Frederick Law Olmsted describes the challenges of urban planning in the nineteenth century including issues related to public transportation and public works such as municipal water. A landscape developer, Olmsted envisions the possible solutions to the problems sudden urban growth and industrial development pose. Olmsted, who writes for a general audience in a persuasive manner, claims that urban growth is an unavoidable fact of modernization. Framing urban development in positive terms, Olmsted suggests large-scale transit projects, sanitation projects, and access to sources of energy. The author mentions also the scores of people who commute to the cities for work and cites reasons why urban living can be preferable to rural lifestyles because of the greater access to sources of business and education. Olmsted is concerned with retaining quality of life in the midst of rapid industrial and urban development.

Long before the cause for labor unions blossomed in the United States, Dr. John B. Whitaker lists the possible repercussions of working in unsafe factory and other industrial conditions. The author mentions deadly accidents from new machinery that workers are unfamiliar with. Moreover, the author discusses issues related to ergonomics, exhaustion, and pollution. Writing as a doctor, Whitaker makes a strong case for forming labor unions.

Croffut describes John Gast's painting "American Progress." The painting conveys the essence of manifest destiny. Using visual imagery, Gast visualize the mythos that underlies American culture. Gaft juxtaposes imagery of the West and its wold frontier with the new and sometimes unsightly urban and industrial developments. Gast's painting provides visual commentary on the ways the United States was changing during the late nineteenth century.

Harper's Weekly editorial describes the event known as Custer's Last Stand with an obvious pro-Custer mentality. Referring to the Native Americans as "savages," the author underscores the popular sentiments of the nineteenth century that the European settlers had a right to Westward expansion. Indian revolts like the Battle of Little Big Horn were viewed with scorn.