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The way of life, in America, at the time was to live and work on a farm. Cities were for the very rich businessmen, not for the average man. Many people had negative opinions of cities and urbanizing the country. This lead to many pieces of art and literature being created to demonstrate this opinion.

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Throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries, America transformed from an agriculture-based nation into an urban power, dominated by cities.

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Though it started as a rural nation, the turn of the century into the 1900’s brought the era of big cities to America.  Off in the horizon, one could see buildings piercing the sky; in the streets a bustling scene of people going from tenement building to workplace, the streets crowded and the city life booming. These are just two scenes that exemplify the immense urbanization of 20th century America. Here are a few more:

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This photograph of Mulberry Street (in New York City) shows the lively scene of families out buying from street vendors. The multitude of families depicted goes to show the vast migration from “farm to city” that Americans made in the 20th century.

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Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman is a collection of his own poems throughout his life, which show his beliefs on all things, including urbanization. In his poems, he makes himself out to be anti-urbanization because farms and nature are good for the soul. This comes from the fact that he was a Transcendentalist, who believed that life, religion, and nature were all deeply connected.

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“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains.” -Walt Whitman

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Upton Sinclair was an author in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He wrote about many topics, especially the impact of cities and factories on laborers. Specifically their long hours, little pay, and unsafe working spaces. Although he was in favor of urbanization in general, he did not like the way it was happening in the U.S..

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The below photograph, entitled Lunch Atop a Skyscraper, is a clear indicator of American urbanization because it depicts teenage-looking people taking a break from their work in New York City.  The buildup of cities like New York, as seen in the photograph, swept up not just well-to-do adults, but working kids as well.

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http://www.mantlethought.org/arts-and-culture/lunch-atop-skyscraper

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-gilded-age/gilded-age/a/america-moves-to-the-city

https://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/a-primer-on-social-problems/s17-01-a-brief-history-of-urbanizatio.html

http://users.humboldt.edu/ogayle/hist110/geography.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaves_of_Grass

https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/3985648/mod_resource/content/1/LEAVES%20OF%20GRASS.pdf

Lemann, Nicholas (1991). The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. p. 6. ISBN 0-394-56004-3.

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/2-plate-tintype-great-slice-1800s-1820318390

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“All day long this man would toil thus, his whole life being centered upon the purpose of making twenty-three instead of twenty-two and a half cents an hour…and jubilant captains of industry would boast of it… If we are the greatest nation the sun ever shone upon, it would seem to be mainly because we have been able to goad our wage-earners to this pitch of frenzy.”

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This image depicts a family happily living on a farm. It is what most average people's lives were like. Many Americans made their livings by working on and owning farms. It was the hallmark of the American way of life. This upheld a traditional air to the country and its morals. As you can see in the image, this family looks old fashioned, like how you would imagine a farm family in the 1800s to be. Many people like this were opposed to urbanization in America.

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The featured graph clearly shows the correlation between passage of time and urbanization in the United States. From 1850 to 1950, the percentage of Americans living in cities skyrocketed from a mere 15% to almost 70%, a shocking increase in city-dwellers.

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The Promised Land, Nicholas Lemann, 1991

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The Promised Land, Nicholas Lemann, 1991

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The following excerpt from The Promised Land by Nicholas Lemann shows the magnitude of the Great Migration, and in turn that of American urbanization in the 20th century. The fact that the Great Migration uprooted thousands of African-Americans from their rural areas and placed them in cities makes it a huge urbanization move. The Migration was one of the main causes of the great increase in % of Americans living in cities in the above figure.

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“[The Great Migration] was one of the largest and most rapid mass internal movements in history—perhaps the greatest not caused by the immediate threat of execution or starvation. In sheer numbers it outranks the migration of any other ethnic group—Italians or Irish or Jews or Poles—to [the United States]. For blacks, the migration meant leaving what had always been their economic and social base in America, and finding a new one."

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This painting from the early 1800s celebrates the simple life of living on a farm. The bright colors and home-y feeling illustrate this. Paintings like these, had a positive affect on people and gave them the impression that farms were perfect for them, and they shouldn't move to cities and urban areas.