the habit of equating cities with a breakdown of social morals - and with corrupt political power is as old as the US itself...T. Jefferson, for example, is well know for his suspicion of city life:
"I view great cities as penitential to the morals, the health, and the liberties of man ...I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities as in Europe, they will become corrupt as is Europe ...The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body." (Quoted in James A. Clapp, _The City: A Dictionary of Quotable Thoughts on Cities and Urban Life_, 1984, pp. 128-129) Michael Hoover