CHAPTER XIII

COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR

I. INTRODUCTION

1. Collective Behavior Defined

A collection of individuals is not always, and by the mere fact of its collectivity, a society. On the other hand, when people come together anywhere, in the most casual way, on the street corner or at a railway station, no matter how great the social distances between them, the mere fact that they are aware of one another’s presence sets up a lively exchange of influences, and the behavior that ensues is both social and collective. It is social, at the very least, in the sense that the train of thought and action in each individual is influenced more or less by the action of every other. It is collective in so far as each individual acts under the influence of a mood or a state of mind in which each shares, and in accordance with conventions which all quite unconsciously accept, and which the presence of each enforces upon the others.

The amount of individual eccentricity or deviation from normal and accepted modes of behavior which a community will endure without comment and without protest will vary naturally enough with the character of the community. A cosmopolitan community like New York City can and does endure a great deal in the way of individual eccentricity that a smaller city like Boston would not tolerate. In any case, and this is the point of these observations, even in the most casual relations of life, people do not behave in the presence of others as if they were living alone like Robinson Crusoe, each on his individual island. The very fact of their consciousness of each other tends to maintain and enforce a great body of convention and usage which otherwise falls into abeyance and is forgotten. Collective behavior, then, is the behavior of individuals under the influence of an impulse that is common and collective, an impulse, in other words, that is the result of social interaction.

2. Social Unrest and Collective Behavior

The most elementary form of collective behavior seems to be what is ordinarily referred to as “social unrest.” Unrest in the individual becomes social when it is, or seems to be, transmitted from one individual to another, but more particularly when it produces something akin to the milling process in the herd, so that the manifestations of discontent in A communicated to B, and from B reflected back to A, produce the circular reaction described in the preceding chapter.

The significance of social unrest is that it represents at once a breaking up of the established routine and a preparation for new collective action. Social unrest is not of course a new phenomenon; it is possibly true, however, that it is peculiarly characteristic, as has been said, of modern life. The contrast between the conditions of modern life and of primitive society suggests why this may be true.

The conception which we ought to form of primitive society, says Sumner, is that of small groups scattered over a territory. The size of the group will be determined by the conditions of the struggle for existence and the internal organization of each group will correspond (1) to the size of the group, and (2) to the nature and intensity of the struggle with its neighbors.

The isolation, territorial and cultural, under which alone it is possible to maintain an organization which corresponds to Sumner’s description, has disappeared within comparatively recent times from all the more inhabitable portions of the earth. In place of it there has come, and with increasing rapidity is coming, into existence a society which includes within its limits the total population of the earth and is so intimately bound together that the speculation of a grain merchant in Chicago may increase the price of bread in Bombay, while the act of an assassin in a provincial town in the Balkans has been sufficient to plunge the world into a war which changed the political map of three continents and cost the lives, in Europe alone, of 8,500,000 combatants.

The first effect of modern conditions of life has been to increase and vastly complicate the economic interdependence of strange and distant peoples, i.e., to destroy distances and make the world, as far as national relations are concerned, small and tight.

The second effect has been to break down family, local, and national ties, and emancipate the individual man.

A survey of the world today shows that vast changes are everywhere in progress. Not only in Europe but in Asia and in Africa new cultural contacts have undermined and broken down the old cultures. The effect has been to loosen all the social bonds and reduce society to its individual atoms. The energies thus freed have produced a world-wide ferment. Individuals released from old associations enter all the more readily into new ones. Out of this confusion new and strange political and religious movements arise, which represent the groping of men for a new social order.

3. The Crowd and the Public

Gustave Le Bon, who was the first writer to call attention to the significance of the crowd as a social phenomenon,[281] said that mass movements mark the end of an old régime and the beginning of a new.

“When the structure of a civilization is rotten, it is always the masses that bring about its downfall.”[282] On the other hand, “all founders of religious or political creeds have established them solely because they were successful in inspiring crowds with those fanatical sentiments which have as result that men find their happiness in worship and obedience and are ready to lay down their lives for their idol.”[283]

The crowd was, for Le Bon, not merely any group brought together by the accident of some chance excitement, but it was above all the emancipated masses whose bonds of loyalty to the old order had been broken by “the destruction of those religious, political, and social beliefs in which all the elements of our civilization are rooted.” The crowd, in other words, typified for Le Bon the existing social order. Ours is an age of crowds, he said, an age in which men, massed and herded together in great cities without real convictions or fundamental faiths, are likely to be stampeded in any direction for any chance purpose under the influence of any passing excitement.

Le Bon did not attempt to distinguish between the crowd and the public. This distinction was first made by Tarde in a paper entitled “Le Public et la foule,” published first in La Revue de Paris in 1898, and included with several others on the same general theme under the title L’Opinion et la foule which appeared in 1901. The public, according to Tarde, was a product of the printing press. The limits of the crowd are determined by the length to which a voice will carry or the distance that the eye can survey. But the public presupposes a higher stage of social development in which suggestions are transmitted in the form of ideas and there is “contagion without contact.”[284]

The fundamental distinction between the crowd and the public, however, is not to be measured by numbers nor by means of communication, but by the form and effects of the interactions. In the public, interaction takes the form of discussion. Individuals tend to act upon one another critically; issues are raised and parties form. Opinions clash and thus modify and moderate one another.

The crowd does not discuss and hence it does not reflect. It simply “mills.” Out of this milling process a collective impulse is formed which dominates all members of the crowd. Crowds, when they act, do so impulsively. The crowd, says Le Bon, “is the slave of its impulses.”

“The varying impulses which crowds obey may be, according to their exciting causes, generous or cruel, heroic or cowardly, but they will always be so imperious that the interest of the individual, even the interest of self-preservation, will not dominate them.”[285]

When the crowd acts it becomes a mob. What happens when two mobs meet? We have in the literature no definite record. The nearest approach to it are the occasional accounts we find in the stories of travelers of the contacts and conflicts of armies of primitive peoples. These undisciplined hordes are, as compared with the armies of civilized peoples, little more than armed mobs. Captain S. L. Hinde in his story of the Belgian conquest of the Congo describes several such battles. From the descriptions of battles carried on almost wholly between savage and undisciplined troops it is evident that the morale of an army of savages is a precarious thing. A very large part of the warfare consists in alarms and excursions interspersed with wordy duels to keep up the courage on one side and cause a corresponding depression on the other.[286]

Gangs are conflict groups. Their organization is usually quite informal and is determined by the nature and imminence of its conflicts with other groups. When one crowd encounters another it either goes to pieces or it changes its character and becomes a conflict group. When negotiations and palavers take place as they eventually do between conflict groups, these two groups, together with the neutrals who have participated vicariously in the conflict, constitute a public. It is possible that the two opposing savage hordes which seek, by threats and boastings and beatings of drums, to play upon each other’s fears and so destroy each other’s morale, may be said to constitute a very primitive type of public.

Discussion, as might be expected, takes curious and interesting forms among primitive peoples. In a volume, Iz Derevni: 12 Pisem (“From the Country: 12 Letters”), A. N. Engelgardt describes the way in which the Slavic peasants reach their decisions in the village council.

4. Crowds and Sects

Reference has been made to the crowds that act, but crowds do not always act. Sometimes they merely dance or, at least, make expressive motions which relieve their feelings. “The purest and most typical expression of simple feeling,” as Hirn remarks, “is that which consists of mere random movements.”[288] When these motions assume, as they so easily do, the character of a fixed sequence in time, that is to say when they are rhythmical, they can be and inevitably are, as by a sort of inner compulsion, imitated by the onlookers. “As soon as the expression is fixed in rhythmical form its contagious power is incalculably increased.”[289]

This explains at once the function and social importance of the dance among primitive people. It is the form in which they prepare for battle and celebrate their victories. It gives the form at once to their religious ritual and to their art. Under the influence of the memories and the emotions which these dances stimulate the primitive group achieves a sense of corporate unity, which makes corporate action possible outside of the fixed and sacred routine of ordinary daily life.

If it is true, as has been suggested, that art and religion had their origin in the choral dance, it is also true that in modern times religious sects and social movements have had their origin in crowd excitements and spontaneous mass movements. The very names which have been commonly applied to them—Quakers, Shakers, Convulsionaires, Holy Rollers—suggest not merely the derision with which they were at one time regarded, but indicate likewise their origin in ecstatic or expressive crowds, the crowds that do not act.

All great mass movements tend to display, to a greater or less extent, the characteristics that Le Bon attributes to crowds. Speaking of the convictions of crowds, Le Bon says:

Le Bon’s definition of religion and religious sentiment will hardly find general acceptance but it indicates at any rate his conception of the extent to which individual personalities are involved in the excitements that accompany mass movements.

Just as the gang may be regarded as the perpetuation and permanent form of “the crowd that acts,” so the sect, religious or political, may be regarded as a perpetuation and permanent form of the orgiastic (ecstatic) or expressive crowd.

“The sect,” says Sighele, “is a crowd triée, selected, and permanent, the crowd is a transient sect, which does not select its members. The sect is the chronic form of the crowd; the crowd is the acute form of the sect.”[292] It is Sighele’s conception that the crowd is an elementary organism, from which the sect issues, like the chick from the egg, and that all other types of social groups “may, in this same manner, be deduced from this primitive social protoplasm.” This is a simplification which the facts hardly justify. It is true that, implicit in the practices and the doctrines of a religious sect, there is the kernel of a new independent culture.

5. Sects and Institutions

A sect is a religious organization that is at war with the existing mores. It seeks to cultivate a state of mind and establish a code of morals different from that of the world about it and for this it claims divine authority. In order to accomplish this end it invariably seeks to set itself off in contrast with the rest of the world. The simplest and most effective way to achieve this is to adopt a peculiar form of dress and speech. This, however, invariably makes its members objects of scorn and derision, and eventually of persecution. It would probably do this even if there was no assumption of moral superiority to the rest of the world in this adoption of a peculiar manner and dress.

Persecution tends to dignify and sanctify all the external marks of the sect, and it becomes a cardinal principle of the sect to maintain them. Any neglect of them is regarded as disloyalty and is punished as heresy. Persecution may eventually, as was the case with the Puritans, the Quakers, the Mormons, compel the sect to seek refuge in some part of the world where it may practice its way of life in peace.

Once the sect has achieved territorial isolation and territorial solidarity, so that it is the dominant power within the region that it occupies, it is able to control the civil organization, establish schools and a press, and so put the impress of a peculiar culture upon all the civil and political institutions that it controls. In this case it tends to assume the form of a state, and become a nationality. Something approaching this was achieved by the Mormons in Utah. The most striking illustration of the evolution of a nationality from a sect is Ulster, which now has a position not quite that of a nation within the English empire.

This sketch suggests that the sect, like most other social institutions, originates under conditions that are typical for all institutions of the same species; then it develops in definite and predictable ways, in accordance with a form or entelechy that is predetermined by characteristic internal processes and mechanisms, and that has, in short, a nature and natural history which can be described and explained in sociological terms. Sects have their origin in social unrest to which they give a direction and expression in forms and practices that are largely determined by historical circumstances; movements which were at first inchoate impulses and aspirations gradually take form; policies are defined, doctrine and dogmas formulated; and eventually an administrative machinery and efficiencies are developed to carry into effect policies and purposes. The Salvation Army, of which we have a more adequate history than of most other religious movements, is an example.

A sect in its final form may be described, then, as a movement of social reform and regeneration that has become institutionalized. Eventually, when it has succeeded in accommodating itself to the other rival organizations, when it has become tolerant and is tolerated, it tends to assume the form of a denomination. Denominations tend and are perhaps destined to unite in the form of religious federations—a thing which is inconceivable of a sect.

What is true of the sect, we may assume, and must assume if social movements are to become subjects for sociological investigation, is true of other social institutions. Existing institutions represent social movements that survived the conflict of cultures and the struggle for existence.

Sects, and that is what characterizes and distinguishes them from secular institutions, at least, have had their origin in movements that aimed to reform the mores—movements that sought to renovate and renew the inner life of the community. They have wrought upon society from within outwardly. Revolutionary and reform movements, on the contrary, have been directed against the outward fabric and formal structure of society. Revolutionary movements in particular have assumed that if the existing structure could be destroyed it would then be possible to erect a new moral order upon the ruins of the old social structures.

A cursory survey of the history of revolutions suggests that the most radical and the most successful of them have been religious. Of this type of revolution Christianity is the most conspicuous example.

