Chapter VI: Rural Influences on Urban Affairs

It cannot be denied that the hitherto controlling power of voters in rural districts has frequently been used to the prejudice of city interests. Representatives from country regions have lent their aid in effecting vicious as well as wholesome changes in legislation affecting municipalities, and this aid has sometimes been secured by corrupt methods. It is nevertheless true that the average country voter and the average legislator who represents him sincerely desire to promote only such legislation as will be of highest advantage to urban communities. If their votes fail to secure this result it is more often because of insufficient knowledge of urban conditions and needs, than of indifference or corrupt influences.

It is, therefore, a matter of the very highest importance that citizens remote from our great cities be made sufficiently familiar with municipal needs to enable them to reach wiser conclusions as to the desirability or undesirability of special measures affecting their political, social, and industrial interests. Opinions based, as now, chiefly upon the statements of a partisan press, too often represent the interests of a party regardless of those of the municipalities directly concerned.

With the steady growth of our great cities in population and political power, the question of wholesome State legislation in matters affecting their civic and moral wellbeing, is one of no less importance to rural communities than to the cities themselves. Controlling power is already drifting cityward in many States, and rural voters who have not contributed to the creation of right civic conditions in our great municipalities may soon find this power used to their own serious injury. In this connection the New York _Christian Advocate_, referring to the possibilities of good and evil in the Greater New York, justly says:

The only balancing force in preventing the evil from triumphing
over the good, will be the influence of the remainder of the Empire
State. The morale of cities differs from that of rural regions in
that the evil-minded can consort and conceal their deeds, can
obtain great political power; and large cities are prone to
legalize vice and admit of organized political corruption. Whereas
elsewhere the laws are generally in harmony with morality, and the
difficulty of concealment impedes the growth and the increase of
the arrogance of vice.

The force of Greater New York in legislation and the administration
of law, is something appalling to contemplate. Permanent antagonism
between the Metropolis and the rest of the State will in itself be
a demoralizing element. Yet unless the State watches this immense
aggregation of heterogeneous peoples and cities, Greater New York
may become a pervading source of corruption. If there be one
tendency confirmed by history, it is that smaller cities imitate
the greater, that towns imitate the smaller cities, and villages,
the towns. Thus for good or ill the most populous centres become
the controlling force.