression of 1890

Government responses to depression during the 1890s exhibited elements of complexity, confusion, and contradiction. Yet they also showed a pattern that confirmed the transitional character of the era and clarified the role of the business crisis in the emergence of modern America. (Barlow, 90)

 Hard times, intimately related to developments issuing in an industrial economy characterized by increasingly vast business units and concentrations of financial and productive power, were a major influence on society, thought, politics, and thus, unavoidably, government. Awareness of, and proposals of means for adapting to, deep-rooted changes attending industrialization, urbanization, and other dimensions of the current ...