6. Classification of the Materials

The materials in this chapter have been arranged under the headings: (a) social contagion, (b) the crowd, and (c) types of mass movements. The order of materials follows, in a general way, the order of institutional evolution. Social unrest is first communicated, then takes form in crowd and mass movements, and finally crystallizes in institutions. The history of almost any single social movement—woman’s suffrage, prohibition, protestantism—exhibit in a general way, if not in detail, this progressive change in character. There is at first a vague general discontent and distress. Then a violent, confused, and disorderly, but enthusiastic and popular movement, and finally the movement takes form; develops leadership, organization; formulates doctrines and dogmas. Eventually it is accepted, established, legalized. The movement dies, but the institution remains.

a) Social contagion.—The ease and the rapidity with which a cultural trait originating in one cultural group finds its way to other distant groups is familiar to students of folklore and ethnology. The manner in which fashions are initiated in some metropolitan community, and thence make their way, with more or less rapidity, to the provinces is an illustration of the same phenomenon in a different context.

But the changes of fashion are so pervasive, so familiar, and, indeed, universal phenomena that we do not regard the changes which they bring, no matter how fantastic, as quite out of the usual and expected order. Gabriel Tarde, however, regards the “social contagion” represented in fashion (imitation) as the fundamental social phenomenon.[294]

The term social epidemic, which is, like fashion, a form of social contagion, has a different origin and a different connotation. J. F. C. Hecker, whose study of the Dancing Mania of the Middle Ages, published in 1832, was an incident of his investigation of the Black Death, was perhaps the first to give currency to the term.[295] Both the Black Death and the Dancing Mania assumed the form of epidemics and the latter, the Dancing Mania, was in his estimation the sequel of the former, the Black Death. It was perhaps this similarity in the manner in which they spread—the one by physical and the other by psychical infection—that led him to speak of the spread of a popular delusion in terms of a physical science. Furthermore, the hysteria was directly traceable, as he believed, to the prevailing conditions of the time, and this seemed to put the manifestations in the world of intelligible and controllable phenomena, where they could be investigated.

It is this notion, then, that unrest which manifests itself in social epidemics is an indication of pathological social conditions, and the further, the more general, conception that unrest does not become social and hence contagious except when there are contributing causes in the environment—it is this that gives its special significance to the term and the facts. Unrest in the social organism with the social ferments that it induces is like fever in the individual organism, a highly important diagnostic symptom.

b) The crowd.—Neither Le Bon nor any of the other writers upon the subject of mass psychology has succeeded in distinguishing clearly between the organized or “psychological” crowd, as Le Bon calls it, and other similar types of social groups. These distinctions, if they are to be made objectively, must be made on the basis of case studies. It is the purpose of the materials under the general heading of “The ‘Animal’ Crowd,” not so much to furnish a definition, as to indicate the nature and sources of materials from which a definition can be formulated. It is apparent that the different animal groups behave in ways that are distinctive and characteristic, ways which are predetermined in the organism to an extent that is not true of human beings.

One other distinction may possibly be made between the so-called “animal” and the human crowd. The organized crowd is controlled by a common purpose and acts to achieve, no matter how vaguely it is defined, a common end. The herd, on the other hand, has apparently no common purpose. Every sheep in the flock, at least as the behavior of the flock is ordinarily interpreted, behaves like every other. Action in a stampede, for example, is collective but it is not concerted. It is very difficult to understand how there can be concerted action in the herd or the flock unless it is on an instinctive basis. The crowd, however, responds to collective representations. The crowd does not imitate or follow its leader as sheep do a bellwether. On the contrary, the crowd carries out the suggestions of the leader, and even though there be no division of labor each individual acts more or less in his own way to achieve a common end.

In the case of a panic or a stampede, however, where there is no common end, the crowd acts like a flock of sheep. But a stampede or a panic is not a crowd in Le Bon’s sense. It is not a psychological unity, nor a “single being,” subject to “the mental unity of crowds.”[296] The panic is the crowd in dissolution. All effective methods of dispersing crowds involve some method of distracting attention, breaking up the tension, and dissolving the mob into its individual units.

c) Types of mass movements.—The most elementary form of mass movement is a mass migration. Such a mass movement displays, in fact, many of the characteristics of the “animal” crowd. It is the “human” herd. The migration of a people, either as individuals or in organized groups, may be compared to the swarming of the hive. Peoples migrate in search of better living conditions, or merely in search of new experience. It is usually the younger generation, the more restless, active, and adaptable, who go out from the security of the old home to seek their fortunes in the new. Once settled on the new land, however, immigrants inevitably remember and idealize the home they have left. Their first disposition is to reproduce as far as possible in the new world the institutions and the social order of the old. Just as the spider spins his web out of his own body, so the immigrant tends to spin out of his experience and traditions, a social organization which reproduces, as far as circumstances will permit, the organization and the life of the ancestral community. In this way the older culture is transplanted and renews itself, under somewhat altered circumstances, in the new home. That explains, in part, at any rate, the fact that migration tends to follow the isotherms, since all the more fundamental cultural devices and experience are likely to be accommodations to geographical and climatic conditions.

In contrast with migrations are movements which are sometimes referred to as crusades, partly because of the religious fervor and fanaticism with which they are usually conducted and partly because they are an appeal to the masses of the people for direct action and depend for their success upon their ability to appeal to some universal human interest or to common experiences and interests that are keenly comprehended by the common man.

The Woman’s Christian Temperance Crusade, referred to in the materials, may be regarded, if we are permitted to compare great things with small, as an illustration of collective behavior not unlike the crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Crusades are reformatory and religious. This was true at any rate of the early crusades, inspired by Peter the Hermit, whatever may have been the political purposes of the popes who encouraged them. It was the same motive that led the people of the Middle Ages to make pilgrimages which led them to join the crusades. At bottom it was an inner restlessness, that sought peace in great hardship and inspiring action, which moved the masses.

Somewhat the same widespread contagious restlessness is the source of most of our revolutions. It is not, however, hardships and actual distress that inspire revolutions but hopes and dreams, dreams which find expression in those myths and “vital lies,” as Vernon Lee calls them,[297] which according to Sorel are the only means of moving the masses.

The distinction between crusades, like the Woman’s Temperance Crusade, and revolutions, like the French Revolution, is that one is a radical attempt to correct a recognized evil and the other is a radical attempt to reform an existing social order.

II. MATERIALS

A. SOCIAL CONTAGION

1. An Incident in a Lancashire Cotton Mill[298]

At a cotton manufactory at Hodden Bridge, in Lancashire, a girl, on the fifteenth of February, 1787, put a mouse into the bosom of another girl, who had a great dread of mice. The girl was immediately thrown into a fit, and continued in it with the most violent convulsions for twenty-four hours. On the following day three more girls were seized in the same manner; and on the seventeenth, six more. By this time the alarm was so great that the whole work, in which 200 or 300 were employed, was totally stopped, and an idea prevailed that a particular disease had been introduced by a bag of cotton opened in the house. On Sunday, the eighteenth, Dr. St. Clare was sent for from Preston; before he arrived three more were seized, and during that night and the morning of the nineteenth, eleven more, making in all twenty-four. Of these, twenty-one were young women, two were girls of about ten years of age, and one man, who had been much fatigued with holding the girls. Three of the number lived about two miles from the place where the disorder first broke out, and three at another factory in Clitheroe, about five miles distant, which last and two more were infected entirely from report, not having seen the other patients, but, like them and the rest of the country, strongly impressed with the idea of the plague being caught from the cotton. The symptoms were anxiety, strangulation, and very strong convulsions; and these were so violent as to last without any intermission from a quarter of an hour to twenty-four hours, and to require four or five persons to prevent the patients from tearing their hair and dashing their heads against the floor or walls. Dr. St. Clare had taken with him a portable electrical machine, and by electric shocks the patients were universally relieved without exception. As soon as the patients and the country were assured that the complaint was merely nervous, easily cured, and not introduced by the cotton, no fresh person was affected. To dissipate their apprehension still further, the best effects were obtained by causing them to take a cheerful glass and join in a dance. On Tuesday, the twentieth, they danced, and the next day were all at work, except two or three, who were much weakened by their fits.

2. The Dancing Mania of the Middle Ages[299]

So early as the year 1374, assemblages of men and women were seen at Aix-la-Chapelle who had come out of Germany and who, united by one common delusion, exhibited to the public both in the streets and in the churches the following strange spectacle. They formed circles hand in hand and, appearing to have lost all control over their senses, continued dancing, regardless of the by-standers, for hours together in wild delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion. While dancing they neither saw nor heard, being insensible to external impressions through the senses, but were haunted by visions, their fancies conjuring up spirits whose names they shrieked out; and some of them afterward asserted that they felt as if they had been immersed in a stream of blood, which obliged them to leap so high. Others, during the paroxysm, saw the heavens open and the Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary, according as the religious notions of the age were strangely and variously reflected in their imaginations.

Where the disease was completely developed, the attack commenced with epileptic convulsions. Those affected fell to the ground senseless, panting and laboring for breath. They foamed at the mouth, and suddenly springing up began their dance amid strange contortions. Yet the malady doubtless made its appearance very variously, and was modified by temporary or local circumstances, whereof non-medical contemporaries but imperfectly noted the essential particulars, accustomed as they were to confound their observation of natural events with their notions of the world of spirits.

It was but a few months ere this demoniacal disease had spread from Aix-la-Chapelle, where it appeared in July, over the neighboring Netherlands. Wherever the dancers appeared, the people assembled in crowds to gratify their curiosity with the frightful spectacle. At length the increasing number of the affected excited no less anxiety than the attention that was paid to them. In towns and villages they took possession of the religious houses, processions were everywhere instituted on their account, and masses were said and hymns were sung, while the disease itself, of the demoniacal origin of which no one entertained the least doubt, excited everywhere astonishment and horror. In Liége the priests had recourse to exorcisms and endeavored by every means in their power to allay an evil which threatened so much danger to themselves; for the possessed, assembling in multitudes, frequently poured forth imprecations against them and menaced their destruction.

A few months after this dancing malady had made its appearance at Aix-la-Chapelle, it broke out at Cologne, where the number of those possessed amounted to more than five hundred; and about the same time at Metz, the streets of which place are said to have been filled with eleven hundred dancers. Peasants left their plows, mechanics their workshops, housewives their domestic duties, to join the wild revels, and this rich commercial city became the scene of the most ruinous disorder. Secret desires were excited and but too often found opportunities for wild enjoyment; and numerous beggars, stimulated by vice and misery, availed themselves of this new complaint to gain a temporary livelihood. Girls and boys quitted their parents, and servants their masters, to amuse themselves at the dances of those possessed, and greedily imbibed the poison of mental infection. Above a hundred unmarried women were seen raving about in consecrated and unconsecrated places, and the consequences were soon perceived. Gangs of idle vagabonds, who understood how to imitate to the life the gestures and convulsions of those really affected, roved from place to place seeking maintenance and adventures, and thus, wherever they went, spreading this disgusting spasmodic disease like a plague; for in maladies of this kind the susceptible are infected as easily by the appearance as by the reality. At last it was found necessary to drive away these mischievous guests, who were equally inaccessible to the exorcisms of the priests and the remedies of the physicians. It was not, however, until after four months that the Rhenish cities were able to suppress these impostures, which had so alarmingly increased the original evil. In the meantime, when once called into existence, the plague crept on and found abundant food in the tone of thought which prevailed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and even, though in a minor degree, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth, causing a permanent disorder of the mind, and exhibiting, in those cities to whose inhabitants it was a novelty, scenes as strange as they were detestable.

B. THE CROWD

1. The “Animal” Crowd

a. The Flock[300]

Understand that a flock is not the same thing as a number of sheep. On the stark, wild headlands of the White Mountains, as many as thirty Bighorn are known to run in loose, fluctuating hordes; in fenced pastures, two to three hundred; close-herded on the range, two to three thousand; but however artificially augmented, the flock is always a conscious adjustment. There are always leaders, middlers, and tailers, each insisting on its own place in the order of going. Should the flock be rounded up suddenly in alarm it mills within itself until these have come to their own places.

There is much debate between herders as to the advantage of goats over sheep as leaders. In any case there are always a few goats in a flock, and most American owners prefer them; but the Frenchmen choose bell-wethers. Goats lead naturally by reason of a quicker instinct, forage more freely, and can find water on their own account. But wethers, if trained with care, learn what goats abhor, to take broken ground sedately, to walk through the water rather than set the whole flock leaping and scrambling; but never to give voice to alarm, as goats will, and call the herder.

It appears that leaders understand their office, and goats particularly exhibit a jealousy of their rights to be first over the stepping-stones or to walk the teetering log-bridges at the roaring creeks. By this facile reference of the initiative to the wisest one, the shepherd is served most. The dogs learn to which of the flock to communicate orders, at which heels a bark or a bite soonest sets the flock in motion. But the flock-mind obsesses equally the best-trained, flashes as instantly from the meanest of the flock.

