Science and technology captured the imaginations and improved the lives of millions of Americans in the decade following the turn of the century. Since science could make communication across vast distances instantaneous, revolutionize transportation, and cure diseases, many Americans believed that scientific methods could also improve individuals, societies, and governments. During the 1910s the hope that social scientists could transform society was very much alive. Psychologist John B. Watson's theory of behavioral psychology suggested that man had the ability to learn to control human behavior. Frederick Winslow Taylor's The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) proposed new routines to increase worker efficiency and industrial productivity. In 1919 the sociologist Thorstein Veblen published The Place of Science in Modern Civilization as well as a series of articles in the Dial that were to become the basis for his The Engineers and the Price System (1921). Veblen suggested...