Psychologists explain this difference in the connotation of the same word among people using the same language in terms of difference in the "apperception mass" in different individuals and different groups of individuals. In their phraseology the "apperception mass" represents the body of memories and meanings deposited in the consciousness of the individual from the totality of his experiences. It is the body of material with which every new datum of experience comes into contact, to which it is related, and in connection with which it gets its meaning.

When persons interpret data on different grounds, when the apperception mass is radically different, we say popularly that they live in different worlds. The logician expresses this by saying that they occupy different "universes of discourse"—that is, they cannot talk in the same terms. The ecclesiastic, the artist, the mystic, the scientist, the Philistine, the Bohemian, represent more or less different "universes of discourse." Even social workers occupy universes of discourse not mutually intelligible.

Similarly, different races and nationalities as wholes represent different apperception masses and consequently different universes of discourse and are not mutually intelligible. Even our remote forefathers are with difficulty intelligible to us, though always more intelligible than the Eastern immigrant because of the continuity of our tradition. Still it is almost as difficult for us to comprehend Elsie Dinsmore or the Westminster Catechism as the Koran or the Talmud.

It is apparent, therefore, that in the wide extension and vast complexity of modern life, in which peoples of different races and cultures are now coming into intimate contact, the divergences in the meanings and values which individuals and groups attach to objects and forms of behavior are deeper than anything expressed by differences in language.

Actually common participation in common activities implies a common "definition of the situation." In fact, every single act, and eventually all moral life, is dependent upon the definition of the situation. A definition of the situation precedes and limits any possible action, and a redefinition of the situation changes the character of the action. An abusive person, for example, provokes anger and possibly violence, but if we realize that the man is insane this redefinition of the situation results in totally different behavior.

Every social group develops systematic and unsystematic means of defining the situation for its members. Among these means are the "don'ts" of the mother, the gossip of the community, epithets ("liar," "traitor," "scab"), the sneer, the shrug, the newspaper, the theater, the school, libraries, the law, and the gospel. Education in the widest sense—intellectual, moral, aesthetic—is the process of defining the situation. It is the process by which the definitions of an older generation are transmitted to a younger. In the case of the immigrant it is the process by which the definitions of one cultural group are transmitted to another.

Differences in meanings and values, referred to above in terms of the "apperception mass," grow out of the fact that different individuals and different peoples have defined the situation in different ways. When we speak of the different "heritages" or "traditions" which our different immigrant groups bring, it means that, owing to different historical circumstances, they have defined the situation differently. Certain prominent personalities, schools of thought, bodies of doctrine, historical events, have contributed in defining the situation and determining the attitudes and values of our various immigrant groups in characteristic ways in their home countries. To the Sicilian, for example, marital infidelity means the stiletto; to the American, the divorce court. And even when the immigrant thinks that he understands us, he nevertheless does not do this completely. At the best he interprets our cultural traditions in terms of his own. Actually the situation is progressively redefined by the consequences of the actions, provoked by the previous definitions, and a prison experience is designed to provide a datum toward the redefinition of the situation.

It is evidently important that the people who compose a community and share in the common life should have a sufficient body of common memories to understand one another. This is particularly true in a democracy, where it is intended that the public institutions should be responsive to public opinion. There can be no public opinion except in so far as the persons who compose the public are able to live in the same world and speak and think in the same universe of discourse. For that reason it seems desirable that the immigrants should not only speak the language of the country but should know something of the history of the people among whom they have chosen to dwell. For the same reason it is important that native Americans should know the history and social life of the countries from which the immigrants come.

It is important also that every individual should share as fully as possible a fund of knowledge, experience, sentiments, and ideals common to the whole community and himself contribute to this fund. It is for this reason that we maintain and seek to maintain freedom of speech and free schools. The function of literature, including poetry, romance, and the newspaper, is to enable all to share victoriously and imaginatively in the inner life of each. The function of science is to gather up, classify, digest, and preserve, in a form in which they may become available to the community as a whole, the ideas, inventions, and technical experience of the individuals composing it. Thus not merely the possession of a common language but the wide extension of the opportunities for education become conditions of Americanization.

The immigration problem is unique in the sense that the immigrant brings divergent definitions of the situation, and this renders his participation in our activities difficult. At the same time this problem is of the same general type as the one exemplified by "syndicalism," "bolshevism," "socialism," etc., where the definition of the situation does not agree with the traditional one. The modern "social unrest," like the immigrant problem, is a sign of the lack of participation and this is true to the degree that certain elements feel that violence is the only available means of participating.

3. Assimilation and the Mediation of Individual Differences

In general, a period of unrest represents the stage in which a new definition of the situation is being prepared. Emotion and unrest are connected with situations where there is loss of control. Control is secured on the basis of habits and habits are built up on the basis of the definition of the situation. Habit represents a situation where the definition is working. When control is lost it means that the habits are no longer adequate, that the situation has changed and demands a redefinition. This is the point at which we have unrest—a heightened emotional state, random movements, unregulated behavior—and this continues until the situation is redefined. The unrest is associated with conditions in which the individual or society feels unable to act. It represents energy, and the problem is to use it constructively.

The older societies tended to treat unrest by defining the situation in terms of the suppression or postponement of the wish; they tried to make the repudiation of the wish itself a wish. "Contentment," "conformity to the will of God," ultimate "salvation" in a better world, are representative of this. The founders of America defined the situation in terms of participation, but this has actually taken too exclusively the form of "political participation." The present tendency is to define the situation in terms of social participation, including demand for the improvement of social conditions to a degree which will enable all to participate.

But, while it is important that the people who are members of the same community should have a body of common memories and a common apperception mass, so that they may talk intelligibly to one another, it is neither possible nor necessary that everything should have the same meaning for everyone. A perfectly homogeneous consciousness would mean a tendency to define all situations rigidly and sacredly and once and forever. Something like this did happen in the Slavic village communities and among all savage people, and it was the ideal of the medieval church, but it implies a low level of efficiency and a slow rate of progress.

Mankind is distinguished, in fact, from the animal world by being composed of persons of divergent types, of varied tastes and interests, of different vocations and functions. Civilization is the product of an association of widely different individuals, and with the progress of civilization the divergence in individual human types has been and must continue to be constantly multiplied. Our progress in the arts and sciences and in the creation of values in general has been dependent on specialists whose distinctive worth was precisely their divergence from other individuals. It is even evident that we have been able to use productively individuals who in a savage or peasant society would have been classed as insane—who perhaps were indeed insane.

The ability to participate productively implies thus a diversity of attitudes and values in the participants, but a diversity not so great as to lower the morals of the community and to prevent effective co-operation. It is important to have ready definitions for all immediate situations, but progress is dependent on the constant redefinitions for all immediate situations, and the ideal condition for this is the presence of individuals with divergent definitions, who contribute, in part consciously and in part unconsciously, through their individualism and labors to a common task and a common end. It is only in this way that an intelligible world, in which each can participate according to his intelligence, comes into existence. For it is only through their consequences that words get their meanings or that situations become defined. It is through conflict and co-operation, or, to use a current phrase of economists, through "competitive co-operation," that a distinctively human type of society does anywhere exist. Privacy and publicity, "society" and solitude, public ends and private enterprises, are each and all distinctive factors in human society everywhere. They are particularly characteristic of historic American democracy.

In this whole connection it appears that the group consciousness and the individual himself are formed by communication and participation, and that the communication and participation are themselves dependent for their meaning on common interests.

But it would be an error to assume that participation always implies an intimate personal, face-to-face relation. Specialists participate notably and productively in our common life, but this is evidently not on the basis of personal association with their neighbors. Darwin was assisted by Lyell, Owen, and other contemporaries in working out a new definition of the situation, but these men were not his neighbors. When Mayer worked out his theory of the transmutation of energy, his neighbors in the village of Heilbronn were so far from participating that they twice confined him in insane asylums. A postage stamp may be a more efficient instrument of participation than a village meeting.

Defining the situation with reference to the participation of the immigrant is of course not solving the problem of immigration. This involves an analysis of the whole significance of the qualitative and quantitative character of a population, with reference to any given values—standards of living, individual level of efficiency, liberty and determinism, etc. We have, for instance, in America a certain level of culture, depending, let us say as a minimum, on the perpetuation of our public-school system. But, if by some conceivable lusus naturae the birth rate was multiplied a hundred fold, or by some conceivable cataclysm a hundred million African blacks were landed annually on our eastern coast and an equal number of Chinese coolies on our western coast, then we should have neither teachers enough nor buildings enough nor material resources enough to impart even the three R's to a fraction of the population, and the outlook of democracy, so far as it is dependent upon participation, would become very dismal. On the other hand, it is conceivable that certain immigrant populations in certain numbers, with their special temperaments, endowments, and social heritages, would contribute positively and increasingly to our stock of civilization. These are questions to be determined, but certainly if the immigrant is admitted on any basis whatever the condition of his Americanization is that he shall have the widest and freest opportunity to contribute in his own way to the common fund of knowledge, ideas, and ideals which makes up the culture of our common country. It is only in this way that the immigrant can "participate" in the fullest sense of the term.

