ABSTRACT
Some nations felt the impact of the Industrial Revolution, the problems of the machine age, the trend toward urbanization, the vast increases in population due to the industrialization of society, and the resultant urge toward overseas possessions and imperialism in politics and trade. Industrialism was to encounter the mentality not of a people emerging from feudalism, but of one emerging from the exceptionally free and optimistic life of the frontier. Successive frontiers had been established and ended, more territory acquired and more frontiers begun and ended, for many generations. Importation of foreign labor was the answer of the industrial capitalists to the demands of native labor, just as had been the use of the Irish a half century and more earlier on a smaller scale. The people, having been panicked by the bogie of the currency, were rewarded for their votes with an increase in the cost of living.
