ABSTRACT
During the nineteenth century a great many Americans thought of the city as a perilous place. The city destroyed people who were born or migrated there. During the 1920s, although Robert Park's program for studying the city was further removed from reformistic tendencies, it received much direction from an attempt to understand for whom the city was perilous—and perhaps what could be done about it. Socialism not only centers in the city, but is almost confined to it; and the materials of its growth are multiplied with the growth of the city. The result of a national election may depend on a single state; the vote of that state may depend on a single city; the vote of that city may depend on a "boss," or a capitalist, or a corporation; or the election may be decided, and the policy of the government may be reversed, by the socialist, or liquor, or Romish, or immigrant vote.