By very little the herder may turn the flock-mind to his advantage, but chiefly it works against him. Suppose on the open range the impulse to forward movement overtakes them, set in motion by some eager leaders that remember enough of what lies ahead to make them oblivious to what they pass. They press ahead. The flock draws on. The momentum of travel grows. The bells clang soft and hurriedly; the sheep forget to feed; they neglect the tender pastures; they will not stay to drink. Under an unwise or indolent herder the sheep going on an unaccustomed trail will overtravel and underfeed, until in the midst of good pasture they starve upon their feet. So it is on the Long Trail you so often see the herder walking with his dogs ahead of his sheep to hold them back to feed. But if it should be new ground he must go after and press them skilfully, for the flock-mind balks chiefly at the unknown.

In sudden attacks from several quarters, or inexplicable man-thwarting of their instincts, the flock-mind teaches them to turn a solid front, revolving about in the smallest compass with the lambs in their midst, narrowing and indrawing until they perish by suffocation. So they did in the intricate defiles of Red Rock, where Carrier lost 250 in ‘74, and at Poison Springs, as Narcisse Duplin told me, where he had to choose between leaving them to the deadly waters, or, prevented from the spring, made witless by thirst, to mill about until they piled up and killed threescore in their midst. By no urgency of the dogs could they be moved forward or scattered until night fell with coolness and returning sanity. Nor does the imperfect gregariousness of man always save us from ill-considered rushes or strangulous in-turnings of the social mass. Notwithstanding there are those who would have us to be flock-minded.

It is doubtful if the herder is anything more to the flock than an incident of the range, except as a giver of salt, for the only cry they make to him is the salt cry. When the natural craving is at the point of urgency, they circle about his camp or his cabin, leaving off feeding for that business; and nothing else offering, they will continue this headlong circling about a bowlder or any object bulking large in their immediate neighborhood remotely resembling the appurtenances of man, as if they had learned nothing since they were free to find licks for themselves, except that salt comes by bestowal and in conjunction with the vaguely indeterminate lumps of matter that associate with man. As if in fifty centuries of man-herding they had made but one step out of the terrible isolation of brute species, an isolation impenetrable except by fear to every other brute, but now admitting the fact without knowledge, of the God of the Salt. Accustomed to receiving this miracle on open bowlders, when the craving is strong upon them, they seek such as these to run about, vociferating, as if they said, In such a place our God has been wont to bless us, come now, let us greatly entreat Him. This one quavering bleat, unmistakable to the sheepman even at a distance, is the only new note in the sheep’s vocabulary, and the only one which passes with intention from himself to man. As for the call of distress which a leader raised by hand may make to his master, it is not new, is not common to flock usage, and is swamped utterly in the obsession of the flock-mind.

b. The Herd[301]

My purpose in this paper is to discuss a group of curious and useless emotional instincts of social animals, which have not yet been properly explained. Excepting two of the number, placed first and last in the list, they are not related in their origin; consequently they are here grouped together arbitrarily, only for the reason that we are very familiar with them on account of their survival in our domestic animals, and because they are, as I have said, useless; also because they resemble each other, among the passions and actions of the lower animals, in their effect on our minds. This is in all cases unpleasant, and sometimes exceedingly painful, as when species that rank next to ourselves in their developed intelligence and organized societies, such as elephants, monkeys, dogs, and cattle, are seen under the domination of impulses, in some cases resembling insanity, and in others simulating the darkest passions of man.

These instincts are:

(1) The excitement caused by the smell of blood, noticeable in horses and cattle among our domestic animals, and varying greatly in degree, from an emotion so slight as to be scarcely perceptible to the greatest extremes of rage or terror.

(2) The angry excitement roused in some animals when a scarlet or bright red cloth is shown to them. So well known is this apparently insane instinct in our cattle that it has given rise to a proverb and metaphor familiar in a variety of forms to everyone.

(3) The persecution of a sick or weakly animal by its companions.

(4) The sudden deadly fury that seizes on the herd or family at the sight of a companion in extreme distress. Herbivorous mammals at such times will trample and gore the distressed one to death. In the case of wolves, and other savage-tempered carnivorous species, the distressed fellow is frequently torn to pieces and devoured on the spot.

To take the first two together. When we consider that blood is red; that the smell of it is, or may be, or has been, associated with that vivid hue in the animal’s mind; that blood, seen and smelt, is, or has been, associated with the sight of wounds and with cries of pain and rage or terror from the wounded or captive animal, there appears at first sight to be some reason for connecting these two instinctive passions as having the same origin—namely, terror and rage caused by the sight of a member of the herd struck down and bleeding, or struggling for life in the grasp of an enemy. I do not mean to say that such an image is actually present in the animal’s mind, but that the inherited or instinctive passion is one in kind and in its working with the passion of the animal when experience and reason were its guides.

But the more I consider the point, the more am I inclined to regard these two instincts as separate in their origin, although I retain the belief that cattle and horses and several wild animals are violently excited by the smell of blood for the reason just given—namely, their inherited memory associates the smell of blood with the presence among them of some powerful enemy that threatens their life.

The following incident will show how violently this blood passion sometimes affects cattle, when they are permitted to exist in a half-wild condition, as on the Pampas. I was out with my gun one day, a few miles from home, when I came across a patch on the ground where the grass was pressed or trodden down and stained with blood. I concluded that some thievish Gauchos had slaughtered a fat cow there on the previous night, and, to avoid detection, had somehow managed to carry the whole of it away on their horses. As I walked on, a herd of cattle, numbering about three hundred, appeared moving slowly on to a small stream a mile away; they were traveling in a thin, long line, and would pass the blood-stained spot at a distance of seven to eight hundred yards, but the wind from it would blow across their track. When the tainted wind struck the leaders of the herd they instantly stood still, raising their heads, then broke out into loud, excited bellowings; and finally turning, they started off at a fast trot, following up the scent in a straight line, until they arrived at the place where one of their kind had met its death. The contagion spread, and before long all the cattle were congregated on the fatal spot, and began moving round in a dense mass, bellowing continually.

It may be remarked here that the animal has a peculiar language on occasions like this; it emits a succession of short, bellowing cries, like excited exclamations, followed by a very loud cry, alternately sinking into a hoarse murmur and rising to a kind of scream that grates harshly on the sense. Of the ordinary “cow-music” I am a great admirer, and take as much pleasure in it as in the cries and melody of birds and the sound of the wind in trees; but this performance of cattle excited by the smell of blood is most distressing to hear.

The animals that had forced their way into the center of the mass to the spot where the blood was, pawed the earth, and dug it up with their horns, and trampled each other down in their frantic excitement. It was terrible to see and hear them. The action of those on the border of the living mass, in perpetually moving round in a circle with dolorous bellowings, was like that of the women in an Indian village when a warrior dies, and all night they shriek and howl with simulated grief, going round and round the dead man’s hut in an endless procession.

c. The Pack[302]

Wolves are the most sociable of beasts of prey. Not only do they gather in bands, but they arrange to render each other assistance, which is the most important test of sociability. The most gray wolves I ever saw in a band was five. This was in northern New Mexico in January, 1894. The most I ever heard of in a band was thirty-two that were seen in the same region. These bands are apparently formed in winter only. The packs are probably temporary associations of personal acquaintances, for some temporary purpose, or passing reason, such as food question or mating-instinct. As soon as this is settled, they scatter.

An instance in point was related to me by Mr. Gordon Wright of Carberry, Manitoba. During the winter of 1865 he was logging at Sturgeon Lake, Ontario. One Sunday he and some companions strolled out on the ice of the lake to look at the logs there. They heard the hunting-cry of wolves, then a deer (a female) darted from the woods to the open ice. Her sides were heaving, her tongue out, and her legs cut by the slight crust of the snow. Evidently she was hard pressed. She was coming toward them, but one of the men gave a shout which caused her to sheer off. A minute later six timber wolves appeared galloping on her trail, heads low, tails horizontal, and howling continuously. They were uttering their hunting-cry, but as soon as they saw her they broke into a louder, different note, left the trail and made straight for her. Five of the wolves were abreast and one that seemed much darker was behind. Within half a mile they overtook her and pulled her down, all seemed to seize her at once. For a few minutes she bleated like a sheep in distress; after that the only sound was the snarling and the crunching of the wolves as they feasted. Within fifteen minutes nothing was left of the deer but hair and some of the larger bones, and the wolves fighting among themselves for even these. Then they scattered, each going a quarter of a mile or so, no two in the same direction, and those that remained in view curled up there on the open lake to sleep. This happened about ten in the morning within three hundred yards of several witnesses.

2. The Psychological Crowd[303]

In its ordinary sense the word “crowd” means a gathering of individuals of whatever nationality, profession, or sex, and whatever be the chances that have brought them together. From the psychological point of view the expression “crowd” assumes quite a different signification. Under certain given circumstances, and only under those circumstances, an agglomeration of men presents new characteristics very different from those of the individuals composing it. The sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their conscious personality vanishes. A collective mind is formed, doubtless transitory, but presenting very clearly defined characteristics. The gathering has thus become what, in the absence of a better expression, I will call an organized crowd, or, if the term is considered preferable, a psychological crowd. It forms a single being, and is subjected to the law of the mental unity of crowds.

It is evident that it is not by the mere fact of a number of individuals finding themselves accidentally side by side that they acquire the character of an organized crowd. A thousand individuals accidentally gathered in a public place without any determined object in no way constitute a crowd, from the psychological point of view. To acquire the special characteristics of such a crowd, the influence is necessary of certain predisposing causes, of which we shall have to determine the nature.

The disappearance of conscious personality and the turning of feelings and thoughts in a definite direction, which are the primary characteristics of a crowd about to become organized, do not always involve the simultaneous presence of a number of individuals on one spot. Thousands of isolated individuals may acquire at certain moments, and under the influence of certain violent emotions—such, for example, as a great national event—the characteristics of a psychological crowd. It will be sufficient in that case that a mere chance should bring them together for their acts at once to assume the characteristics peculiar to the acts of a crowd. At certain moments half a dozen men might constitute a psychological crowd, which may not happen in the case of hundreds of men gathered together by accident. On the other hand, an entire nation, though there may be no visible agglomeration, may become a crowd under the action of certain influences.

It is not easy to describe the mind of crowds with exactness, because its organization varies not only according to race and composition but also according to the nature and intensity of the exciting causes to which crowds are subjected. The same difficulty, however, presents itself in the psychological study of an individual. It is only in novels that individuals are found to traverse their whole life with an unvarying character. It is only the uniformity of the environment that creates the apparent uniformity of characters. I have shown elsewhere that all mental constitutions contain possibilities of character which may be manifested in consequence of a sudden change of environment. This explains how it was that among the most savage members of the French Convention were to be found inoffensive citizens who, under ordinary circumstances, would have been peaceable notaries or virtuous magistrates. The storm past, they resumed their normal character of quiet, law-abiding citizens. Napoleon found amongst them his most docile servants.

It being impossible to study here all the successive degrees of organization of crowds, we shall concern ourselves more especially with such crowds as have attained to the phase of complete organization. In this way we shall see what crowds may become, but not what they invariably are. It is only in this advanced phase of organization that certain new and special characteristics are superposed on the unvarying and dominant character of the race; then takes place that turning, already alluded to, of all the feelings and thoughts of the collectivity in an identical direction. It is only under such circumstances, too, that what I have called above the psychological law of the mental unity of crowds comes into play.

The most striking peculiarity presented by a psychological crowd is the following: Whoever be the individuals that compose it, however like or unlike be their mode of life, their occupations, their character, or their intelligence, the fact that they have been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each individual of them would feel, think, and act, were he in a state of isolation. There are certain ideas and feelings which do not come into being or do not transform themselves into acts except in the case of individuals forming a crowd. The psychological crowd is a provisional being formed of heterogeneous elements, which for a moment are combined, exactly as the cells which constitute a living body form by their reunion a new being which displays characteristics very different from these possessed by each of the cells singly.

Contrary to an opinion which one is astonished to find coming from the pen of so acute a philosopher as Herbert Spencer, in the aggregate which constitutes a crowd there is in no sort a summing-up of or an average struck between its elements. What really takes place is a combination followed by the creation of new characteristics, just as in chemistry certain elements, when brought into contact—bases and acids, for example—combine to form a new body possessing properties quite different from those of the bodies that have served to form it.

It is easy to prove how much the individual forming part of a crowd differs from the isolated individual, but it is less easy to discover the causes of this difference. To obtain, at any rate, a glimpse of them it is necessary in the first place to call to mind the truth established by modern psychology that unconscious phenomena play an altogether preponderating part not only in organic life but also in the operations of the intelligence. The conscious life of the mind is of small importance in comparison with its unconscious life. The most subtle analyst, the most acute observer, is scarcely successful in discovering more than a very small number of the unconscious motives that determine his conduct.