III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS

1. Assimilation and Amalgamation

The literature upon assimilation falls naturally under three main heads: (1) assimilation and amalgamation; (2) the conflict and fusion of cultures; and (3) immigration and Americanization.

Literature on assimilation is very largely a by-product of the controversy in regard to the relative superiority and inferiority of races. This controversy owes its existence, in the present century, to the publication in 1854 of Gobineau's The Inequality of Human Races. This treatise appeared at a time when the dominant peoples of Europe were engaged in extending their benevolent protection over all the "unprotected" lesser breeds, and this book offered a justification, on biological grounds, of the domination of the "inferior" by the "superior" races.

Gobineau's theory, and that of the schools which have perpetuated and elaborated his doctrines, defined culture as an essentially racial trait. Other races might accommodate themselves to, but could not originate nor maintain a superior culture. This is the aristocratic theory of the inequalities of races and, as might be expected, was received with enthusiasm by the chauvinists of the "strong" nations.

The opposing school is disposed to treat the existing civilizations as largely the result of historical accident. The superior peoples are those who have had access to the accumulated cultural materials of the peoples that preceded them. Modern Europe owes its civilization to the fact that it went to school to the ancients. The inferior peoples are those who did not have this advantage.

Ratzel was one of the first to venture the theory that the natural and the cultural peoples were fundamentally alike and that the existing differences, great as they are, were due to geographical and cultural isolation of the less advanced races. Boas' Mind of Primitive Man is the most systematic and critical statement of that view of the matter.

The discussion which these rival theories provoked has led students to closer studies of the effects of racial contacts and to a more penetrating analysis of the cultural process.

The contacts of races have invariably led to racial intermixture, and the mixed breed, as in the case of the mulatto, the result of the white-Negro cross, has tended to create a distinct cultural as well as a racial type. E. B. Reuter's volume on The Mulatto is the first serious attempt to study the mixed blood as a cultural type and define his role in the conflict of races and cultures.

Historical cases of the assimilation of one group by another are frequent. Kaindl's investigations of the German settlements in the Carpathian lands are particularly instructive. The story of the manner in which the early German settlers in Cracow, Galicia, were Polonized mainly under the influence of the Polish nobility, is all the more interesting when it is contrasted with the German colonists in the Siebenbuergen, which have remained strongholds of the German language and culture in the midst of a population of Roumanian peasants for nearly eight hundred years. Still more interesting are the recent attempts of the Prussians to Germanize the former province of Posen, now reunited to Poland. Prussia's policy of colonization of German peasants in Posen failed for several reasons, but it failed finally because the German peasant, finding himself isolated in the midst of a Polish community, either gave up the land the government had acquired for him and returned to his native German province, or identified himself with the Polish community and was thus lost to the cause of German nationalism. The whole interesting history of that episode is related in Bernard's Die Polenfrage, which is at the same time an account of the organization of an autonomous Polish community within the limits of a German state.

The competition and survival of languages affords interesting material for the study of cultural contacts and the conditions that determine assimilation. Investigations of the racial origins of European peoples have discovered a great number of curious cultural anomalies. There are peoples like the Spreewaelder who inhabit a little cultural island of about 240 miles square in the Province of Brandenburg, Prussia. Surviving remnants of a Slavic people, they still preserve their language and their tribal costumes, and, although but thirty thousand in number and surrounded by Germans, maintain a lively literary movement all their own. On the other hand, the most vigorous and powerful of the Germanic nationalities, the Prussian, bears the name of a conquered Slavic people whose language, "Old Prussian," not spoken since the seventeenth century, is preserved only in a few printed books, including a catechism and German-Prussian vocabulary, which the German philologists have rescued from oblivion.

2. The Conflict and Fusion of Cultures

The contacts and transmission of cultures have been investigated in different regions of social life under different titles. The ethnologists have investigated the process among primitive peoples under the title acculturation. Among historical peoples, on the other hand, acculturation has been called assimilation. The aim of missions has been, on the whole, to bring the world under the domination of a single moral order; but in seeking to accomplish this task they have contributed greatly to the fusion and cross-fertilization of racial and national cultures.

The problem of origin is the first and often the most perplexing problem which the study of primitive cultures presents.[248] Was a given cultural trait, i.e., a weapon, a tool, or a myth, borrowed or invented? For example, there are several independent centers of origin and propagation of the bow and arrow. Writing approached or reached perfection in at least five different, widely separated regions. Other problems of acculturation which have been studied include the following: the degree and order of transmissibility of different cultural traits; the persistence or the immunity against change of different traits; the modification of cultural traits in the process of transmission; the character of social contacts between cultural groups; the distance that divides cultural levels; and the role of prestige in stimulating imitation and copying.

The development of a world-commerce, the era of European colonization and imperial expansion in America, Asia, and Africa and Australia, the forward drive of occidental science and the Western system of large-scale competitive industry have created racial contacts, cultural changes, conflicts, and fusions of unprecedented and unforeseen extent, intensity, and immediateness. The crash of a fallen social order in Russia reverberates throughout the world; reports of the capitalization of new enterprises indicate that India is copying the economic organization of Europe; the feminist movement has invaded Japan; representatives of close to fifty nations of the earth meet in conclave in the assembly of the League of Nations.

So complete has been in recent years the interpenetration of peoples and cultures that nations are now seeking to preserve their existence not alone from assault from without by force of arms, but they are equally concerned to protect themselves from the more insidious attacks of propaganda from within. Under these circumstances the ancient liberties of speech and press are being scrutinized and questioned. Particularly is this true when this freedom of speech and press is exercised by alien peoples, who criticize our institutions in a foreign tongue and claim the right to reform native institutions before they have become citizens and even before they are able to use the native language.

3. Immigration and Americanization

The presence of large groups of foreign-born in the United States was first conceived of as a problem of immigration. From the period of the large Irish immigration to this country in the decades following 1820 each new immigrant group called forth a popular literature of protest against the evils its presence threatened. After 1890 the increasing volume of immigration and the change in the source of the immigrants from northwestern Europe to southeastern Europe intensified the general concern. In 1907 the Congress of the United States created the Immigration Commission to make "full inquiry, examination, and investigation into the subject of immigration." The plan and scope of the work as outlined by the Commission "included a study of the sources of recent immigration in Europe, the general character of incoming immigrants, the methods employed here and abroad to prevent the immigration of persons classed as undesirable in the United States immigration law, and finally a thorough investigation into the general status of the more recent immigrants as residents of the United States, and the effect of such immigration upon the institutions, industries, and people of this country." In 1910 the Commission made a report of its investigations and findings together with its conclusions and recommendations which were published in forty-one volumes.

The European War focused the attention of the country upon the problem of Americanization. The public mind became conscious of the fact that "the stranger within our gates," whether naturalized or unnaturalized, tended to maintain his loyalty to the land of his origin, even when it seemed to conflict with loyalty to the country of his sojourn or his adoption. A large number of superficial investigations called "surveys" were made of immigrant colonies in the larger cities of the country. Americanization work of many varieties developed apace. A vast literature sprang up to meet the public demand for information and instruction on this topic. In view of this situation the Carnegie Corporation of New York City undertook in 1918 a "Study of the Methods of Americanization or Fusion of Native and Foreign Born." The point of view from which the study was made may be inferred from the following statement by its director, Allen T. Burns:

Americanization is the uniting of new with native born Americans in fuller common understanding and appreciation to secure by means of self-government the highest welfare of all. Such Americanization should produce no unchangeable political, domestic, and economic regime delivered once for all to the fathers, but a growing and broadening national life, inclusive of the best wherever found. With all our rich heritages, Americanism will develop through a mutual giving and taking of contributions from both newer and older Americans in the interest of the common weal. This study will follow such an understanding of Americanization.

The study, as originally planned, was divided into ten divisions, as follows: the schooling of the immigrant, the press and the theater, adjustment of homes and family life, legal protection and correction, health standards and care, naturalization and political life, industrial and economic amalgamation, treatment of immigrant heritages, neighborhood agencies, and rural developments. The findings of these different parts of the study are presented in separate volumes.

This is the most recent important survey-investigation of the immigrant, although there are many less imposing but significant studies in this field. Among these are the interesting analyses of the assimilation process in Julius Drachsler's Democracy and Assimilation and in A. M. Dushkin's study of Jewish Education in New York City.

The natural history of assimilation may be best studied in personal narratives and documents, such as letters and autobiographies, or in monographs upon urban and rural immigrant communities. In recent years a series of personal narrative and autobiographical sketches have revealed the intimate personal aspects of the assimilation process. The expectancy and disillusionment of the first experiences, the consequent nostalgia and homesickness, gradual accommodation to the new situation, the first participations in American life, the fixation of wishes in the opportunities of the American social environment, the ultimate identification of the person with the memories, sentiments, and future of his adopted country—all these steps in assimilation are portrayed in such interesting books as The Far Journey by Abraham Rihbany, The Promised Land by Mary Antin, Out of the Shadow by Rose Cohen, An American in the Making by M. E. Ravage, My Mother and I by E. C. Stern.

