The More Things Change ...

"Although economic growth after 1820 did not change the fundamental relationship between the cities and the countryside in the South, the change in the Northern cities was a veritable revolution in culture. Not only did the urban population of the Northeast expand at an unprecedented rate during the last four decades of the antebellum era, but nearly half that population was concentrated in just two cities. By 1860 Philadelphia's population exceeded a half million and New York's was close to a million. Such large cities made possible or promoted certain elements of high culture--music, literature, and theater--and were showcases for some of the most spectacular aspects of the new technology of the age, especially in transportation, communication, and commerce.

Yet it was not the achievements of these and other large cities but the severe new problems they posed that were foremost in American thought at the time. Philadelphia, New York, and other large cities were perceived as threats to social order; as breeders of disease, crime, violence, and moral decay; and as threats to American religious freedom and to popular democracy. Between 1790 and 1850 Northern life expectancies declined by 25 percent, and the decline in New York, Philadelphia, and other large cities was twice as great. Life expectancy at birth in New York and Philadelphia during the 1830s and 1840s averaged just 24 years, six years less than that of Southern slaves."
- Nobel Prize winner Robert W. Fogel, 1993, "Problems in modeling complex dynamic interactions: The political realignment of the 1850s"

I smell a slogan: "Philadelphia. We breed disease, crime, violence, and moral decay." [[justin]]