Note 68 — Chapter X · CITY GOVERNMENT

If you make your home in a rural community, you will become acquainted with most of your neighbors within a week; you will know all about them, and (if they can find it out) they will know all about you. But if you go as a stranger to live in a city apartment, with only thin walls separating you from your neighbors, you may remain there for months or even for years without becoming acquainted with any of them. You may not even know your neighbor’s name, save for seeing it on his door. Neighborliness is a trait of human nature which disappears in the great cities. In the city a man’s friends are not his neighbors as a rule, but persons of his own occupation or interests who may live a considerable distance away. This is an important difference, for it means that townships and villages have a unity which the wards and districts of large cities do not possess.