The most reflective use of personal documents for the study of the problems of the immigrant has been made by Thomas and Znaniecki in The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. In these studies letters and life-histories have been, for the first time, methodically employed to exhibit the processes of adjustment in the transition from a European peasant village to the immigrant colony of an American industrial community.

The work of Thomas and Znaniecki is in a real sense a study of the Polish community in Europe and America. Less ambitious studies have been made of individual immigrant communities. Several religious communities composed of isolated and unassimilated groups, such as the German Mennonites, have been intensively studied.

Materials valuable for the study of certain immigrant communities, assembled for quite other purposes, are contained in the almanacs, yearbooks, and local histories of the various immigrant communities. The most interesting of these are the Jewish Communal Register of New York and the studies made by the Norwegian Lutheran Church in America under the direction of O. M. Norlie.[249]

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. ASSIMILATION AND AMALGAMATION

A. The Psychology and Sociology of Assimilation

(1) Wundt, Wilhelm. "Bermerkungen zur Associationslehre," Philosophische Studien, VII (1892), 329-61. ["Complication und Assimilation," pp. 334-53.]

(2) ——. Grundzuege der physiologischen Psychologie. "Assimilationen," III, 528-35. 5th ed. Leipzig, 1903.

(3) Ward, James. "Association and Assimilation," Mind, N.S., II (1893), 347-62; III (1894), 509-32.

(4) Baldwin, J. Mark. Mental Development in the Child and the Race. Methods and processes. "Assimilation, Recognition," pp. 308-19. New York, 1895.

(5) Novicow, J. Les Luttes entre societes humaines et leur phases successives. Book II, chap. vii, "La Denationalisation," pp. 125-53. Paris, 1893. [Definition of denationalization.]

(6) Ratzenhofer, Gustav. Die sociologische Erkenntnis, pp. 41-42. Leipzig, 1898.

(7) Park, Robert E. "Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups with Particular Reference to the Negro," American Journal of Sociology, XIX (1913-14), 606-23.

(8) Simons, Sarah E. "Social Assimilation," American Journal of Sociology, VI (1900-1901), 790-822; VII (1901-2), 53-79, 234-48, 386-404, 539-56. [Bibliography.]

(9) Jenks, Albert E. "Assimilation in the Philippines as Interpreted in Terms of Assimilation in America," Publications of the American Sociological Society, VIII (1913), 140-58.

(10) McKenzie, F. A. "The Assimilation of the American Indian," Publications of the American Sociological Society, VIII (1913), 37-48. [Bibliography.]

(11) Ciszewski, S. Kunstliche Verwandschaft bei den Suedslaven. Leipzig, 1897.

(12) Windisch, H. Taufe und Suende im aeltesten Christentum bis auf Origines. Ein Beitrag zur altchristlichen Dogmengeschichte. Tuebingen, 1908.

B. Assimilation and Amalgamation

(1) Gumplowicz, Ludwig. Der Rassenkampf. Sociologische Untersuchungen, sec. 38, "Wie die Amalgamirung vor sich geht," pp. 253-63. Innsbruck, 1883.

(2) Commons, John R. Races and Immigrants in America. Chap. ix, "Amalgamation and Assimilation," pp. 198-238. New ed. New York, 1920. [See also pp. 17-21.]

(3) Ripley, William Z. The Races of Europe. A sociological study. Chap. ii, "Language, Nationality, and Race," pp. 15-36. Chap. xviii, "European Origins: Race and Culture," pp. 486-512. New York, 1899.

(4) Fischer, Eugen. Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen. Anthropologische und ethnographische Studien am Rehobother Bastardvolk in Deutsch-Suedwest Afrika. Jena, 1913.

(5) Mayo-Smith, Richmond. "Theories of Mixture of Races and Nationalities," Yale Review, III (1894), 166-86.

(6) Smith, G. Elliot. "The Influence of Racial Admixture in Egypt," Eugenics Review, VII (1915-16), 163-83.

(7) Reuter, E. B. The Mulatto in the United States. Including a study of the role of mixed-blood races throughout the world. Boston, 1918.

(8) Weatherly, Ulysses G. "The Racial Element in Social Assimilation," Publications of the American Sociological Society, V (1910), 57-76.

(9) ——. "Race and Marriage," American Journal of Sociology, XV (1909-10), 433-53.

(10) Roosevelt, Theodore. "Brazil and the Negro," Outlook, CVI (1904), 409-11.

II. THE CONFLICT AND FUSION OF CULTURES

A. Process of Acculturation

(1) Ratzel, Friedrich. The History of Mankind. Vol. I, Book I, sec. 4, "Nature, Rise and Spread of Civilization," pp. 20-30. Vol. II, Book II, sec. 31, "Origin and Development of the Old American Civilization," pp. 160-70. Translated from the 2d German ed. by A. J. Butler. 3 vols. London, 1896-98.

(2) Rivers, W. H. R. "The Ethnological Analysis of Culture," Report of the 81st Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1911, pp. 490-99.

(3) Frobenius, L. Der Ursprung der afrikanischen Kulturen. Berlin, 1898.

(4) Boas, Franz. The Mind of Primitive Man. Chap. vi, "The Universality of Cultural Traits," pp. 155-73. Chap. vii, "The Evolutionary Viewpoint," pp. 174-96. New York, 1911.

(5) Vierkandt, A. Die Stetigkeit im Kulturwandel. Eine sociologische Studie. Leipzig, 1908.

(6) McGee, W. J. "Piratical Acculturation," American Anthropologist, XI (1898), 243-51.

(7) Crooke, W. "Method of Investigation and Folklore Origins," Folklore, XXIV (1913), 14-40.

(8) Graebner, F. "Die melanesische Bogenkultur und ihre Verwandten," Anthropos, IV (1909), 726-80, 998-1032.

(9) Lowie, Robert H. "On the Principle of Convergence in Ethnology," Journal of American Folklore, XXV (1912), 24-42.

(10) Goldenweiser, A. A. "The Principle of Limited Possibilities in the Development of Culture," Journal of American Folklore, XXVI (1913), 259-90.

(11) Dixon, R. B. "The Independence of the Culture of the American Indian," Science, N.S., XXXV (1912), 46-55.

(12) Johnson, W. Folk-Memory. Or the continuity of British archaeology. Oxford, 1908.

(13) Wundt, Wilhelm. Voelkerpsychologie. Eine Untersuchung der Entwicklungsgesetze von Sprache, Mythus, und Sitte. Band I, "Die Sprache." 3 vols. Leipzig, 1900-1909.

(14) Tarde, Gabriel. The Laws of Imitation. Translated from the 2d French ed. by Elsie Clews Parsons. New York, 1903.

B. Nationalization and Denationalization

(1) Bauer, Otto. Die Nationalitaetenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie. Wien, 1907. Chap. vi, sec. 30, "Der Sozialismus und das Nationalitaetsprinzip," pp. 507-21. (In: Adler, M. and Hildering, R. Marx-Studien; Blaetter zur Theorie und Politik des wissenschaftlichen Sozialismus. Band II. Wien, 1904.

(2) Kerner, R. J. Slavic Europe. A selected bibliography in the western European languages, comprising history, languages, and literature. "The Slavs and Germanization," Nos. 2612-13, pp. 193-95. Cambridge, Mass., 1918.

(3) Delbrueck, Hans. "Das Polenthum," Preussische Jahrbuecher, LXXVI (April, 1894), 173-86.

(4) Warren, H. C. "Social Forces and International Ethics," International Journal of Ethics, XXVII (1917), 350-56.

(5) Prince, M. "A World Consciousness and Future Peace," Journal of Abnormal Psychology, XI (1917), 287-304.

(6) Reich, Emil. General History of Western Nations, from 5000 B.C. to 1900 A.D. "Europeanization of Humanity," pp. 33-65, 480-82. (Vols. I-II published.) London, 1908.

(7) Thomas, William I. "The Prussian-Polish Situation: an Experiment in Assimilation," American Journal of Sociology, XIX (1913-14), 624-39.

(8) Parkman, Francis. Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian Wars after the Conquest of Canada. 8th ed., 2 vols. Boston, 1877. [Discusses the cultural effects of the mingling of French and Indians in Canada.]

(9) Moore, William H. The Clash. A study in nationalities. New York, 1919. [French and English cultural contacts in Canada.]

(10) Mayo-Smith, Richmond. "Assimilation of Nationalities in the United States," Political Science Quarterly, IX (1894), 426-44, 649-70.

(11) Kelly, J. Liddell. "New Race in the Making; Many Nationalities in the Territory of Hawaii—Process of Fusion Proceeding—the Coming Pacific Race," Westminster Review, CLXXV (1911), 357-66.