The greater part of our daily actions are the result of hidden motives which escape our observation. It is more especially with respect to those unconscious elements that all the individuals belonging to it resemble each other, while it is principally in respect to the conscious elements of their character—the fruit of education, and yet more of exceptional hereditary conditions—that they differ from each other. Men most unlike in the matter of their intelligence possess instincts, passions, and feelings that are very similar. In the case of everything that belongs to the realm of sentiment—religion, politics, morality, the affections and antipathies, etc.—the most eminent men seldom surpass the standard of the most ordinary individuals. From the intellectual point of view an abyss may exist between a great mathematician and his bootmaker, but from the point of view of character the difference is most often slight or nonexistent.

It is precisely these general qualities of character, governed by forces of which we are unconscious, and possessed by the majority of the normal individuals of a race in much the same degree, it is precisely these qualities that in crowds become common property. In the collective mind the intellectual aptitudes of the individuals, and in consequence their individuality, are weakened. The heterogeneous is swamped by the homogeneous, and the unconscious qualities obtain the upper hand.

This very fact that crowds possess in common ordinary qualities explains why they can never accomplish acts demanding a high degree of intelligence. The decisions affecting matters of general interest come to by an assembly of men of distinction, but specialists in different walks of life, are not sensibly superior to the decisions that would be adopted by a gathering of imbeciles. The truth is, they can only bring to bear in common on the work in hand those mediocre qualities which are the birthright of every average individual. In crowds it is stupidity and not mother-wit that is accumulated. It is not all the world, as is so often repeated, that has more wit than Voltaire, but assuredly Voltaire that has more wit than all the world, if by “all the world” crowds are to be understood.

If the individuals of a crowd confined themselves to putting in common the ordinary qualities of which each of them has his share, there would merely result the striking of an average, and not, as we have said is actually the case, the creation of new characteristics. How is it that these new characteristics are created? This is what we are now to investigate.

Different causes determine the appearance of these characteristics peculiar to crowds and not possessed by isolated individuals. The first is that the individual forming part of a crowd acquires, solely from numerical considerations, a sentiment of invincible power which allows him to yield to instincts which, had he been alone, he would perforce have kept under restraint. He will be the less disposed to check himself from the consideration that, a crowd being anonymous and in consequence irresponsible, the sentiment of responsibility which always controls individuals disappears entirely.

The second cause, which is contagion, also intervenes to determine the manifestation in crowds of their special characteristics, and at the same time the trend they are to take. Contagion is a phenomenon of which it is easy to establish the presence, but which it is not easy to explain. It must be classed among those phenomena of a hypnotic order. In a crowd every sentiment and act is contagious, and contagious to such a degree that an individual readily sacrifices his personal interest to the collective interest. This is an aptitude very contrary to his nature, and of which a man is scarcely capable except when he makes part of a crowd.

A third cause, and by far the most important, determines in the individuals of a crowd special characteristics which are quite contrary at times to those presented by the isolated individual. I allude to that suggestibility of which, moreover, the contagion mentioned above is neither more nor less than an effect.

The most careful observations seem to prove that an individual immerged for some length of time in a crowd in action soon finds himself—either in consequence of the magnetic influence given out by the crowd or from some other cause of which we are ignorant—in a special state, which much resembles the state of fascination in which the hypnotized individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotizer.

Such also is approximately the state of the individual forming part of a psychological crowd. He is no longer conscious of his acts. In his case, as in the case of the hypnotized subject, at the same time that certain faculties are destroyed, others may be brought to a high degree of exaltation. Under the influence of a suggestion, he will undertake the accomplishment of certain acts with irresistible impetuosity. This impetuosity is the more irresistible in the case of crowds than in that of the hypnotized subject, from the fact that, the suggestion being the same for all the individuals of the crowd, it gains in strength by reciprocity. The individualities in the crowd who might possess a personality sufficiently strong to resist the suggestion are too few in number to struggle against the current. At the utmost, they may be able to attempt a diversion by means of different suggestions. It is in this way, for instance, that a happy expression, an image opportunely evoked, have occasionally deterred crowds from the most bloodthirsty acts.

We see, then, that the disappearance of the conscious personality, the predominance of the unconscious personality, the turning by means of suggestion and contagion of feelings and ideas in an identical direction, the tendency to immediately transform the suggested ideas into acts; these, we see, are the principal characteristics of the individual forming part of a crowd. He is no longer himself, but has become an automaton who has ceased to be guided by his will.

Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part of an organized crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilization. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian—that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings.

An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will. It is for these reasons that juries are seen to deliver verdicts of which each individual juror would disapprove, that parliamentary assemblies adopt laws and measures of which each of their members would disapprove in his own person. Taken separately, the men of the Convention were enlightened citizens of peaceful habits. United in a crowd, they did not hesitate to give their adhesion to the most savage proposals, to guillotine individuals most clearly innocent, and, contrary to their interest, to renounce their inviolability and to decimate themselves.

The conclusion to be drawn from what precedes is that the crowd is always intellectually inferior to the isolated individual, but that, from the point of view of feelings and of the acts these feelings provoke, the crowd may, according to circumstances, be better or worse than the individual. All depends on the nature of the suggestion to which the crowd is exposed. This is the point that has been completely misunderstood by writers who have only studied crowds from the criminal point of view. Doubtless a crowd is often criminal, but also it is often heroic. It is crowds rather than isolated individuals that may be induced to run the risk of death to secure the triumph of a creed or an idea, that may be fired with enthusiasm for glory and honor, that are led on—almost without bread and without arms, as in the age of the Crusades—to deliver the tomb of Christ from the infidel, or, as in ‘93, to defend the fatherland. Such heroism is without doubt somewhat unconscious, but it is of such heroism that history is made. Were peoples only to be credited with the great actions performed in cold blood, the annals of the world would register but few of them.

3. The Crowd Defined[304]

A crowd in the ordinary sense of that term is any chance collection of individuals. Such a collectivity becomes a crowd in the sociological sense only when a condition of rapport has been established among the individuals who compose it.

Rapport implies the existence of a mutual responsiveness, such that every member of the group reacts immediately, spontaneously, and sympathetically to the sentiments and attitudes of every other member.

The fact that A responds sympathetically toward B and C implies the existence in A of an attitude of receptivity and suggestibility toward the sentiments and attitudes of B and C. Where A, B, and C are mutually sympathetic, the inhibitions which, under ordinary circumstances, serve to preserve the isolation and self-consciousness of individuals are relaxed or completely broken down. Under these circumstances each individual, in so far as he may be said to reflect, in his own consciousness and in his emotional reactions, the sentiments and emotions of all the others, tends at the same time to modify the sentiments and attitudes of those others. The effect is to produce a heightened, intensified, and relatively impersonal state of consciousness in which all seem to share, but which is, at the same time, relatively independent of each.

The development of this so-called “group-consciousness” represents a certain amount of loss of self-control on the part of the individual. Such control as the individual loses over himself is thus automatically transferred to the group as a whole or to the leader.

What is meant by rapport in the group may be illustrated by a somewhat similar phenomenon which occurs in hypnosis. In this case a relation is established between the experimenter and his subject such that the subject responds automatically to every suggestion of the experimenter but is apparently oblivious of suggestions coming from other persons whose existence he does not perceive or ignores. This is the condition called “isolated rapport.”[305]

In the case of the crowd this mutual and exclusive responsiveness of each member of the crowd to the suggestions emanating from the other members produces here also a kind of mental isolation which is accompanied by an inhibition of the stimuli and suggestions that control the behavior of individuals under the conditions of ordinary life. Under these conditions impulses long repressed in the individual may find an expression in the crowd. It is this, no doubt, which accounts for those so-called criminal and atavistic tendencies of crowds, of which Le Bon and Sighele speak.[306]

The organization of the crowd is only finally effected when the attention of the individuals who compose it becomes focused upon some particular object or some particular objective. This object thus fixed in the focus of the attention of the group tends to assume the character of a collective representation.[307] It becomes this because it is the focus of the collectively enhanced emotion and sentiment of the group. It becomes the representation and the symbol of what the crowd feels and wills at the moment when all members are suffused with a common collective excitement and dominated by a common and collective idea. This excitement and this idea with the meanings that attach to it are called collective because they are a product of the interactions of the members of the crowd. They are not individual but corporate products.

Le Bon describes the organization thus effected in a chance-met collection of individuals as a “collective mind,” and refers to the group, transitory and ephemeral though it be, as a “single being.”

The positive factors in determining the organization of the crowd are then:

(1) A condition of rapport among the members of the group with a certain amount of contagious excitement and heightened suggestibility incident to it.

(2) A certain degree of mental isolation of the group following as a consequence of the rapport and sympathetic responsiveness of members of the group.

(3) Focus of attention; and finally the consequent.

(4) Collective representation.

C. TYPES OF MASS MOVEMENTS

1. Crowd Excitements and Mass Movements: The Klondike Rush[308]

It was near the middle of July when the steamer Excelsior arrived in San Francisco from St. Michael’s, on the west coast of Alaska, with forty miners, having among them seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of gold, brought down from the Klondike. When the bags and cans and jars containing it had been emptied and the gold piled on the counters of the establishment to which it was brought, no such sight had been seen in San Francisco since the famous year of 1849.

On July 18 the Portland arrived in Seattle, on Puget Sound, having on board sixty-eight miners, who brought ashore bullion worth a million dollars. The next day it was stated that these miners had in addition enough gold concealed about their persons and in their baggage to double the first estimate. Whether all these statements were correct or not does not signify, for those were the reports that were spread throughout the states. From this last source alone, the mint at San Francisco received half a million dollars’ worth of gold in one week, and it was certain that men who had gone away poor had come back with fortunes. It was stated that a poor blacksmith who had gone up from Seattle returned with $115,000, and that a man from Fresno, who had failed as a farmer, had secured $135,000.

The gold fever set in with fury and attacked all classes. Men in good positions, with plenty of money to spend on an outfit, and men with little beyond the amount of their fare, country men and city men, clerks and professional men without the faintest notion of the meaning of “roughing it,” flocked in impossible numbers to secure a passage. There were no means of taking them. Even in distant New York, the offices of railroad companies and local agencies were besieged by anxious inquirers eager to join the throng. On Puget Sound, mills, factories, and smelting works were deserted by their employees, and all the miners on the upper Skeena left their work in a body. On July 21 the North American Transportation Company (one of two companies which monopolized the trade of the Yukon) was reincorporated in Chicago with a quadrupled capital, to cope with the demands of traffic. At the different Pacific ports every available vessel was pressed into the service, and still the wild rush could not be met. Before the end of July the Portland left Seattle again for St. Michael’s, and the Mexico and Topeka for Dyea; the Islander and Tees sailed for Dyea from Victoria, and the G. W. Elder from Portland; while from San Francisco the Excelsior, of the Alaska Company, which had brought the first gold down, left again for St. Michael’s on July 28, being the last of the company’s fleet scheduled to connect with the Yukon river boats for the season. Three times the original price was offered for the passage, and one passenger accepted an offer of $1,500 for the ticket for which he had paid only $150.

This, however, was only the beginning of the rush. Three more steamers were announced to sail in August for the mouth of the Yukon, and at least a dozen more for the Lynn Canal, among which were old tubs, which, after being tied up for years, were now overhauled and refitted for the voyage north. One of these was the Williamette, an old collier with only sleeping quarters for the officers and crew, which, however, was fitted up with bunks and left Seattle for Dyea and Skagway with 850 passengers, 1,200 tons of freight, and 300 horses, men, live stock, and freight being wedged between decks till the atmosphere was like that of a dungeon; and even with such a prospect in view, it was only by a lavish amount of tipping that a man could get his effects taken aboard. Besides all these, there were numerous scows loaded with provisions and fuel, and barges conveying horses for packing purposes.

A frightful state of congestion followed as each successive steamer on its arrival at the head of the Lynn Canal poured forth its crowds of passengers and added to the enormous loads of freight already accumulated. Matters became so serious that on August 10 the United States Secretary of the Interior, having received information that 3,000 persons with 2,000 tons of baggage and freight were then waiting to cross the mountains to Yukon, and that many more were preparing to join them, issued a warning to the public (following that of the Dominion Government of the previous week) in which he called attention to the exposure, privation, suffering, and danger incident to the journey at that advanced period of the season, and further referred to the gravity of the possible consequences to people detained in the mountainous wilderness during five or six months of Arctic winter, where no relief could reach them.

To come now to the state of things at the head of the Lynn Canal, where the steamers discharged their loads of passengers, horses, and freight. This was done either at Dyea or Skagway, the former being the landing-place for the Chilcoot Pass, and the latter for the White Pass, the distance between the two places being about four miles by sea. There were no towns at these places, nor any convenience for landing except a small wharf at Skagway, which was not completed, the workmen having been smitten with the gold fever. Every man had to bring with him, if he wanted to get through and live, supplies for a year: sacks of flour, slabs of bacon, beans, and so forth, his cooking utensils, his mining outfit and building tools, his tent, and all the heavy clothing and blankets suitable for the northern winter, one thousand pounds’ weight at least. Imagine the frightful mass of stuff disgorged as each successive vessel arrived, with no adequate means of taking it inland!

