After the twelve Southern contributors to the Agrarian manifesto, I'll Take My Stand, had submitted their completed manuscript to Harper's in the late summer of 1930, they eagerly looked forward to the American public's reaction to their book, which the Saturday Review would call “the most challenging book published in the United States since [Henry] George's Progress and Poverty” and the “most audacious book ever written by Southerners.” In the meantime, they devised plans of a practical sort that might implement their theoretical statement, such as founding a Southern academy that would have a complete philosophical constitution and an organized program of publication to spread Agrarian ideas. The twelve Southerners also considered establishing a Southern magazine associated with a publishing house and a chain of book stores, purchasing and editing a Tennessee county newspaper, securing foundation funds to support their programs, and possibly even developing a political force by either winning Democratic party support, or uniting with Western agricultural interests.

In 1916, Mary Beard, the historian and progressive activist, advanced the thesis that women shared an equal role with men in directing the great social forces that determined the quality of life in cities. In a compendium of Woman's Work in Municipalities, she demonstrated that every action supported by women's clubs and groups, ranging from improved wages and working conditions to vice control, was a part of an effort to make the city a viable environment for carrying on family life. In describing the process that led women to take an active role in sanitation reform Mary Beard wrote:

Woman's historic function having been along the line of cleanliness, her instinct when she looks forth from her own clean windows is toward public cleanliness. Her indoor battle has been against the dirt that blew in from outside, against the dust and ashes of the streets, and the particles of germladen matter carried in from neglected refuse piles. Ultimately she begins to take an interest in that portion of municipal dusting and sweeping assigned to men; namely street cleaning.

For over A half-century America has been an urban nation. However, a significant upsurge of concern for the cities has generally not accompanied the increasing acknowledgment of the country's urban status. In large measure, any serious governmental concern for American cities has been halfhearted. Attempts have been made to confront the problems of the nation's cities. Planners, enlightened city officials, and others have faced the intrinsic difficulty of bringing together thousands, and often millions, of individuals in a single municipal unit sometimes with limited success; but more often such attempts have been well-intentioned failures. Americans have yet to develop a consistent or coherent approach either to current urban dilemmas or to the future roles we envision for our cities. Though there are a multitude of regulations for almost every aspect of urban life, the phenomenon called “the city” continues to be as problematic for us today as it was for earlier generations of urban dwellers.