(12) Kallen, H. M. Structure of Lasting Peace. An inquiry into the motives of war and peace. Boston, 1918.

(13) Westermarck, Edward. "Finland and the Czar," Contemporary Review, LXXV (1899), 652-59.

(14) Brandes, Georg. "Denmark and Germany," Contemporary Review, LXXVI (1899), 92-104.

(15) Marvin, Francis S. The Unity of Western Civilization. Essays. London and New York, 1915.

(16) Fishberg, Maurice. The Jews: a Study in Race and Environment. London and New York, 1911. [Chap. xxii deals with assimilation versus nationalism.]

(17) Bailey, W. F., and Bates, Jean V. "The Early German Settlers in Transylvania," Fortnightly Review, CVII (1917), 661-74.

(18) Auerbach, Bertrand. Les Races et les nationalites en Autriche-Hongrie. Paris, 1898.

(19) Cunningham, William. Alien Immigrants to England. London and New York, 1897.

(20) Kaindl, Raimund Friedrich. Geschichte der Deutschen in den Karpathenlaendern. Vol. I, "Geschichte der Deutschen in Galizien bis 1772." 3 vols. in 2. Gotha, 1907-11.

C. Missions

(1) Moore, Edward C. The Spread of Christianity in the Modern World. Chicago, 1919. [Bibliography.]

(2) World Missionary Conference. Report of the World Missionary Conference, 1910. 9 vols. Chicago, 1910.

(3) Robinson, Charles H. History of Christian Missions. New York, 1915.

(4) Speer, Robert E. Missions and Modern History. A study of the missionary aspects of some great movements of the nineteenth century. 2 vols. New York, 1904.

(5) Warneck, Gustav. Outline of a History of Protestant Missions from the Reformation to the Present Time. A contribution to modern church history. Translated from the German by George Robson. Chicago, 1901.

(6) Creighton, Louise. Missions. Their rise and development. New York, 1912. [Bibliography.]

(7) Pascoe, C. F. Two Hundred Years of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 1701-1900. Based on a digest of the Society's records. London, 1901.

(8) Parkman, Francis. The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century. Part II. "France and England in North America." Boston, 1902.

(9) Bryce, James. Impressions of South Africa. Chap. xxii, "Missions," pp. 384-93. 3d ed. New York, 1900.

(10) Sumner, W. G. Folkways. "Missions and Antagonistic Mores," pp. 111-14, 629-31. New York, 1906.

(11) Coffin, Ernest W. "On the Education of Backward Races," Pedagogical Seminary, XV (1908), 1-62. [Bibliography.]

(12) Blackmar, Frank W. Spanish Colonization in the South West. "The Mission System," pp. 28-48. "Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science." Baltimore, 1890.

(13) Johnston, Harry H. George Grenfell and the Congo. A history and description of the Congo Independent State and adjoining districts of Congoland, together with some account of the native peoples and their languages, the fauna and flora, and similar notes on the Cameroons, and the Island of Fernando Po, the whole founded on the diaries and researches of the late Rev. George Grenfell, B.M.S., F.R.S.G.; and on the records of the British Baptist Missionary society; and on additional information contributed by the author, by the Rev. Lawson Forfeitt, Mr. Emil Torday, and others. 2 vols. London, 1908.

(14) Kingsley, Mary H. West African Studies. Pp. 107-9, 272-75. 2d ed. London, 1901.

(15) Morel, E. D. Affairs of West Africa. Chaps. xxii-xxiii, "Islam in West Africa," pp. 208-37. London, 1902.

(16) Sapper, Karl. "Der Charakter der mittelamerikanischen Indianer," Globus, LXXXVII (1905), 128-31.

(17) Fleming, Daniel J. Devolution in Mission Administration. As exemplified by the legislative history of five American missionary societies in India. New York, 1916. [Bibliography.]

III. IMMIGRATION AND AMERICANIZATION

A. Immigration and the Immigrant

(1) United States Immigration Commission. Reports of the Immigration Commission. 41 vols. Washington, 1911.

(2) Lauck, William J., and Jenks, Jeremiah. The Immigration Problem. New York, 1912.

(3) Commons, John R. Races and Immigrants in America. New ed. New York, 1920.

(4) Fairchild, Henry P. Immigration. A world-movement and its American significance. New York, 1913. [Bibliography.]

(5) Ross, E. A. The Old World in the New. The significance of past and present immigration to the American people. New York, 1914.

(6) Abbott, Grace. The Immigrant and the Community. With an introduction by Judge Julian W. Mack. New York, 1917.

(7) Steiner, Edward A. On the Trail of the Immigrant. New York, 1906.

(8) ——. The Immigrant Tide, Its Ebb and Flow. Chicago, 1909.

(9) Brandenburg, Broughton. Imported Americans. The story of the experiences of a disguised American and his wife studying the immigration question. New York, 1904.

(10) Kapp, Friedrich. Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the State of New York. New York, 1880.

B. Immigrant Communities

(1) Faust, Albert B. The German Element in the United States. With special reference to its political, moral, social, and educational influence. New York, 1909.

(2) Green, Samuel S. The Scotch-Irish in America, 1895. A paper read as the report of the Council of the American Antiquarian Society, at the semi-annual meeting, April 24, 1895, with correspondence called out by the paper. Worcester, Mass., 1895.

(3) Hanna, Charles A. The Scotch-Irish. Or the Scot in North Britain, North Ireland, and North America. New York and London, 1902.

(4) Jewish Publication Society of America. The American Jewish Yearbook. Philadelphia, 1899.

(5) Jewish Communal Register, 1917-1918. 2d ed. Edited and published by the Kehillah (Jewish Community) of New York City. New York, 1919.

(6) Balch, Emily G. Our Slavic Fellow Citizens. New York, 1910.

(7) Horak, Jakub. Assimilation of Czechs in Chicago. [In press.]

(8) Millis, Harry A. The Japanese Problem in the United States. An investigation for the Commission on Relations with Japan appointed by the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. New York, 1915.

(9) Fairchild, Henry P. Greek Immigration to the United States. New Haven, 1911.

(10) Burgess, Thomas. Greeks in America. An account of their coming, progress, customs, living, and aspirations; with a historical introduction and the stories of some famous American-Greeks. Boston, 1913.

(11) Coolidge, Mary R. Chinese Immigration. New York, 1909.

(12) Foerster, Robert F. The Italian Emigration of Our Times. Cambridge, Mass., 1919.

(13) Lord, Eliot, Trenor, John J. D., and Barrows, Samuel J. The Italian in America. New York, 1905.

(14) DuBois, W. E. Burghardt. The Philadelphia Negro, A Social Study. Together with a special report on domestic service by Isabel Eaton. "Publications of the University of Pennsylvania, Series in Political Economy and Public Law," No. 14. Philadelphia, 1899.

(15) Williams, Daniel J. The Welsh of Columbus, Ohio. A study in adaptation and assimilation. Oshkosh, Wis., 1913.

C. Americanization

(1) Drachsler, Julius. Democracy and Assimilation. The blending of immigrant heritages in America. New York, 1920. [Bibliography.]

(2) Dushkin, Alexander M. Jewish Education in New York City. New York, 1918.

(3) Thompson, Frank V. Schooling of the Immigrant. New York, 1920.

(4) Daniels, John. America via the Neighborhood. New York, 1920.

(5) Park, Robert E., and Miller, Herbert A. Old World Traits Transplanted. New York, 1921.

(6) Speek, Peter A. A Stake in the Land. New York, 1921.

(7) Davis, Michael M. Immigrant Health and the Community. New York, 1921.

(8) Breckinridge, Sophonisba P. New Homes for Old. New York, 1921.

(9) Leiserson, William M. Adjusting Immigrant and Industry. [In press.]

(10) Gavit, John P. Americans by Choice. [In press.]

(11) Claghorn, Kate H. The Immigrant's Day in Court. [In press.]

(12) Park, Robert E. The Immigrant Press and Its Control. [In press.] New York, 1921.

(13) Burns, Allen T. Summary of the Americanization Studies of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. [In press.]

(14) Miller, Herbert A. The School and the Immigrant. Cleveland Education Survey. Cleveland, 1916.

(15) Kallen, Horace M. "Democracy versus the Melting-Pot, a Study of American Nationality." Nation, C (1915), 190-94, 217-20.

(16) Gulick, Sidney L. American Democracy and Asiatic Citizenship. New York, 1918.

(17) Talbot, Winthrop, editor. Americanization. Principles of Americanism; essentials of Americanization; technic of race-assimilation. New York, 1917. [Annotated bibliography.]

(18) Stead, W. T. The Americanization of the World. Or the trend of the twentieth century. New York and London, 1901.

(19) Aronovici, Carol. Americanization. St. Paul, 1919. [Also in American Journal of Sociology, XXV (1919-20), 695-730.]

D. Personal Documents

(1) Bridges, Horace. On Becoming an American. Some meditations of a newly naturalized immigrant. Boston, 1919.