Before the end of September people were preparing to winter on the coast, and Skagway was growing into a substantial town. Where in the beginning of August there were only a couple of shacks, there were in the middle of October 700 wooden buildings and a population of about 1,500. Businesses of all kinds were carried on, saloons and low gaming houses and haunts of all sorts abounded, but of law and order there was none. Dyea also, which at one time was almost deserted, was growing into a place of importance, but the title of every lot in both towns was in dispute. Rain was still pouring down, and without high rubber boots walking was impossible. None indeed but the most hardy could stand existence in such places, and every steamer from the south carried fresh loads of people back to their homes.

Of the 6,000 people who went in this fall, 200 at the most got over to the Dawson Route by the White Pass, and perhaps 700 by the Chilcoot. There were probably 1,000 camped at Lake Bennett, and all the rest, except the 1,500 remaining on the coast, had returned home to wait till midwinter or the spring before venturing up again. The question of which was the best trail was still undecided, and men vehemently debated it every day with the assistance of the most powerful language at their command.

As to the crowds who had gone to St. Michael’s, it is doubtful whether any of them got through to Dawson City, since the lower Yukon is impassable by the end of September, and, at any rate, in view of the prospects of short rations, it would have been rash to try. The consequence would be that they would have to remain on that desolate island during nine months of almost Arctic winter, for the river does not open again till the end of June. Here they would be absolutely without employment unless they chose to stack wood for the steamboat companies, and their only amusements (save the mark) would be drinking bad rye whiskey—for Alaska is a “prohibition” country—and poker-playing. For men with a soul above such delights, the heart-breaking monotony of a northern winter would be appalling, and it is only to be understood by those who have had to endure similar experiences themselves on the western prairies.

2. Mass Movements and the Mores: The Woman’s Crusade[309]

On the evening of December 23, 1873, there might have been seen in the streets of Hillsboro, Ohio, persons singly or in groups wending their way to Music Hall, where a lecture on temperance was to be delivered by Dr. Dio Lewis, of Boston, Massachusetts.

Hillsboro is a small place, containing something more than 3,000 people. The inhabitants are rather better educated than is usually the case in small towns, and its society is indeed noted in that part of the country for its quietude, culture, and refinement.

But Hillsboro was by no means exempt from the prevailing scourge of intemperance. The early settlers of Hillsboro were mostly from Virginia, and brought with them the old-fashioned ideas of hospitality. For many years previous to the crusade the professional men, and especially of the bar, were nearly all habitual drinkers, and many of them very dissipated. When a few earnest temperance men, among whom was Governor Allen Trimble, initiated a total-abstinence movement in or about the year 1830, the pulpit took up arms against them, and a condemnatory sermon was preached in one of the churches.

Thus it was that, although from time to time men, good and true, banded themselves together in efforts to break up this dreadful state of things and reform society, all endeavors seemed to fail of any permanent effect.

The plan laid down by Dr. Lewis challenged attention by its novelty at least. He believed the work of temperance reform might be successfully carried on by women if they would set about it in the right manner—going to the saloon-keeper in a spirit of Christian love, and persuading him for the sake of humanity and his own eternal welfare to quit the hateful, soul-destroying business. The doctor spoke with enthusiasm; and seeing him so full of faith, the hearts of the women seized the hope—a forlorn one, ‘tis true, but still a hope—and when Dr. Lewis asked if they were willing to undertake the task, scores of women rose to their feet, and there was no lack of good men who pledged themselves to encourage and sustain the women in their work.

At a subsequent meeting an organization was effected and Mrs. Eliza J. Thompson, a daughter of ex-Governor Trimble of Ohio, was elected chairman. Mrs. Thompson gives the following account of the manner in which the crusade was organized:

Next day the ladies held another meeting, but decided not to make any visitations, it being Christmas day, and the hotel-keepers more than usually busy and not likely to listen very attentively to our proposition.

On the twenty-sixth, the hotels and saloons were visited; Mrs. Thompson presenting the appeal. And it was on this morning, and at the saloon of Robert Ward, that there came a break in the established routine. “Bob” was a social, jolly sort of fellow, and his saloon was a favorite resort, and there were many women in the company that morning whose hearts were aching in consequence of his wrong-doing. Ward was evidently touched. He confessed that it was a “bad business,” said if he could only “afford to quit it he would,” and then tears began to flow from his eyes. Many of the ladies were weeping, and at length, as if by inspiration, Mrs. Thompson kneeled on the floor of the saloon, all kneeling with her, even the saloonist, and prayed, pleading with indescribable pathos and earnestness for the conversion and salvation of this and all saloon-keepers. When the amen was sobbed rather than spoken, Mrs. Washington Doggett’s sweet voice began, “There is a fountain,” etc., in which all joined; the effect was most solemn, and when the hymn was finished the ladies went quietly away, and that was the first saloon prayer meeting.

There was a saloon-keeper brought from Greenfield to H—— to be tried under the Adair law. The poor mother who brought the suit had besought him not to sell to her son—“her only son.” He replied roughly that he would sell to him “as long as he had a dime.” Another mother, an old lady, made the same request, “lest,” she said, “he may some day fill a drunkard’s grave.” “Madam,” he replied, “your son has as good a right to fill a drunkard’s grave as any other mother’s son.” And in one of the Hillsboro saloons a lady saw her nephew. “O, Mr. B——,” said she, “don’t sell whiskey to that boy: if he has one drink he will want another, and he may die a drunkard.” “Madam, I will sell to him if it sends his soul to hell,” was the awful reply. The last man is a peculiarly hard, stony sort of man; his lips look as if chiseled out of flint, a man to be afraid of. One morning, when the visiting band reached his door, they found him in a very bad humor. He locked his door and seated himself on the horse block in front in a perfect rage, clenched his fist, swore furiously, and ordered us to go home. Some gentlemen, on the opposite side of the street, afterward said that they were watching the scene, ready to rush over and defend the ladies from an attack, and they were sure it would come; but one of the ladies, a sweet-souled woman, gentle and placid, kneeled just at his feet, and poured out such a tender, earnest prayer for him, that he quieted down entirely, and when she rose and offered him her hand in token of kind feeling, he could not refuse to take it.

The crusade began at Washington C.H. only two days later than at Hillsboro. And Washington C.H. was the first place where the crusade was made prominent and successful.

On Friday morning, December 26, 1873, after an hour of prayer in the M.E. Church, forty-four women filed slowly and solemnly down the aisle, and started forth upon their strange mission with fear and trembling, while the male portion of the audience remained at the church to pray for the success of this new undertaking; the tolling of the church-bell keeping time to the solemn march of the women, as they wended their way to the first drug-store on the list. (The number of places within the city limits where intoxicating drinks were sold was fourteen—eleven saloons and three drug-stores.) Here, as in every place, they entered singing, every woman taking up the sacred strain as she crossed the threshold. This was followed by the reading of the appeal and prayer; then earnest pleading to desist from their soul-destroying traffic and sign the dealer’s pledge.

Thus, all the day long, they went from place to place, without stopping even for dinner or lunch, till five o’clock, meeting with no marked success; but invariably courtesy was extended to them; not even their reiterated promise, “We will call again,” seeming to offend.

No woman who has ever entered one of these dens of iniquity on such an errand needs to be told of the heartsickness that almost over-came them as they, for the first time, saw behind those painted windows or green blinds, or entered the little stifling “back room,” or found their way down winding steps into the damp, dark cellars, and realized that into such places those they loved best were being landed, through the allurements of the brilliantly lighted drug-store, the fascinating billiard table, or the enticing beer gardens, with their siren attractions. A crowded house at night, to hear the report of the day’s work, betrayed the rapidly increasing interest in this mission.

On the twenty-seventh the contest really began, and, at the first place, the doors were found locked. With hearts full of compassion, the women knelt in the snow upon the pavement, to plead for the divine influence upon the heart of the liquor-dealer, and there held their first street prayer meeting.

At night the weary but zealous workers reported at a mass meeting of the various rebuffs, and the success in having two druggists sign the pledge not to sell, except upon the written prescription of a physician.

The Sabbath, was devoted to union mass meeting, with direct reference to the work in hand; and on Monday the number of ladies had increased to near one hundred. That day, December 29, is one long to be remembered in Washington, as the day upon which occurred the first surrender ever made by a liquor-dealer, of his stock of liquors of every kind and variety, to the women, in answer to their prayers and entreaties, and by them poured into the street. Nearly a thousand men, women, and children witnessed the mingling of beer, ale, wine, and whiskey, as they filled the gutters and were drunk up by the earth, while the bells were ringing, men and boys shouting, and women singing and praying to God who had given the victory. But on the fourth day, “stock sale-day,” the campaign had reached its height, the town being filled with visitors from all parts of the county and adjoining villages. Another public surrender, and another pouring into the street of a larger stock of liquors than on the previous day, and more intense excitement and enthusiasm.

Mass meetings were held nightly, with new victories reported constantly, until on Friday, January 21, one week from the beginning of the work, at the public meeting held in the evening, the secretary’s report announced the unconditional surrender of every liquor-dealer, some having shipped their liquors back to wholesale dealers, others having poured them into the gutters, and the druggists as all having signed the pledge. Thus a campaign of prayer and song had, in eight days, closed eleven saloons, and pledged three drug-stores to sell only on prescription. At first men had wondered, scoffed, and laughed, then criticized, respected, and yielded.

Morning prayer and evening mass meetings continued daily, and the personal pledge was circulated till over one thousand signatures were obtained. Physicians were called upon to sign a pledge not to prescribe ardent spirits when any other substitute could be found, and in no case without a personal examination of the patient.

Early in the third week the discouraging intelligence came that a new man had taken out a license to sell liquor in one of the deserted saloons, and that he was backed by a whiskey house in Cincinnati, to the amount of $5,000, to break down this movement. On Wednesday, ‘the fourteenth, the whiskey was unloaded at his room. About forty women were on the ground and followed the liquor in, and remained holding an uninterrupted prayer meeting all day and until eleven o’clock at night. The next day, bitterly cold, was spent in the same place and manner, without fire or chairs, two hours of that time the women being locked in, while the proprietor was off attending a trial. On the following day, the coldest of the winter of 1874, the women were locked out, and stood on the street holding religious services all day long.

Next morning a tabernacle was built in the street, just in front of the house, and was occupied for the double purpose of watching and prayer through the day; and before night the sheriff closed the saloon, and the proprietor surrendered; thus ended the third week.

A short time after, on a dying-bed, this four days’ liquor-dealer sent for some of these women, telling them their songs and prayers had never ceased to ring in his ears, and urging them to pray again in his behalf; so he passed away.

Thus, through most of the winter of 1874 no alcoholic drinks were publicly sold as a beverage in the county.

During the two intervening years weekly temperance-league meetings have been kept up by the faithful few, while frequent union mass meetings have been held, thus keeping the subject always before the people. Today the disgraceful and humiliating fact exists that there are more places where liquors are sold than before the crusade.

3. Mass Movements and Revolution

a. The French Revolution[310]

The outward life of men in every age is molded upon an inward life consisting of a framework of traditions, sentiments, and moral influences which direct their conduct and maintain certain fundamental notions which they accept without discussion.

Let the resistance of this social framework weaken, and ideas which could have had no force before will germinate and develop. Certain theories whose success was enormous at the time of the Revolution would have encountered an impregnable wall two centuries earlier.

The aim of these considerations is to recall to the reader the fact that the outward events of revolutions are always a consequence of invisible transformations which have slowly gone forward in men’s minds. Any profound study of a revolution necessitates a study of the mental soil upon which the ideas that direct its courses have to germinate.

Generally slow in the extreme, the evolution of ideas is often invisible for a whole generation. Its extent can only be grasped by comparing the mental condition of the same social classes at the two extremities of the curve which the mind has followed.

The actual influence of the philosophers in the genesis of the Revolution was not that which was attributed to them. They revealed nothing new, but they developed the critical spirit which no dogma can resist, once the way is prepared for its downfall.

Under the influence of this developing critical spirit things which were no longer very greatly respected came to be respected less and less. When tradition and prestige had disappeared, the social edifice suddenly fell. This progressive disaggregation finally descended to the people, but was not commenced by them. The people follow examples, but never set them.

The philosophers, who could not have exerted any influence over the people, did exert a great influence over the enlightened portion of the nation. The unemployed nobility, who had long been ousted from their old functions and who were consequently inclined to be censorious, followed their leadership. Incapable of foresight, the nobles were the first to break with the traditions that were their only raison d’être. As steeped in humanitarianism and rationalism as the bourgeoisie of today, they continually sapped their own privileges by their criticisms. As today, the most ardent reformers were found among the favorites of fortune. The aristocracy encouraged dissertations on the social contract, the rights of man, and the equality of citizens. At the theater it applauded plays which criticized privileges, the arbitrariness and the incapacity of men in high places, and abuses of all kinds.

