The cause and effect of rural to urban migration is analyzed in this collection of studies completed from the early 1930's to the 1970's. The analysis revealed that urban problems have been closely related to the sociocultural transition going on in rural America--that the changes in life and labor in agriculture have influenced, if not caused, the bulk of today's urban social ills and issues. In 1932 the process began of replacing the traditional "employer of last resort" in the U.S. (farm labor and subsistence agriculture) with public relief and welfare assistance of some kind. This has resulted in the mass transplantation of between 55 and 60 million persons, of mostly lower or lower-middle social and economic status, from the farm to cities and towns. Statistics on population, farm labor, and technological change show conclusively the size, causes, and impact of this migration (mainly from the South). Pointed out are the disappearance of subsistence farming, drastic reduction of farmhand employment (over 50 percent in about 25 years), the steady disappearance of the traditional corn-hog-beef-cattle farm ("live-at-home" farm), and the impact of the semiservile sharecropping sociocultural system. A proposal suggests a method to stop and even reverse the migratory flow--to lure people back to the farm--by a simple extension of "benefit payments" that reinforce the small farmer in his struggle to remain on the land. (AH)