This chapter deals with the failures of traditional two-party politics in the Gilded Age. The trends that we have seen in the previous chapters--toward industrialization, urbanization, and a sharply increased immigration--all worked to fracture conventional politics. Cities had gained in political and cultural strength, while farmers, despite an outburst of political activity, had begun an irreversible decline in numbers that would continue steadily into the next century. The chapter stresses the importance of the period as a precursor to the politics of organization, professionalism, and national vision that also characterize the twentieth century. But those features of political life would not become evident until the wrenching effects of social change disrupted the politics of the Gilded Age during the 1890s. This chapter also looks at America's New Empire. Europeans had practiced imperialism long before Americans took it up. The chapter looks first at the human side of the equation, the people within American society who supported American expansionism: missionaries, naval officers, business interests, farmers, and a social/intellectual elite. These groups collectively generated a series of cultural, racist, and economic rationales to justify the nation's new directions in foreign policy.