Two Extremes About The City

Vaughan and Engels stand on opposing sides on the issue of the city. I think that they both have very valid points but equally jump to the polar extremes of their positions. A very rough critique of Engels would be that he is writing about The Conditions of the Working Class from a privileged point of view. He was the heir to a wealthy business man who lived among the working classes a mere “twenty one months”(12). It is the equivalent of Tyra Banks claiming she knows the suffering of fat people because she rode the bus wearing a fat suit. It is ludicrous to say that one knows and had a deep understanding of the working class because they have skipped on dinner parties and dull conversations. I’m sure the experiences were enlightening but Engle’s treats it as if he himself had been on of the suffering lot, and a foreign savior sent to the destitute working children of England. In his Introduction he claims to have proof of these working conditions but he mostly enumerates the export and import sales and of Linen, Wool, Cotton, Lace, Flax and the list goes on. He gives a history of the rise of machinery but no personal account of the living condition of the working man. There is no connection to his suffering at the expense of technological innovation. I hope that upon further reading I am mistaken but as of now Engels seems to be more concerned with the capitalistic advance of the city more then the working man. He and Wordsworth may have similar stances on the city life as detrimental to the human spirit. They lay the fault at industries door. Claiming it is the clock, the robotic nature of the working hours and the isolation the ensues. This may be true but there are positives to the city aswell and Vaughan proclaims those positive aspects in his book “The Age of Great Cities.”

         My quarrel with Vaughan is that while he defends the City he attacks the country. It is an inverted argument from that of the romantics and Marxist. He claims that the country makes one dull and un-intelligent. That there is stagnation to country life that prevents minds from being stimulated toward intelligence. I think that he is right in claiming that the city stimulates and encourages the arts, literature, morality etc., but he presents a polar extreme. The city and the Country both have their pros and cons. But humans are not just things to be acted upon by ambients alone. We react to our situations high or low in life.