(2) Riis, Jacob A. The Making of an American. New York, 1901.

(3) Rihbany, Abraham Mitrie. A Far Journey. Boston, 1914.

(4) Hasanovitz, Elizabeth. One of Them. Chapters from a passionate autobiography. Boston, 1918.

(5) Cohen, Rose. Out of the Shadow. New York, 1918.

(6) Ravage, M. E. An American in the Making. The life-story of an immigrant. New York, 1917.

(7) Cahan, Abraham. The Rise of David Levinsky. A novel. New York, 1917.

(8) Antin, Mary. The Promised Land. New York, 1912.

(9) ——. They Who Knock at Our Gates. A complete gospel of immigration. New York, 1914.

(10) Washington, Booker T. Up from Slavery. An autobiography. New York, 1901.

(11) Steiner, Edward A. From Alien to Citizen. The story of my life in America. New York, 1914.

(12) Stern, Mrs. Elizabeth Gertrude (Levin). My Mother and I. New York, 1919.

(13) DuBois, W. E. Burghardt. Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil. New York, 1920.

(14) ——. The Souls of Black Folk. Essays and sketches. Chicago, 1903.

(15) Hapgood, Hutchins. The Spirit of the Ghetto. Studies of the Jewish quarter in New York. Rev. ed. New York, 1909.

TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES

1. Race and Culture, and the Problem of the Relative Superiority and Inferiority of Races.

2. The Relation of Assimilation to Amalgamation.

3. The Mulatto as a Cultural Type.

4. Language as a Means of Assimilation and a Basis of National Solidarity.

5. History and Literature as Means for Preserving National Solidarity.

6. Race Prejudice and Segregation in Their Relations to Assimilation and Accommodation.

7. Domestic Slavery and the Assimilation of the Negro.

8. A Study of Historical Experiments in Denationalization; the Germanization of Posen, the Russianization of Poland, the Japanese Policy in Korea, etc.

9. The "Melting-Pot" versus "Hyphen" in Their Relation to Americanization.

10. A Study of Policies, Programs, and Experiments in Americanization from the Standpoint of Sociology.

11. The Immigrant Community as a Means of Americanization.

12. The Process of Assimilation as Revealed in Personal Documents, as Antin, The Promised Land; Rihbany, A Far Journey; Ravage, An American in the Making; etc.

13. Foreign Missions and Native Cultures.

14. The Role of Assimilation and Accommodation in the Personal Development of the Individual Man.

15. Assimilation and Accommodation in Their Relations to the Educational Process.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What do you understand Simons to mean by the term "assimilation"?

2. What is the difference between amalgamation and assimilation?

3. How are assimilation and amalgamation interrelated?

4. What do you consider to be the difference between Trotter's explanation of human evolution and that of Crile?

5. What do you understand Trotter to mean by the gregarious instinct as a mechanism controlling conduct?

6. Of what significance is the distinction made by Trotter between (a) the three individual instincts, and (b) the gregarious instincts?

7. What is the significance of material and non-material cultural elements for the study of race contact and intermixture?

8. How do you explain the difference in rapidity of assimilation of the various types of cultural elements?

9. What factors promoted and impeded the extension of Roman culture in Gaul?

10. What social factors were involved in the origin of the French language?

11. To what extent does the extension of a cultural language involve assimilation?

12. In what sense do the cultural languages compete with each other?

13. Do you agree with the prediction that within a century English will be the vernacular of a quarter of the people of the world? Justify your position.

14. Does Park's definition of assimilation differ from that of Simons?

15. What do you understand Park to mean when he says, "Social institutions are not founded in similarities any more than they are founded in differences, but in relations, and in the mutual interdependence of the parts"? What is the relation of this principle to the process of assimilation?

16. What do you understand to be the difference between the type of assimilation (a) that makes for group solidarity and corporate action, and (b) that makes for formal like-mindedness? What conditions favor the one or the other type of assimilation?

17. What do you understand by the term "Americanization"?

18. Is there a difference between Americanization and Prussianization?

19. With what programs of Americanization are you familiar? Are they adequate from the standpoint of the sociological interpretation of assimilation?

20. In what way is language both a means and a product of assimilation?

21. What is meant by the phrases "apperception mass," "universes of discourse," and "definitions of the situations"? What is their significance for assimilation?

22. In what way does assimilation involve the mediation of individual differences?

23. Does the segregation of immigrants make for or against assimilation?

24. In what ways do primary and secondary contacts, imitation and suggestion, competition, conflict and accommodation, enter into the process of assimilation?

FOOTNOTES:

[241] Adapted from Sarah E. Simons, "Social Assimilation," in the American Journal of Sociology, VI (1901), 790-801.

[242] Adapted from W. Trotter, "Herd Instinct," in the Sociological Review, I (1908), 231-42.

[243] From W. H. R. Rivers, "The Ethnological Analysis of Culture," in Nature, LXXXVII (1911), 358-60.

[244] From John H. Cornyn, "French Language," in the Encyclopedia Americana, XI (1919), 646-47.

[245] Adapted from E. H. Babbitt, "The Geography of the Great Languages," in World's Work, XV (1907-8), 9903-7.

[246] From Robert E. Park, "Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups," in the Publications of the American Sociological Society, VIII (1914), 66-72.

[247] The three selections under this heading are adapted from Memorandum on Americanization, prepared by the Division of Immigrant Heritages, of the Study of Methods of Americanization, of the Carnegie Corporation, New York City, 1919.

[248] See chap. i, pp. 16-24.

[249] See Menighetskalenderen. (Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Publishing Co. 1917.)



CHAPTER XII

SOCIAL CONTROL

I. INTRODUCTION

1. Social Control Defined

Social control has been studied, but, in the wide extension that sociology has given to the term, it has not been defined. All social problems turn out finally to be problems of social control. In the introductory chapter to this volume social problems were divided into three classes: Problems (a) of administration, (b) of policy and polity, (c) of social forces and human nature.[250] Social control may be studied in each one of these categories. It is with social forces and human nature that sociology is mainly concerned. Therefore it is from this point of view that social control will be considered in this chapter.

In the four preceding chapters the process of interaction, in its four typical forms, competition, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation, has been analyzed and described. The community and the natural order within the limits of the community, it appeared, are an effect of competition. Social control and the mutual subordination of individual members to the community have their origin in conflict, assume definite organized forms in the process of accommodation, and are consolidated and fixed in assimilation.

Through the medium of these processes, a community assumes the form of a society. Incidentally, however, certain definite and quite spontaneous forms of social control are developed. These forms are familiar under various titles: tradition, custom, folkways, mores, ceremonial, myth, religious and political beliefs, dogmas and creeds, and finally public opinion and law. In this chapter it is proposed to define a little more accurately certain of these typical mechanisms through which social groups are enabled to act. In the chapter on "Collective Behavior" which follows, materials will be presented to exhibit the group in action.

It is in action that the mechanisms of control are created, and the materials under the title "Collective Behavior" are intended to illustrate the stages, (a) social unrest, (b) mass movements, (c) institutions in which society is formed and reformed. Finally, in the chapter on "Progress," the relation of social change to social control will be discussed and the role of science and collective representations in the direction of social changes indicated.

The most obvious fact about social control is the machinery by which laws are made and enforced, that is, the legislature, the courts, and the police. When we think of social control, therefore, these are the images in which we see it embodied and these are the terms in which we seek to define it.

It is not quite so obvious that legislation and the police must, in the long run, have the support of public opinion. Hume's statement that governments, even the most despotic, have nothing but opinion to support them, cannot be accepted without some definition of terms, but it is essentially correct. Hume included under opinion what we would distinguish from it, namely, the mores. He might have added, using opinion in this broad sense, that the governed, no matter how numerous, are helpless unless they too are united by "opinion."

A king or a political "boss," having an army or apolitical "machine" at his command, can do much. It is possible, also, to confuse or mislead public opinion, but neither the king nor the boss will, if he be wise, challenge the mores and the common sense of the community.

Public opinion and the mores, however, representing as they do the responses of the community to changing situations, are themselves subject to change and variation. They are based, however, upon what we have called fundamental human nature, that is, certain traits which in some form or other are reproduced in every form of society.

During the past seventy years the various tribes, races, and nationalities of mankind have been examined in detail by the students of ethnology, and a comparison of the results shows that the fundamental patterns of life and behavior are everywhere the same, whether among the ancient Greeks, the modern Italians, the Asiatic Mongols, the Australian blacks, or the African Hottentots. All have a form of family life, moral and legal regulations, a religious system, a form of government, artistic practices, and so forth. An examination of the moral code of any given group, say the African Kaffirs, will disclose many identities with that of any other given group, say the Hebrews. All groups have such "commandments" as "Honor thy father and mother," "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal." Formerly it was assumed that this similarity was the result of borrowing between groups. When Bastian recorded a Hawaiian myth resembling the one of Orpheus and Eurydice, there was speculation as to how this story had been carried so far from Greece. But it is now recognized that similarities of culture are due, in the main, not to imitation, but to parallel development. The nature of man is everywhere essentially the same and tends to express itself everywhere in similar sentiments and institutions.[251]

There are factors in social control more fundamental than the mores. Herbert Spencer, in his chapter on "Ceremonial Government," has defined social control from this more fundamental point of view. In that chapter he refers to "the modified forms of action caused in men by the presence of their fellows" as a form of control "out of which other more definite controls are evolved." The spontaneous responses of one individual to the presence of another which are finally fixed, conventionalized, and transmitted as social ritual constitute that "primitive undifferentiated kind of government from which political and religious government are differentiated, and in which they continue immersed."

