Different visions of Urbanization between Vaughn and Engels

     The difference in opinion about the effect of urbanization upon the proletariat between Vaughn and Engels is striking to say the least. In Vaughn's account we are faced with what sounds more like a Utopia, where science and literature flourish,  the intelligence of the common man is growing, and there is little to no crime because morality reigns supreme. This overly optimistic view of Vaughn's Great Cities can hardly be taken as an accurate account of the conditions of the working class. His claim that intelligence is enhance through the interactions of the working class and the upper class is totally false. Engels points out that factory owners hardly, if ever, had to walk through the filthy conditions of the cities. In fact, the working class is so far removed from the upper class that it is likely that they were truly unaware of the true conditions that their workers had to live in. The living conditions of the poor are compared to that of "pig-sty's" by Engels.
    The competition that existed between workers as well as the market are the cause for such horrific living conditions. Engels points out that in such an unpredictable market, the stability needed to create security was not possible. There were far more workers than there was work, and as a result the owners were able to pay wages that were hardly enough to feed families. This lack of compassion was purely money driven. Vaughn tries to claim that the moral standards are of the upmost when Great Cities are allowed to thrive, but what we are presented with in Engels' writing is a picture of heartless, capitalistic, and subhuman factory owners. While men, women, and children slowly starved to death in the streets that are filled with their own waste, the upper society was not even required to walk through those realities.
    Vaughn's claim that "If large towns may be regarded as giving shelter and maturity to some of the worst forms of depravity, it must not be forgotten that to such towns, almost entirely, society is indebted for that higher tone of moral feeling by which vice is in so great a measure discountenanced, and for those voluntary combinations of the virtuous in the cause of purity, humanity, and general improvement, which hold so conspicuous a place in our social history". (56-7) The reality being, according to Engels, is though there are charitable people and places that are willing to help the impoverished, they could help only 1% of the homeless and starving. There was not an equal moral reaction to the depravities found in the city, not even enough to be considered an drop in the bucket. While it would be nice to think that Vaughn's presentation could represent the conditions of the working class, we are forced to see the reality from Engels' brutal accounts of the Great Cities.