As soon as men lose confidence in the foundations of the mental framework which guides their conduct, they feel at first uneasy and then discontented. All classes felt their old motives of action gradually disappearing. Things that had seemed sacred for centuries were now sacred no longer.

The censorious spirit of the nobility and of the writers of the day would not have sufficed to move the heavy load of tradition but that its action was added to that of other powerful influences. We have already stated, in citing Bossuet, that under the ancien régime the religious and civil governments, widely separated in our day, were intimately connected. To injure one was inevitably to injure the other. Now even before the monarchical idea was shaken, the force of religious tradition was greatly diminished among cultivated men. The constant progress of knowledge had sent an increasing number of minds from theology to science by opposing the truth observed to the truth revealed.

This mental evolution, although as yet very vague, was sufficient to show that the traditions which for so many centuries had guided men had not the value which had been attributed to them, and that it would soon be necessary to replace them.

But where discover the new elements which might take the place of tradition? Where seek the magic ring which would raise a new social edifice on the remains of that which no longer contented men?

Men were agreed in attributing to reason the power that tradition and the gods seemed to have lost. How could its force be doubted? Its discoveries having been innumerable, was it not legitimate to suppose that by applying it to the construction of societies it would entirely transform them? Its possible function increased very rapidly in the thoughts of the more enlightened, in proportion as tradition seemed more and more to be distrusted.

The sovereign power attributed to reason must be regarded as the culminating idea which not only engendered the Revolution but governed it throughout. During the whole Revolution men gave themselves up to the most persevering efforts to break with the past and to erect society upon a new plan dictated by logic.

Slowly filtering downward, the rationalistic theories of the philosophers meant to the people simply that all the things which had been regarded as worthy of respect were now no longer worthy. Men being declared equal, the old masters need no longer be obeyed. The multitude easily succeeded in ceasing to respect what the upper classes themselves no longer respected. When the barrier of respect was down the Revolution was accomplished.

The first result of this new mentality was a general insubordination. Mme. Vigée Lebrun relates that on the promenade at Longchamps men of the people leaped on the footboards of the carriages, saying, “Next year you will be behind and we shall be inside.”

The populace was not alone in manifesting insubordination and discontent. These sentiments were general on the eve of the Revolution. “The lesser clergy,” says Taine, “are hostile to the prelates; the provincial gentry to the nobility of the court; the vassals to the seigneurs; the peasants to the townsmen, etc.”

This state of mind, which had been communicated from the nobles and clergy to the people, also invaded the army. At the moment the States General were opened, Necker said: “We are not sure of the troops.” The officers were becoming humanitarian and philosophical. The soldiers, recruited from the lowest class of the population, did not philosophize, but they no longer obeyed. In their feeble minds the ideas of equality meant simply the suppression of all leaders and masters, and therefore of all obedience. In 1790 more than twenty regiments threatened their officers, and sometimes, as at Nancy, threw them into prison.

The mental anarchy which, after spreading through all classes of society, finally invaded the army was the principal cause of the disappearance of the ancien régime. “It was the defection of the army affected by the ideas of the Third Estate,” wrote Rivarol, “that destroyed royalty.”

The genesis of the French Revolution, as well as its duration, was conditioned by elements of a rational, affective, mystic, and collective nature, each category of which was ruled by a different logic. The rational element usually invoked as an explanation exerted in reality but very slight influence. It prepared the way for the Revolution, but maintained it only at the outset, while it was still exclusively middle class. Its action was manifested by many measures of the time, such as the proposals to reform the taxes, the suppression of the privileges of a useless nobility, etc.

As soon as the Revolution reached the people, the influence of the rational elements speedily vanished before that of the affective and collective elements. As for the mystic elements, the foundation of the revolutionary faith, they made the army fanatical and propagated the new belief throughout the world.

We shall see these various elements as they appeared in events and in the psychology of individuals. Perhaps the most important was the mystic element. The Revolution cannot be clearly comprehended—we cannot repeat it too often—unless it is considered as the formation of a religious belief. What I have said elsewhere of all beliefs applies equally to the Revolution. They impose themselves on men apart from reason and have the power to polarize men’s thoughts and feelings in one direction. Pure reason had never such a power, for men were never impassioned by reason.

The religious forms rapidly assumed by the Revolution explain its power of expansion and the prestige which it possessed and has retained. Few historians have understood that this great monument ought to be regarded as the foundation of a new religion. The penetrating mind of Tocqueville, I believe, was the first to perceive as much. He wrote:

Although the mystic element is always the foundation of beliefs, certain affective and rational elements are quickly added thereto. A belief thus serves to group sentiments and passions and interests which belong to the affective domain. Reason then envelops the whole, seeking to justify events in which, however, it played no part whatever.

At the moment of the Revolution everyone, according to his aspirations, dressed the new belief in a different rational vesture. The peoples saw in it only the suppression of the religious and political despotisms and hierarchies under which they had so often suffered. Writers like Goethe and thinkers like Kant imagined that they saw in it the triumph of reason. Foreigners like Humboldt came to France “to breathe the air of liberty and to assist at the obsequies of despotism.” These intellectual illusions did not last long. The evolution of the drama soon revealed the true foundations of the dream.

b. Bolshevism[311]

Great mass movements, whether these be religious or political, are at first always difficult to understand. Invariably they challenge existing moral and intellectual values, the revaluation of which is, for the normal mind, an exceedingly difficult and painful task. Moreover the definition of their aims and policies into exact and comprehensive programs is generally slowly achieved. At their inception and during the early stages of their development there must needs be many crude and tentative statements and many rhetorical exaggerations. It is safe to assert as a rule that at no stage of its history can a great movement of the masses be fully understood and fairly interpreted by a study of its formal statements and authentic expositions only. These must be supplemented by a careful study of the psychology of the men and women whose ideals and yearnings these statements and expositions aim to represent. It is not enough to know and comprehend the creed: it is essential that we also know and comprehend the spiritual factors, the discontent, the hopes, the fears, the inarticulate visionings of the human units in the movement. This is of greater importance in the initial stages than later, when the articulation of the soul of the movement has become more certain and clear.

No one who has attended many bolshevist meetings or is acquainted with many of the individuals to whom bolshevism makes a strong appeal will seriously question the statement that an impressively large number of those who profess to be Bolshevists present a striking likeness to extreme religious zealots, not only in the manner of manifesting their enthusiasm, but also in their methods of exposition and argument. Just as in religious hysteria a single text becomes a whole creed to the exclusion of every other text, and instead of being itself subject to rational tests is made the sole test of the rationality of everything else, so in the case of the average Bolshevist of this type a single phrase received into the mind in a spasm of emotion, never tested by the usual criteria of reason, becomes not only the very essence of truth but also the standard by which the truth or untruth of everything else must be determined. Most of the preachers who become pro-Bolshevists are of this type.

People who possess minds thus affected are generally capable of, and frequently indulge in, the strictest logical deduction and analysis. Sometimes they acquire the reputation of being exceptionally brilliant thinkers because of this power. But the fact is that their initial ideas, upon which everything is pivoted, are derived emotionally and are not the results of a deliberate weighing of available evidence. The initial movement is one of feeling, of emotional impulse. The conviction thereby created is so strong and so dominant that it cannot be affected by any purely rational functional factors.

People of this type jump at decisions and reach very positive convictions upon the most difficult matters with bewildering ease. For them the complexities and intricacies which trouble the normal mind do not exist. Everything is either black or white: there are no perplexing intervening grays. Right is right and wrong is wrong; they do not recognize that there are doubtful twilight zones. Ideas capable of the most elaborate expansion and the most subtle intricacies of interpretation are immaturely grasped and preached with naïve assurance. Statements alleged to be facts, no matter what their source, if they seem to support the convictions thus emotionally derived, are received without any examination and used as conclusive proof, notwithstanding that a brief investigation would prove them to be worthless as evidence.

If we take the group of American intellectuals who at present are ardent champions of bolshevism we shall find that, with exceptions so few as to be almost negligible, they have embraced nearly every “ism” as it arose, seeing in each one the magic solvent of humanity’s ills. Those of an older generation thus regarded bimetallism, for instance. What else could be required to make the desert bloom like a garden and to usher in the earthly Paradise? The younger ones, in their turn, took up anarchist-communism, Marxian socialism, industrial unionism, syndicalism, birth control, feminism, and many other movements and propagandas, each of which in its turn induced ecstatic visions of a new heaven and a new earth. The same individuals have grown lyrical in praise of every bizarre and eccentric art fad. In the banal and grotesque travesties of art produced by cubists, futurists, et al., they saw transcendent genius. They are forever seeking new gods and burying old ones.

It would be going too far to say that these individuals are all hystericals in the pathological sense, but it is strictly accurate to say that the class exhibits marked hysterical characteristics and that it closely resembles the large class of over-emotionalized religious enthusiasts which furnish so many true hystericals. It is probable that accidents of environment account for the fact that their emotionalism takes sociological rather than religious forms. If the sociological impetus were absent, most of them would be religiously motived to a state not less abnormal.

To understand the spread of bolshevist agitation and sympathy among a very considerable part of the working class in this country, we must take into account the fact that its logical and natural nucleus is the I.W.W. It is necessary also to emancipate our minds from the obsession that only “ignorant foreigners” are affected. This is not a true estimate of either the I.W.W. or the bolshevist propaganda as a whole. There are indeed many of this class in both, but there are also many native Americans, sturdy, self-reliant, enterprising, and courageous men. The peculiar group psychology which we are compelled to study is less the result of those subtle and complex factors which are comprehended in the vague term “race” than of the political and economic conditions by which the group concerned is environed.

The typical native-born I.W.W. member, the “Wobbly” one frequently encounters in our mid-western and western cities, is very unlike the hideous and repulsive figure conjured up by sensational cartoonists. He is much more likely to be a very attractive sort of man. Here are some characteristics of the type: figure robust, sturdy, and virile; dress rough but not unclean; speech forthright, deliberate, and bold; features intelligent, frank, and free from signs of alcoholic dissipation; movements slow and leisurely as of one averse to over-exertion. There are thousands of “wobblies” to whom the specifications of this description will apply. Conversation with these men reveals that, as a general rule, they are above rather than below the average in sobriety. They are generally free from family ties, being either unmarried or, as often happens, wife-deserters. They are not highly educated, few having attended any school beyond the grammar-school grade. Many of them have, however, read a great deal more than the average man, though their reading has been curiously miscellaneous in selection and nearly always badly balanced. Theology, philosophy, sociology, and economics seem to attract most attention. In discussion—and every “Wobbly” seems to possess a passion for disputation—men of this type will manifest a surprising familiarity with the broad outlines of certain theological problems, as well as with the scriptural texts bearing upon them. It is very likely to be the case, however, that they have only read a few popular classics of what used to be called rationalism—Paine’s Age of Reason, Ingersoll’s lectures in pamphlet form, and Haeckel’s Riddle of the Universe are typical. A surprisingly large number can quote extensively from Buckle’s History of Civilization and from the writings of Marx. They quote statistics freely—statistics of wages, poverty, crime, vice, and so on—generally derived from the radical press and implicitly believed because so published, with what they accept as adequate authority.

Their most marked peculiarity is the migratory nature of their lives. Whether this is self-determined, a matter of temperament and habit, or due to uncontrollable factors, it is largely responsible for the contempt in which they are popularly held. It naturally brings upon them the reproach and resentment everywhere visited upon “tramps” and “vagabonds.” They rarely remain long enough in any one place to form local attachments and ties or anything like civic pride. They move from job to job, city to city, state to state, sometimes tramping afoot, begging as they go; sometimes stealing rides on railway trains, in freight cars—“side-door Pullmans”—or on the rods underneath the cars. Frequently arrested for begging, trespassing, or stealing rides, they are often victims of injustice at the hands of local judges and justices. The absence of friends, combined with the prejudice against vagrants which everywhere exists, subjects them to arbitrary and high-handed injustice such as no other body of American citizens has to endure. Moreover, through the conditions of their existence they are readily suspected of crimes they do not commit; it is all too easy for the hard-pushed police officer or sheriff to impute a crime to the lone and defenseless “Wobbly,” who frequently can produce no testimony to prove his innocence, simply because he has no friends in the neighborhood and has been at pains to conceal his movements. In this manner the “Wobbly” becomes a veritable son of Ishmael, his hand against the hand of nearly every man in conventional society. In particular he becomes a rebel by habit, hating the police and the courts as his constant enemies.

