The New York-born president looked out at the nation and didn’t like what he saw.He saw two very different Americas that were increasingly growing apart — a prosperous urban America where the economy was driven by fantastical new technologies, and a rural America that was being passed over by this emerging new economy.2018? No. 1908. The president then was Theodore Roosevelt, who envisioned himself a man of action (and often was). Roosevelt feared that the economic gap opening between the two parts of the country was not a healthy one. So he did what politicians often do: He appointed a blue-ribbon commission to study the matter.Roosevelt’s commission — which included Henry Wallace, a future Democratic vice president — fanned out across the country to study the economy of rural America. It held 30 public hearings and produced a report, the main recommendations of which were put into action. (The most famous of those at the time was the creation of the agricultural extension service).