ABSTRACT
Strong's critique of American society as it was being transformed by economic development focuses on the moral weaknesses being exposed in the population by opportunities to pile up wealth. But the critique arises from the paradox, as Strong sees it, that the vigour of the Anglo-Saxon character, combined with the possibilities offered in the United States, intensifies the dangers of mammonism, materialism, luxuriousness, and the congestion of wealth. For religious writers the social crises of the industrial era were initially moral crises. From that starting point they responded in a variety of ways; Strong himself moved towards progressive reform, drawing upon the vitality of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism.
