This is a question designed to make you think about politics and what Americans wanted their country to look like. During the Gilded Age, many Americans assumed that the laws of society were very much like the laws of nature—harsh, cruel, and not subject to change by human effort. But toward the end of the century, a new way of thinking emerged with the Populists and Progressives. How were they different from each other and from the Gilded Age politicians who came before them?