In putting this emphasis upon ceremonial and upon those forms of behavior which spring directly and spontaneously out of the innate and instinctive responses of the individual to a social situation, Spencer is basing government on the springs of action which are fundamental, so far, at any rate, as sociology is concerned.

2. Classification of the Materials

The selections on social control have been classified under three heads: (a) elementary forms of social control, (b) public opinion, and (c) institutions. This order of the readings indicates the development of control from its spontaneous forms in the crowd, in ceremony, prestige, and taboo; its more explicit expression in gossip, rumor, news, and public opinion; to its more formal organization in law, dogma, and in religious and political institutions. Ceremonial, public opinion, and law are characteristic forms in which social life finds expression as well as a means by which the actions of the individual are co-ordinated and collective impulses are organized so that they issue in behavior, that is, either (a) primarily expressive—play, for example—or (b) positive action.

A very much larger part of all human behavior than we ordinarily imagine is merely expressive. Art, play, religious exercises, and political activity are either wholly or almost wholly forms of expression, and have, therefore, that symbolic and ceremonial character which belongs especially to ritual and to art, but is characteristic of every activity carried on for its own sake. Only work, action which has some ulterior motive or is performed from a conscious sense of duty, falls wholly and without reservation into the second class.

a) Elementary forms of social control.—Control in the crowd, where rapport is once established and every individual is immediately responsive to every other, is the most elementary form of control.

Something like this same direct and spontaneous response of the individual in the crowd to the crowd's dominant mood or impulse may be seen in the herd and the flock, the "animal crowd."

Under the influence of the vague sense of alarm, or merely as an effect of heat and thirst, cattle become restless and begin slowly moving about in circles, "milling." This milling is a sort of collective gesture, an expression of discomfort or of fear. But the very expression of the unrest tends to intensify its expression and so increases the tension in the herd. This continues up to the point where some sudden sound, the firing of a pistol or a flash of lightning, plunges the herd into a wild stampede.

Milling in the herd is a visible image of what goes on in subtler and less obvious ways in human societies. Alarms or discomforts frequently provoke social unrest. The very expression of this unrest tends to magnify it. The situation is a vicious circle. Every attempt to deal with it merely serves to aggravate it. Such a vicious circle we witnessed in our history from 1830 to 1861, when every attempt to deal with slavery served only to bring the inevitable conflict between the states nearer. Finally there transpired what had for twenty years been visibly preparing and the war broke.

Tolstoi in his great historical romance, War and Peace, describes, in a manner which no historian has equaled, the events that led up to the Franco-Russian War of 1812, and particularly the manner in which Napoleon, in spite of his efforts to avoid it, was driven by social forces over which he had no control to declare war on Russia, and so bring about his own downfall.

The condition under which France was forced by Bismarck to declare war on Prussia in 1870, and the circumstances under which Austria declared war on Serbia in 1914 and so brought on the world-war, exhibit the same fatal circle. In both cases, given the situation, the preparations that had been made, the resolutions formed and the agreements entered into, it seems clear that after a certain point had been reached every move was forced.

This is the most fundamental and elementary form of control. It is the control exercised by the mere play of elemental forces. These forces may, to a certain extent, be manipulated, as is true of other natural forces; but within certain limits, human nature being what it is, the issue is fatally determined, just as, given the circumstances and the nature of cattle, a stampede is inevitable. Historical crises are invariably created by processes which, looked at abstractly, are very much like milling in a herd. The vicious circle is the so-called "psychological factor" in financial depressions and panics and is, indeed, a factor in all collective action.

The effect of this circular form of interaction is to increase the tensions in the group and, by creating a state of expectancy, to mobilize its members for collective action. It is like the attention in the individual: it is the way in which the group prepares to act.

Back of every other form of control—ceremonial, public opinion, or law—there is always this interaction of the elementary social forces. What we ordinarily mean by social control, however, is the arbitrary intervention of some individual—official, functionary, or leader—in the social process. A policeman arrests a criminal, an attorney sways the jury with his eloquence, the judge passes sentence; these are the familiar formal acts in which social control manifests itself. What makes the control exercised in this way social, in the strict sense of that term, is the fact that these acts are supported by custom, law, and public opinion.

The distinction between control in the crowd and in other forms of society is that the crowd has no tradition. It has no point of reference in its own past to which its members can refer for guidance. It has therefore neither symbols, ceremonies, rites, nor ritual; it imposes no obligations and creates no loyalties.

Ceremonial is one method of reviving in the group a lively sense of the past. It is a method of reinstating the excitements and the sentiments which inspired an earlier collective action. The savage war dance is a dramatic representation of battle and as such serves to rouse and reawaken the warlike spirit. This is one way in which ceremonial becomes a means of control. By reviving the memories of an earlier war, it mobilizes the warriors for a new one.

Ernst Grosse, in The Beginnings of Art, has stated succinctly what has impressed all first-hand observers, namely, the important role which the dance plays in the lives of primitive peoples.

The dances of the hunting peoples are, as a rule, mass dances. Generally the men of the tribe, not rarely the members of several tribes, join in the exercises, and the whole assemblage then moves according to one law in one time. All who have described the dances have referred again and again to this "wonderful" unison of the movements. In the heat of the dance the several participants are fused together as into a single being, which is stirred and moved as by one feeling. During the dance they are in a condition of complete social unification, and the dancing group feels and acts like a single organism. The social significance of the primitive dance lies precisely in this effect of social unification. It brings and accustoms a number of men who, in their loose and precarious conditions of life, are driven irregularly hither and thither by different individual needs and desires, to act under one impulse with one feeling for one object. It introduces order and connection, at least occasionally, into the rambling, fluctuating life of the hunting tribes. It is, besides wars, perhaps the only factor that makes their solidarity vitally perceptible to the adherents of a primitive tribe, and it is at the same time one of the best preparations for war, for the gymnastic dances correspond in more than one respect to our military exercises. It would be hard to overestimate the importance of the primitive dance in the culture development of mankind. All higher civilization is conditioned upon the uniformly ordered co-operation of individual social elements, and primitive men are trained to this co-operation by the dance.[252]

The dance, which is so characteristic and so universal a feature of the life of primitive man—at once a mode of collective expression and of collective representation—is but a conventionalized form of the circular reaction, which in its most primitive form is represented by the milling of the herd.

b) Public opinion.—We ordinarily think of public opinion as a sort of social weather. At certain times, and under certain circumstances, we observe strong, steady currents of opinion, moving apparently in a definite direction and toward a definite goal. At other times, however, we note flurries and eddies and counter-currents in this movement. Every now and then there are storms, shifts, or dead calms. These sudden shifts in public opinion, when expressed in terms of votes, are referred to by the politicians as "landslides."

In all these movements, cross-currents and changes in direction which a closer observation of public opinion reveals, it is always possible to discern, but on a much grander scale, to be sure, that same type of circular reaction which we have found elsewhere, whenever the group was preparing to act. Always in the public, as in the crowd, there will be a circle, sometimes wider, sometimes narrower, within which individuals are mutually responsive to motives and interests of one another, so that out of this interplay of social forces there may emerge at any time a common motive and a common purpose that will dominate the whole.

Within the circle of the mutual influence described, there will be no such complete rapport and no such complete domination of the individual by the group as exists in a herd or a crowd in a state of excitement, but there will be sufficient community of interest to insure a common understanding. A public is, in fact, organized on the basis of a universe of discourse, and within the limits of this universe of discourse, language, statements of fact, news will have, for all practical purposes, the same meanings. It is this circle of mutual influence within which there is a universe of discourse that defines the limits of the public.

A public like the crowd is not to be conceived as a formal organization like a parliament or even a public meeting. It is always the widest area over which there is conscious participation and consensus in the formation of public opinion. The public has not only a circumference, but it has a center. Within the area within which there is participation and consensus there is always a focus of attention around which the opinions of the individuals which compose the public seem to revolve. This focus of attention, under ordinary circumstances, is constantly shifting. The shifts of attention of the public constitute what is meant by the changes in public opinion. When these changes take a definite direction and have or seem to have a definite goal, we call the phenomenon a social movement. If it were possible to plot this movement in the form of maps and graphs, it would be possible to show movement in two dimensions. There would be, for example, a movement in space. The focus of public opinion, the point namely at which there is the greatest "intensity" of opinion, tends to move from one part of the country to another.[253] In America these movements, for reasons that could perhaps be explained historically, are likely to be along the meridians, east and west, rather than north and south. In the course of this geographical movement of public opinion, however, we are likely to observe changes in intensity and changes in direction (devagation).

