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During the Great Depression at least three quarters of the population throughout the United States lived in the cities. The most important development in connection with the back-to-the-land movement, "subsistence homesteads", made its beginnings with the Dayton Homestead Unit in Dayton, Ohio. A whole community of homesteaders organized among the unemployed of Dayton, and financed from federal funds, moved out of the city to lessen concentration of population in the industrial center. The spiritual and educational value of having the homesteaders create and build their own homes and community may have inspired the widespread return to country life. As part of the project, people unaccustomed to manual labor did not hesitate to swing picks in an effort to speed up work on the foundation of their home. The technological changes of the industrial revolution made decentralization economical as well.
By the 1950's many older Americans had grown weary of depression and war. Younger Americans were often apolitical. They wanted "a new car every few years-. Americans of both generations were eager to pursue the need for quiet privacy, independent initiative, and some open space. These were not frills or luxuries but constituted real biological necessities. The nations new president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, practiced "the politics of tranquility- a new style that was quite different from the social activism of Roosevelt and Truman. .
The end of World War II brought thousands of young servicemen back to America to pick up their lives and start new families in new homes with new jobs, and American industry expanded to meet peacetime needs. Americans began buying goods that were not available during the war, which created corporate expansion and jobs. As the wave of prosperity and the growth permeated the middle class of the United States, the economy depended on open international markets as well.