Doubtless the great majority of these men are temperamentally predisposed to the unanchored, adventurous, migratory existence which they lead. Boys so constituted run away to sea, take jobs with traveling circuses, or enlist as soldiers. The type is familiar and not uncommon. Such individuals cannot be content with the prosaic, humdrum, monotonous life of regular employment. As a rule we do not look upon this trait in boy or man as criminal.

Many a hardworking, intelligent American, who from choice or from necessity is a migratory worker, following his job, never has an opportunity to vote for state legislators, for governor, for congressman or president. He is just as effectively excluded from the actual electorate as if he were a Chinese coolie, ignorant of our customs and our speech.

We cannot wonder that such conditions prove prolific breeders of bolshevism and similar “isms.” It would be strange indeed if it were otherwise. We have no right to expect that men who are so constantly the victims of arbitrary, unjust, and even brutal treatment at the hands of our police and our courts will manifest any reverence for the law and the judicial system. Respect for majority rule in government cannot fairly be demanded from a disfranchised group. It is not to be wondered at that the old slogan of socialism, “Strike at the ballot-box!”—the call to lift the struggle of the classes to the parliamentary level for peaceful settlement—becomes the desperate, anarchistic I.W.W. slogan, “Strike at the ballot-box with an ax!” Men who can have no family life cannot justly be expected to bother about school administration. Men who can have no home life but only dreary shelter in crowded work-camps or dirty doss-houses are not going to bother themselves with municipal housing reforms.

In short, we must wake up to the fact that, as the very heart of our problem, we have a bolshevist nucleus in America composed of virile, red-blooded Americans, racy of our soil and history, whose conditions of life and labor are such as to develop in them the psychology of reckless, despairing, revengeful bolshevism. They really are little concerned with theories of the state and of social development, which to our intellectuals seem to be the essence of bolshevism. They are vitally concerned only with action. Syndicalism and bolshevism involve speedy and drastic action—hence the force of their appeal.

Finally, if we would understand why millions of people in all lands have turned away from old ideals, old loyalties, and old faiths to bolshevism, with something of the passion and frenzy characteristic of great messianic movements, we must take into account the intense spiritual agony and hunger which the Great War has brought into the lives of civilized men. The old gods are dead and men are everywhere expectantly waiting for the new gods to arise. The aftermath of the war is a spiritual cataclysm such as civilized mankind has never before known. The old religions and moralities are shattered and men are waiting and striving for new ones. It is a time suggestive of the birth of new religions. Man cannot live as yet without faith, without some sort of religion. The heart of the world today is strained with yearning for new and living faiths to replace the old faiths which are dead. Were some persuasive fanatic to arise proclaiming himself to be a new Messiah, and preaching the religion of action, the creation of a new society, he would find an eager, soul-hungry world already predisposed to believe.

4. Mass Movements and Institutions: Methodism[312]

The corruption of manners which has been general since the restoration was combated by societies for “the reformation of manners,” which in the last years of the seventeenth century acquired extraordinary dimensions. They began in certain private societies which arose in the reign of James II, chiefly under the auspices of Beveridge and Bishop Horneck. These societies were at first purely devotional, and they appear to have been almost identical in character with those of the early Methodists. They held prayer meetings, weekly communions, and Bible-readings; they sustained charities and distributed religious books, and they cultivated a warmer and more ascetic type of devotion than was common in the Church. Societies of this description sprang up in almost every considerable city in England and even in several of those in Ireland. In the last years of the seventeenth century we find no less than ten of them in Dublin. Without, however, altogether discarding their first character, they assumed, about 1695, new and very important functions. They divided themselves into several distinct groups, undertaking the discovery and suppression of houses of ill fame, and the prosecution of swearers, drunkards, and Sabbath-breakers. They became a kind of voluntary police, acting largely as spies, and enforcing the laws against religious offenses. The energy with which this scheme was carried out is very remarkable. As many as seventy or eighty persons were often prosecuted in London and Westminster for cursing and swearing, in a single week. Sunday markets, which had hitherto been not uncommon, were effectually suppressed. Hundreds of disorderly houses were closed. Forty or fifty night-walkers were sent every week to Bridewell, and numbers were induced to emigrate to the colonies. A great part of the fines levied for these offenses was bestowed on the poor. In the fortieth annual report of the “Societies for the Reformation of Manners” which appeared in 1735, it was stated that the number of prosecutions for debauchery and profaneness in London and Westminster alone, since the foundation of the societies, had been 99,380.

The term Methodist was a college nickname bestowed upon a small society of students at Oxford, who met together between 1729 and 1735 for the purpose of mutual improvement. They were accustomed to communicate every week, to fast regularly on Wednesdays and Fridays, and on most days during Lent; to read and discuss the Bible in common, to abstain from most forms of amusement and luxury, and to visit sick persons and prisoners in the gaol. John Wesley, the future leader of the religious revival of the eighteenth century, was the master-spirit of this society. The society hardly numbered more than fifteen members, and was the object of much ridicule at the university; but it included some men who afterward played considerable parts in the world. Among them was Charles, the younger brother of John Wesley, whose hymns became the favorite poetry of the sect, and whose gentler, more submissive, and more amiable character, though less fitted than that of his brother for the great conflicts of public life, was very useful in moderating the movement, and in drawing converts to it by personal influence. Charles Wesley appears to have originated the society at Oxford; he brought Whitefield into its pale, and besides being the most popular poet he was one of the most persuasive preachers of the movement.

In the course of 1738 the chief elements of the movement were already formed. Whitefield had returned from Georgia, Charles Wesley had begun to preach the doctrine with extraordinary effect to the criminals in Newgate and from every pulpit into which he was admitted. Methodist societies had already sprung up under Moravian influence. They were in part a continuation of the society at Oxford, in part a revival of those religious societies that have been already noticed as so common after the Revolution. The design of each was to be a church within a church, a seedplot of a more fervent piety, the center of a stricter discipline and a more energetic propagandism than existed in religious communities at large. In these societies the old Christian custom of love-feasts was revived. The members sometimes passed almost the whole night in the most passionate devotions, and voluntarily submitted to a spiritual tyranny that could hardly be surpassed in a Catholic monastery. They were to meet every week, to make an open and particular confession of every frailty, to submit to be crossexamined on all their thoughts, words, and deeds. The following among others were the questions asked at every meeting: “What known sin have you committed since our last meeting? What temptations have you met with? How were you delivered? What have you thought, said, or done of which you doubt whether it be sin or not? Have you nothing you desire to keep secret?”

Such rules could only have been accepted under the influence of an overpowering religious enthusiasm, and there was much truth in the judgment which the elder brother of John Wesley passed upon them in 1739. “Their societies,” he wrote to their mother, “are sufficient to dissolve all other societies but their own. Will any man of common sense or spirit suffer any domestic to be in a band engaged to relate to five or ten people everything without reserve that concerns the person’s conscience how much soever it may concern the family? Ought any married persons to be there unless husband and wife be there together?”

From this time the leaders of the movement became the most active of missionaries. Without any fixed parishes they wandered from place to place, proclaiming their new doctrine in every pulpit to which they were admitted, and they speedily awoke a passionate enthusiasm and a bitter hostility in the Church.

We may blame, but we can hardly, I think, wonder at the hostility all this aroused among the clergy. It is, indeed, certain that Wesley and Whitefield were at this time doing more than any other contemporary clergymen to kindle a living piety among the people. Yet before the end of 1738 the Methodist leaders were excluded from most of the pulpits of the Church, and were thus compelled, unless they consented to relinquish what they considered a Divine mission, to take steps in the direction of separation.

Two important measures of this nature were taken in 1739. One of them was the creation of Methodist chapels, which were intended not to oppose or replace, but to be supplemental and ancillary to, the churches, and to secure that the doctrine of the new birth should be faithfully taught to the people. The other and still more important event was the institution by Whitefield of field-preaching. The idea had occurred to him in London, where he found congregations too numerous for the church in which he preached, but the first actual step was taken in the neighborhood of Bristol. At a time when he was himself excluded from the pulpits at Bristol, and was thus deprived of the chief normal means of exercising his talents, his attention was called to the condition of the colliers at Kingswood. He was filled with horror and compassion at finding in the heart of a Christian country, and in the immediate neighborhood of a great city, a population of many thousands, sunk in the most brutal ignorance and vice, and entirely excluded from the ordinances of religion. Moved by such feelings, he resolved to address the colliers in their own haunts. The resolution was a bold one, for field-preaching was then utterly unknown in England, and it needed no common courage to brave all the obloquy and derision it must provoke, and to commence the experiment in the center of a half-savage population. Whitefield, however, had a just confidence in his cause and in his powers. Standing himself upon a hillside, he took for his text the first words of the sermon which was spoken from the Mount, and he addressed with his accustomed fire an astonished audience of some two hundred men. The fame of his eloquence spread far and wide. On successive occasions, five, ten, fifteen, even twenty thousand were present. It was February, but the winter sun shone clear and bright. The lanes were filled with carriages of the more wealthy citizens, whom curiosity had drawn from Bristol. The trees and hedges were crowded with humbler listeners, and the fields were darkened by a compact mass. The voice of the great preacher pealed with a thrilling power to the outskirts of that mighty throng. The picturesque novelty of the occasion and of the scene, the contagious emotion of so great a multitude, a deep sense of the condition of his hearers and of the momentous importance of the step he was taking, gave an additional solemnity to his eloquence. His rude auditors were electrified. They stood for a time in rapt and motionless attention. Soon tears might be seen forming white gutters down cheeks blackened from the coal mine. Then sobs and groans told how hard hearts were melting at his words. A fire was kindled among the outcasts of Kingswood which burnt long and fiercely, and was destined in a few years to overspread the land.

But for the simultaneous appearance of a great orator and a great statesman, Methodism would probably have smouldered and at last perished like the very similar religious societies of the preceding century. Whitefield was utterly destitute of the organizing skill which could alone give a permanence to the movement, and no talent is naturally more ephemeral than popular oratory; while Wesley, though a great and impressive preacher, could scarcely have kindled a general enthusiasm had he not been assisted by an orator who had an unrivaled power of moving the passions of the ignorant. The institution of field-preaching by Whitefield in the February of 1739 carried the impulse through the great masses of the poor, while the foundation by Wesley, in the May of the same year, of the first Methodist chapel was the beginning of an organized body capable of securing and perpetuating the results that had been achieved.

From the time of the institution of lay preachers Methodism became in a great degree independent of the Established Church. Its chapels multiplied in the great towns, and its itinerant missionaries penetrated to the most secluded districts. They were accustomed to preach in fields and gardens, in streets and lecture-rooms, in market places and churchyards. On one occasion we find Whitefield at a fair mounting a stage which had been erected for some wrestlers, and there denouncing the pleasures of the world; on another, preaching among the mountebanks at Moorfields; on a third, attracting around his pulpit ten thousand of the spectators at a race course; on a fourth, standing beside the gallows at an execution to speak of death and of eternity. Wesley, when excluded from the pulpit of Epworth, delivered some of his most impressive sermons in the churchyard, standing on his father’s tomb. Howell Harris, the apostle of Wales, encountering a party of mountebanks, sprang into their midst exclaiming, in a solemn voice, “Let us pray,” and then proceeded to thunder forth the judgments of the Lord. Rowland Hill was accustomed to visit the great towns on market day in order that he might address the people in the market place, and to go from fair to fair preaching among the revelers from his favorite text, “Come out from among them.” In this manner the Methodist preachers came in contact with the most savage elements of the population, and there were few forms of mob violence they did not experience. In 1741 one of their preachers named Seward, after repeated ill treatment in Wales, was at last struck on the head while preaching at Monmouth, and died of the blow. In a riot, while Wheatley was preaching at Norwich, a poor woman with child perished from the kicks and blows of the mob. At Dublin, Whitefield was almost stoned to death. At Exeter he was stoned in the very presence of the bishop. At Plymouth he was violently assaulted and his life seriously threatened by a naval officer.

Scenes of this kind were of continual occurrence, and they were interspersed with other persecutions of a less dangerous description. Drums were beaten, horns blown, guns let off, and blacksmiths hired to ply their noisy trade in order to drown the voices of the preachers. Once, at the very moment when Whitefield announced his text, the belfry gave out a peal loud enough to make him inaudible. On other occasions packs of hounds were brought with the same object, and once, in order to excite the dogs to fury, a live cat in a cage was placed in their midst. Fire engines poured streams of fetid water upon the congregation. Stones fell so thickly that the faces of many grew crimson with blood. At Hoxton the mob drove an ox into the midst of the congregation. At Pensford the rabble, who had been baiting a bull, concluded their sport by driving the torn and tired animal full against the table on which Wesley was preaching. Sometimes we find innkeepers refusing to receive the Methodist leaders in their inns, farmers entering into an agreement to dismiss every laborer who attended a Methodist preacher, landlords expelling all Methodists from their cottages, masters dismissing their servants because they had joined the sect. The magistrates, who knew by experience that the presence of a Methodist preacher was the usual precursor of disturbance and riot, looked on them with the greatest disfavor, and often scandalously connived at the persecutions they underwent.