Changes in intensity seem to be in direct proportion to the area over which opinion on a given issue may be said to exist. In minorities opinion is uniformly more intense than it is in majorities and this is what gives minorities so much greater influence in proportion to their numbers than majorities. While changes in intensity have a definite relation to the area over which public opinion on an issue may be said to exist, the devagations of public opinion, as distinguished from the trend, will probably turn out to have a direct relation to the character of the parties that participate. Area as applied to public opinion will have to be measured eventually in terms of social rather than geographical distance, that is to say, in terms of isolation and contact. The factor of numbers is also involved in any such calculation. Geographical area, communication, and the number of persons involved are in general the factors that would determine the concept "area" as it is used here. If party spirit is strong the general direction or trend of public opinion will probably be intersected by shifts and sudden transient changes in direction, and these shifts will be in proportion to the intensity of the party spirit. Charles E. Merriam's recent study of political parties indicates that the minority parties formulate most of the legislation in the United States.[254] This is because there is not very great divergence in the policies of the two great parties and party struggles are fought out on irrelevant issues. So far as this is true it insures against any sudden change in policy. New legislation is adopted in response to the trend of public opinion, rather than in response to the devagations and sudden shifts brought about by the development of a radical party spirit.

All these phenomena may be observed, for example, in the Prohibition Movement. Dicey's study of Law and Public Opinion in England showed that while the direction of opinion in regard to specific issues had been very irregular, on the whole the movement had been in one general direction. The trend of public opinion is the name we give to this general movement. In defining the trend, shifts, cross-currents, and flurries are not considered. When we speak of the tendency or direction of public opinion we usually mean the trend over a definite period of time.

When the focus of public attention ceases to move and shift, when it is fixed, the circle which defines the limits of the public is narrowed. As the circle narrows, opinion itself becomes more intense and concentrated. This is the phenomenon of crisis. It is at this point that the herd stampedes.

The effect of crisis is invariably to increase the dangers of precipitate action. The most trivial incident, in such periods of tension, may plunge a community into irretrievable disaster. It is under conditions of crisis that dictatorships are at once possible and necessary, not merely to enable the community to act energetically, but in order to protect the community from the mere play of external forces. The manner in which Bismarck, by a slight modification of the famous telegram of Ems, provoked a crisis in France and compelled Napoleon III, against his judgment and that of his advisers, to declare war on Germany, is an illustration of this danger.[255]

It is this narrowing of the area over which a definite public opinion may be said to exist that at once creates the possibility and defines the limits of arbitrary control, so far as it is created or determined by the existence of public opinion.

Thus far the public has been described almost wholly in terms that could be applied to a crowd. The public has been frequently described as if it were simply a great crowd, a crowd scattered as widely as news will circulate and still be news.[256] But there is this difference. In the heat and excitement of the crowd, as in the choral dances of primitive people, there is for the moment what may be described as complete fusion of the social forces. Rapport has, for the time being, made the crowd, in a peculiarly intimate way, a social unit.

No such unity exists in the public. The sentiment and tendencies which we call public opinion are never unqualified expressions of emotion. The difference is that public opinion is determined by conflict and discussion, and made up of the opinions of individuals not wholly at one. In any conflict situation, where party spirit is aroused, the spectators, who constitute the public, are bound to take sides. The impulse to take sides is, in fact, in direct proportion to the excitement and party spirit displayed. The result is, however, that both sides of an issue get considered. Certain contentions are rejected because they will not stand criticism. Public opinion formed in this way has the character of a judgment, rather than a mere unmeditated expression of emotion, as in the crowd. The public is never ecstatic. It is always more or less rational. It is this fact of conflict, in the form of discussion, that introduces into the control exercised by public opinion the elements of rationality and of fact.

In the final judgment of the public upon a conflict or an issue, we expect, to be sure, some sort of unanimity of judgment, but in the general consensus there will be some individual differences of opinion still unmediated, or only partially so, and final agreement of the public will be more or less qualified by all the different opinions that co-operated to form its judgment.

In the materials which follow a distinction is made between public opinion and the mores, and this distinction is important. Custom and the folkways, like habit in the individual, may be regarded as a mere residuum of past practices. When folkways assume the character of mores, they are no longer merely matters of fact and common sense, they are judgments upon matters which were probably once live issues and as such they may be regarded as the products of public opinion.

Ritual, religious or social, is probably the crystallization of forms of behavior which, like the choral dance, are the direct expression of the emotions and the instincts. The mores, on the other hand, in so far as they contain a rational element, are the accumulations, the residuum, not only of past practices, but of judgments such as find expression in public opinion. The mores, as thus conceived, are the judgments of public opinion in regard to issues that have been settled and forgotten.

L. T. Hobhouse, in his volume, Morals in Evolution, has described, in a convincing way, the process by which, as he conceives it, custom is modified and grows under the influence of the personal judgments of individuals and of the public. Public opinion, as he defines it, is simply the combined and sublimated judgments of individuals.

Most of these judgments are, to be sure, merely the repetition of old formulas. But occasionally, when the subject of discussion touches us more deeply, when it touches upon some matter in which we have had a deeper and more intimate experience, the ordinary patter that passes as public opinion is dissipated and we originate a moral judgment that not only differs from, but is in conflict with, the prevailing opinion. In that case "we become, as it were, centers from which judgments of one kind or another radiate and from which they pass forth to fill the atmosphere of opinion and take their place among the influences that mould the judgments of men."

The manner in which public opinion issues from the interaction of individuals, and moral judgments are formed that eventually become the basis of law, may be gathered from the way in which the process goes on in the daily life about us.

No sooner has the judgment escaped us—a winged word from our own lips—than it impinges on the judgment similarly flying forth to do its work from our next-door neighbor, and if the subject is an exciting one the air is soon full of the winged forces clashing, deflecting or reinforcing one another as the case may be, and generally settling down toward some preponderating opinion which is society's judgment on the case. But in the course of the conflict many of the original judgments are modified. Discussion, further consideration, above all, the mere influence of our neighbour's opinion reacts on each of us, with a stress that is proportioned to various mental and moral characteristics of our own, our clearness of vision, our firmness, or, perhaps, obstinacy of character, our self-confidence, and so forth. Thus, the controversy will tend to leave its mark, small or great, on those who took part in it. It will tend to modify their modes of judgment, confirming one, perhaps, in his former ways, shaping the confidence of another, opening the eyes of a third. Similarly, it will tend to set a precedent for future judgments. It will affect what men say and think on the next question that turns up. It adds its weight, of one grain it may be, to some force that is turning the scale of opinion and preparing society for some new departure. In any case, we have here in miniature at work every day before our eyes the essential process by which moral judgments arise and grow.[257]

c) Institutions.—An institution, according to Sumner, consists of a concept and a structure. The concept defines the purpose, interest, or function of the institution. The structure embodies the idea of the institution and furnishes the instrumentalities through which the idea is put into action. The process by which purposes, whether they are individual or collective, are embodied in structures is a continuous one. But the structures thus formed are not physical, at least not entirely so. Structure, in the sense that Sumner uses the term, belongs, as he says, to a category of its own. "It is a category in which custom produces continuity, coherence, and consistency, so that the word 'structure' may properly be applied to the fabric of relations and prescribed positions with which functions are permanently connected." Just as every individual member of a community participates in the process by which custom and public opinion are made, so also he participates in the creation of the structure, that "cake of custom" which, when it embodies a definite social function, we call an institution.

Institutions may be created just as laws are enacted, but only when a social situation exists to which they correspond will they become operative and effective. Institutions, like laws, rest upon the mores and are supported by public opinion. Otherwise they remain mere paper projects or artefacts that perform no real function. History records the efforts of conquering peoples to impose upon the conquered their own laws and institutions. The efforts are instructive, but not encouraging. The most striking modern instance is the effort of King Leopold of Belgium to introduce civilization into the Congo Free State.[258]

Law, like public opinion, owes its rational and secular character to the fact that it arose out of an effort to compromise conflict and to interpret matters which were in dispute.

To seek vengeance for a wrong committed was a natural impulse, and the recognition of this fact in custom established it not merely as a right but as a duty. War, the modern form of trial by battle, the vendetta, and the duel are examples that have survived down to modern times of this natural and primitive method of settling disputes.

In all these forms of conflict custom and the mores have tended to limit the issues and define the conditions under which disputes might be settled by force. At the same time public opinion, in passing judgment on the issues, exercised a positive influence on the outcome of the struggle.

