Attractions of City Life.

During the 1920s, as in later decades of the twentieth century, huge numbers of Americans were drawn to the city by the perceived advantages it offered. The great urban centers — New York, Chicago, and Detroit, for example — seemed to promise the most exciting and most lucrative job opportunities, whether for stockbrokers, business entrepreneurs, factory workers, automobile salesmen, department-store clerks, or secretaries and receptionists. Cities offered a rich cultural life: theater, music and dance, and movies — particularly foreign movies like those of Sergei Eisenstein or Fritz Lang — that almost certainly would not be shown in small-town movie houses. Nightclub-speakeasies were primarily a phenomenon of the city, as were exotic ethnic restaurants, ethnic shops, or ethnic population centers. All these factors drew multitudes to America's great cities.

Perils.

Yet with these advantages came pronounced urban problems. By the mid 1920s city streets...