Gradually, as men realized the losses which conflicts incurred, the community has intervened to prevent them. At a time when the blood feud was still sanctioned by the mores, cities of refuge and sanctuaries were established to which one who had incurred a blood feud might flee until his case could be investigated. If it then appeared that the wrong committed had been unintentional or if there were other mitigating circumstances, he might find in the sanctuary protection. Otherwise, if a crime had been committed in cold blood, "lying in wait," or "in enmity," as the ancient Jewish law books called it, he might be put to death by the avenger of blood, "when he meeteth him."[259]

Thus, gradually, the principle became established that the community might intervene, not merely to insure that vengeance was executed in due form, but to determine the facts, and thus courts which determined by legal process the guilt or innocence of the accused were established.

It does not appear that courts of justice were ever set up within the kinship group for the trial of offenses, although efforts were made there first of all, by the elders and the headmen, to compromise quarrels and compose differences.

Courts first came into existence, the evidence indicates, when society was organized over wider areas and after some authority had been established outside of the local community. As society was organized over a wider territory, control was extended to ever wider areas of human life until we have at present a program for international courts with power to intervene between nations to prevent wars.[260]

Society, like the individual man, moves and acts under the influence of a multitude of minor impulses and tendencies which mutually interact to produce a more general tendency which then dominates all the individuals of the group. This explains the fact that a group, even a mere casual collection of individuals like a crowd, is enabled to act more or less as a unit. The crowd acts under the influence of such a dominant tendency, unreflectively, without definite reference to a past or a future. The crowd has no past and no future. The public introduces into this vortex of impulses the factor of reflection. The public presupposes the existence of a common impulse such as manifests itself in the crowd, but it presupposes, also, the existence of individuals and groups of individuals representing divergent tendencies. These individuals interact upon one another critically. The public is, what the crowd is not, a discussion group. The very existence of discussion presupposes objective standards of truth and of fact. The action of the public is based on a universe of discourse in which things, although they may and do have for every individual somewhat different value, are describable at any rate in terms that mean the same to all individuals. The public, in other words, moves in an objective and intelligible world.

Law is based on custom. Custom is group habit. As the group acts it creates custom. There is implicit in custom a conception and a rule of action, which is regarded as right and proper in the circumstances. Law makes this rule of action explicit. Law grows up, however, out of a distinction between this rule of action and the facts. Custom is bound up with the facts under which the custom grew up. Law is the result of an effort to frame the rule of action implicit in custom in such general terms that it can be made to apply to new situations, involving new sets of facts. This distinction between the law and the facts did not exist in primitive society. The evolution of law and jurisprudence has been in the direction of an increasingly clearer recognition of this distinction between law and the facts. This has meant in practice an increasing recognition by the courts of the facts, and a disposition to act in accordance with them. The present disposition of courts, as, for example, the juvenile courts, to call to their assistance experts to examine the mental condition of children who are brought before them and to secure the assistance of juvenile-court officers to advise and assist them in the enforcement of the law, is an illustration of an increasing disposition to take account of the facts.

The increasing interest in the natural history of the law and of legal institutions, and the increasing disposition to interpret it in sociological terms, from the point of view of its function, is another evidence of the same tendency.

II. MATERIALS

A. ELEMENTARY FORMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL

1. Control in the Crowd and the Public[261]

In August, 1914, I was a cowboy on a ranch in the interior of British Columbia. How good a cowboy I would not undertake to say, because if there were any errands off the ranch the foreman seemed better able to spare me for them than anyone else in the outfit.

One ambition, and one only, possessed me in those days. And it was not to own the ranch! All in the world I wanted was to accumulate money enough to carry me to San Francisco when the Panama exposition opened in the autumn. After that I didn't care. It would be time enough to worry about another job when I had seen the fair.

Ordinarily I was riding the range five days in the week. Saturdays I was sent on a 35-mile round trip for the mail. It was the most delightful day of them all for me. The trail lay down the valley of the Fraser and although I had been riding it for months it still wove a spell over me that never could be broken. Slipping rapidly by as though escaping to the sea from the grasp of the hills that hemmed it in on all sides, the river always fascinated me. It was new every time I reached its edge.

An early Saturday morning in August found me jogging slowly along the trail to Dog Creek. Dog Creek was our post-office and trading-center. This morning, however, my mind was less on the beauties of the Fraser than on the Dog Creek hotel. Every week I had my dinner there before starting in mid-afternoon on my return to the ranch, and this day had succeeded one of misunderstanding with "Cookie" wherein all the boys of our outfit had come off second-best. I was hungry and that dinner at the hotel was going to taste mighty good. Out there on the range we had heard rumors of a war in Europe. We all talked it over in the evening and decided it was another one of those fights that were always starting in the Balkans. One had just been finished a few months before and we thought it was about time another was under way, so we gave the matter no particular thought. But when I got within sight of Dog Creek I knew something was up. The first thing I heard was that somebody had retreated from Mons and that the Germans were chasing them. So, the Germans were fighting anyway. Then a big Indian came up to me as I was getting off my pony and told me England's big white chief was going to war, or had gone, he wasn't certain which, but he was going too. Would I?

I laughed at him. "What do you mean, go to war?" I asked him.

I wasn't English; I wasn't Canadian. I was from the good old U.S.A. and from all we could understand the States were neutral. So, I reasoned, I ought to be neutral too, and I went in to see what there might be to eat.

There was plenty of excitement in the dining-room. Under its influence I began to look at the thing in a different light. While I was an alien, I had lived in Canada. I had enjoyed her hospitality. Much of my education was acquired in a Canadian school. Canadians were among my dearest friends. Some of these very fellows, there in Dog Creek, were "going down" to enlist.

All the afternoon we argued about it. Politics, economics, diplomacy; none of them entered into the question. In fact we hadn't the faintest idea what the war was all about. Our discussion hinged solely on what we, personally, ought to do. England was at war. She had sent out a call to all the Empire for men; for help. Dog Creek heard and was going to answer that call. Even if I were an alien I had been in that district for more than a year and I owed it to Dog Creek and the district to join up with the rest. By that time I wanted to go. I was crazy to go! It would be great to see London and maybe Paris and some of the other famous old towns—if the war lasted long enough for us to get over there. I began to bubble over with enthusiasm, just thinking about it. So I made an appointment with some of the boys for the next evening, rode back to the ranch and threw the mail and my job at the foreman.

A week later we were in Vancouver. Then things began to get plainer—to some of the fellows. We heard of broken treaties, "scraps of paper," "Kultur," the rights of nations, big and small, "freedom of the seas," and other phrases that meant less than nothing to most of us. It was enough for me, then, that the country which had given me the protection of its laws wanted to help England. I trusted the government to know what it was doing. Before we were in town an hour we found ourselves at a recruiting office. By the simple expedient of moving my birthplace a few hundred miles north I became a Canadian and a member of the expeditionary force—a big word with a big meaning. Christmas came and I was in a well-trained battalion of troops with no more knowledge of the war than the retreat from Mons, the battles of the Marne and the Aisne, and an occasional newspaper report of the capture of a hundred thousand troops here and a couple of hundred thousand casualties somewhere else. We knew, at that rate, it couldn't possibly last until we got to the other side, but we prayed loudly that it would. In April we heard of the gassing of the first Canadians at Ypres. Then the casualty lists from that field arrived and hit Vancouver with a thud. Instantly a change came over the city. Before that day, war had been a romance, a thing far away about which to read and over which to wave flags. It was intangible, impersonal. It was the same attitude the States exhibited in the autumn of '17. Then suddenly it became real. This chap and that chap; a neighbor boy, a fellow from the next block or the next desk. Dead! Gassed! This was war; direct, personal, where you could count the toll among your friends. Personally, I thought that what the Germans had done was a terrible thing and I wondered what kind of people they might be that they could, without warning, deliver such a foul blow. In a prize ring the Kaiser would have lost the decision then and there. We wondered about gas and discussed it by the hour in our barracks. Some of us, bigger fools than the rest, insisted that the German nation would repudiate its army. But days went by and nothing of the kind occurred. It was then I began to take my soldiering a little more seriously. If a nation wanted to win a war so badly that it would damn its good name forever by using means ruled by all humanity as beyond the bounds of civilized warfare, it must have a very big object in view. And I started—late it is true—to obtain some clue to those objects.

May found us at our port of embarkation for the voyage to England. The news of the "Lusitania" came over the wires and that evening our convoy steamed. For the first time, I believe, I fully realized I was a soldier in the greatest war of all the ages.

Between poker, "blackjack," and "crown and anchor" with the crew, we talked over the two big things that had happened in our soldier lives—gas and the "Lusitania." And to these we later added liquid fire.

Our arguments, our logic, may have been elemental, but I insist they struck at the root. I may sum them up thus: Germany was not using the methods of fighting that could be countenanced by a civilized nation. As the nation stood behind its army in all this barbarism, there must be something inherently lacking in it despite its wonderful music, its divine poetry, its record in the sciences. It, too, must be barbarian at heart. We agreed that if it should win this war it would be very uncomfortable to belong to one of the allied nations, or even to live in the world at all, since it was certain German manners and German methods would not improve with victory. And we, as a battalion, were ready to take our places in France to back up our words with deeds.