It was frequently observed by Wesley that his preaching rarely affected the rich and the educated. It was over the ignorant and the credulous that it exercised its most appalling power, and it is difficult to overrate the mental anguish it must sometimes have produced. Timid and desponding natures unable to convince themselves that they had undergone a supernatural change, gentle and affectionate natures who believed that those who were dearest to them were descending into everlasting fire, must have often experienced pangs compared with which the torments of the martyr were insignificant. The confident assertions of the Methodist preacher and the ghastly images he continually evoked poisoned their imaginations, haunted them in every hour of weakness or depression, discolored all their judgments of the world, and added a tenfold horror to the darkness of the grave. Sufferings of this description, though among the most real and the most terrible that superstition can inflict, are so hidden in their nature that they leave few traces in history; but it is impossible to read the journals of Wesley without feeling that they were most widely diffused. Many were thrown into paroxysms of extreme, though usually transient, agony; many doubtless nursed a secret sorrow which corroded all the happiness of their lives, while not a few became literally insane. On one occasion Wesley was called to the bedside of a young woman at Kingswood. He tells us:

For more than two hours Wesley and his brother continued praying over her. At last the paroxysms subsided and the patient joined in a hymn of praise.

In the intense religious enthusiasm that was generated, many of the ties of life were snapped in twain. Children treated with contempt the commands of their parents, students the rules of their colleges, clergymen the discipline of their Church. The whole structure of society, and almost all the amusements of life, appeared criminal. The fairs, the mountebanks, the public rejoicings of the people, were all Satanic. It was sinful for a woman to wear any gold ornament or any brilliant dress. It was even sinful for a man to exercise the common prudence of laying by a certain portion of his income. When Whitefield proposed to a lady to marry him, he thought it necessary to say, “I bless God, if I know anything of my own heart, I am free from that foolish passion which the world calls love.” “I trust I love you only for God, and desire to be joined to you only by His commands, and for His sake.” It is perhaps not very surprising that Whitefield’s marriage, like that of Wesley, proved very unhappy. Theaters and the reading of plays were absolutely condemned, and Methodists employed all their influence with the authorities to prevent the erection of the former. It seems to have been regarded as a divine judgment that once, when Macbeth was being acted at Drury Lane, a real thunderstorm mingled with the mimic thunder in the witch scene. Dancing was, if possible, even worse than the theater. “Dancers,” said Whitefield, “please the devil at every step”; and it was said that his visit to a town usually put “a stop to the dancing-school, the assemblies, and every pleasant thing.” He made it his mission to “bear testimony against the detestable diversions of this generation”; and he declared that no “recreations, considered as such, can be innocent.”

Accompanying this asceticism we find an extraordinary revival of the grossest superstition. It was a natural consequence of the essentially emotional character of Methodism that its disciples should imagine that every strong feeling or impulse within them was a direct inspiration of God or Satan. The language of Whitefield—the language in a great degree of all the members of the sect—was that of men who were at once continually inspired and the continual objects of miraculous interposition. In every perplexity they imagined that, by casting lots or opening their Bibles at random, they could obtain a supernatural answer to their inquiries.

In all matters relating to Satanic interference, Wesley was especially credulous. “I cannot give up to all the Deists in Great Britain the existence of witchcraft till I give up the credit of all history, sacred and profane.” He had no doubt that the physical contortions into which so many of his hearers fell were due to the direct agency of Satan, who tore the converts as they were coming to Christ. He had himself seen men and women who were literally possessed by devils; he had witnessed forms of madness which were not natural, but diabolical, and he had experienced in his own person the hysterical affections which resulted from supernatural agency.

If Satanic agencies continually convulsed those who were coming to the faith, divine judgments as frequently struck down those who opposed it. Every illness, every misfortune that befell an opponent, was believed to be supernatural. Molther, the Moravian minister, shortly after the Methodists had separated from the Moravians, was seized with a passing illness. “I believe,” wrote Wesley, “it was the hand of God that was upon him.” Numerous cases were cited of sudden and fearful judgments which fell upon the adversaries of the cause. A clergyman at Bristol, standing up to preach against the Methodists, “was suddenly seized with a rattling in his throat, attended with a hideous groaning,” and on the next Sunday he died. At Todmorden a minister was struck with a violent fit of palsy immediately after preaching against the Methodists. At Enniscorthy a clergyman, having preached for some time against Methodism, deferred the conclusion of the discourse to the following Sunday. Next morning he was raging mad, imagined that devils were about him, “and not long after, without showing the least sign of hope, he went to his account.” At Kingswood a man began a vehement invective against Wesley and Methodism. “In the midst he was struck raving mad.” A woman, seeing a crowd waiting for Wesley at the church door, exclaimed, “They are waiting for their God.” She at once fell senseless to the ground, and next day expired. “A party of young men rode up to Richmond to disturb the sermons of Rowland Hill. The boat sank, and all of them were drowned.” At Sheffield the captain of a gang who had long troubled the field-preachers, was bathing with his companions. “Another dip,” he said, “and then for a bit of sport with the Methodists.” He dived, struck his head against a stone, and appeared no more. By such anecdotes and by such beliefs a fever of enthusiasm was sustained.

But with all its divisions and defects the movement was unquestionably effecting a great moral revolution in England. It was essentially a popular movement, exercising its deepest influence over the lower and middle classes. Some of its leaders were men of real genius, but in general the Methodist teacher had little sympathy with the more educated of his fellow-countrymen. To an ordinarily cultivated mind there was something extremely repulsive in his tears and groans and amorous ejaculations, in the coarse and anthropomorphic familiarity and the unwavering dogmatism with which he dealt with the most sacred subjects, in the narrowness of his theory of life and his utter insensibility to many of the influences that expand and embellish it, in the mingled credulity and self-confidence with which he imagined that the whole course of nature was altered for his convenience. But the very qualities that impaired his influence in one sphere enhanced it in another. His impassioned prayers and exhortations stirred the hearts of multitudes whom a more decorous teaching had left absolutely callous. The supernatural atmosphere of miracles, judgments, and inspirations in which he moved, invested the most prosaic life with a halo of romance. The doctrines he taught, the theory of life he enforced, proved themselves capable of arousing in great masses of men an enthusiasm of piety which was hardly surpassed in the first days of Christianity, of eradicating inveterate vice, of fixing and directing impulsive and tempestuous natures that were rapidly hastening toward the abyss. Out of the profligate slave-dealer, John Newton, Methodism formed one of the purest and most unselfish of saints. It taught criminals in Newgate to mount the gallows in an ecstasy of rapturous devotion. It planted a fervid and enduring religious sentiment in the midst of the most brutal and most neglected portions of the population, and whatever may have been its vices or its defects, it undoubtedly emancipated great numbers from the fear of death, and imparted a warmer tone to the devotion and a greater energy to the philanthropy of every denomination both in England and the colonies.

III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS

1. Social Unrest

The term collective behavior, which has been used elsewhere to include all the facts of group life, has been limited for the purposes of this chapter to those phenomena which exhibit in the most obvious and elementary way the processes by which societies are disintegrated into their constituent elements and the processes by which these elements are brought together again into new relations to form new organizations and new societies.

Some years ago John Graham Brooks wrote a popular treatise on the labor situation in the United States. He called the volume Social Unrest. The term was, even at that time, a familiar one. Since then the word unrest, in both its substantive and adjective forms, has gained wide usage. We speak in reference to the notorious disposition of the native American to move from one part of the country to another, of his restless blood, as if restlessness was a native American trait transmitted in the blood. We speak more often of the “restless age,” as if mobility and the desire for novelty and new experience were peculiarly characteristic of the twentieth century. We use the word to describe conditions in different regions of social life in such expressions as “political,” “religious,” and “labor” unrest, and in every case the word is used in a sense that indicates change, but change that menaces the existing order. Finally, we speak of the “restless woman,” as of a peculiar modern type, characteristic of the changed status of women in general in the modern world. In all these different uses we may observe the gradual unfolding of the concept which seems to have been implicit in the word as it was first used. It is the concept of an activity in response to some urgent organic impulse which the activity, however, does not satisfy. It is a diagnostic symptom, a symptom of what Graham Wallas calls “balked disposition.” It is a sign that in the existing situation some one or more of the four wishes—security, new experience, recognition, and response—has not been and is not adequately realized. The fact that the symptom is social, that it is contagious, is an indication that the situations that provoke it are social, that is to say, general in the community or the group where the unrest manifests itself.[313] The materials in which the term unrest is used in the sense indicated are in the popular discussions of social questions. The term is not defined but it is frequently used in connection with descriptions of conditions which are evidently responsible for it. Labor strikes are evidences of social unrest, and the literature already referred to in the chapter on “Conflict”[1] shows the conditions under which unrest arises, is provoked and exploited in labor situations. The relation of unrest to routine and fatigue has been the subject of a good deal of discussion and some investigation. The popular conception is that labor unrest is due to the dull driving routine of machine industry. The matter needs further study. The actual mental experiences of the different sexes, ages, temperamental and mental types under the influence of routine would add a much needed body of fact to our present psychology of the worker.

2. Psychic Epidemics

If social unrest is a symptom of disorganization, then the psychic epidemics, in which all the phenomena of social unrest and contagion are intensified, is evidence positive that disorganization exists. Social disorganization must be considered in relation to reorganization. All change involves a certain amount of disorganization. In order that an individual may make new adjustments and establish new habits it is inevitable that old habits should be broken up, and in order that society may reform an existing social order a certain amount of disorganization is inevitable. Social unrest may be, therefore, a symptom of health. It is only when the process of disorganization goes on so rapidly and to such an extent that the whole existing social structure is impaired, and society is, for that reason, not able to readjust itself, that unrest is to be regarded as a pathological symptom.

There is reason to believe, contrary to the popular conception, that the immigrant in America, particularly in the urban environment, accommodates himself too quickly rather than too slowly to American life. Statistics show, particularly in the second generation, a notable increase in juvenile delinquency, and this seems to be due to the fact that in America the relation between parents and children is reversed. Owing to the children’s better knowledge of English and their more rapid accommodation to the conditions of American life, parents become dependent upon their children rather than the children dependent upon their parents.

Social epidemics, however, are evidence of a social disintegration due to more fundamental and widespread disorders. The literature has recorded the facts but writers have usually interpreted the phenomena in medical rather than sociological terms. Stoll, in his very interesting but rather miscellaneous collection of materials upon primitive life, disposes of the phenomena by giving them another name. His volume is entitled Suggestion and Hypnotism in Folk Psychology.[314] Friedmann, in his monograph, Über Wahnideen im Völkerleben, is disposed as a psychiatrist to treat the whole matter as a form of “social” insanity.

3. Mass Movements

In spite of the abundance of materials on the subject of mass movements no attempt has been made as yet to collect and classify them. There have been a number of interesting books in the field of collective psychology, so called mainly by French and Italian writers—Sighele, Rossi, Tarde, and Le Bon—but they are not based on a systematic study of cases. The general assumption has been that the facts are so obvious that any attempt to study systematically the mechanisms involved would amount to little more than academic elaboration of what is already obvious, a restatement in more abstract terms of what is already familiar.

On the other hand, shepherds and cowboys, out of their experience in handling cattle and sheep, have learned that the flock and the herd have quite peculiar and characteristic modes of collective behavior which it is necessary to know if one is to handle them successfully. At the same time, practical politicians who make a profession of herding voters, getting them out to the polls at the times they are needed and determining for them, by the familiar campaign devices, the persons and the issues for which they are to cast their ballots, have worked out very definite methods for dealing with masses of people, so that they are able to predict the outcome with considerable accuracy far in advance of an election and make their dispositions accordingly.

Political manipulation of the movements and tendencies of popular opinion has now reached a point of perfection where it can and will be studied systematically. During the world-war it was studied, and all the knowledge which advertisers, newspaper men, and psychologists possessed was used to win the war.

Propaganda is now recognized as part of the grand strategy of war. Not only political and diplomatic victories, but battles were won during the world-war by the aid of this insidious weapon. The great victory of the Austrian and German armies at Caporetto which in a few days wiped out all the hard-won successes of the Italian armies was prepared by a psychic attack on the morale of the troops at the front and a defeatist campaign among the Italian population back of the lines.

When the final history of the world-war comes to be written, one of its most interesting chapters will be a description of the methods and devices which were used by the armies on both sides to destroy the will to war in the troops and among the peoples behind the lines. If the application of modern science to war has multiplied the engines of destruction, the increase of communication and the interpenetration of peoples has given war among civilized peoples the character of an internal and internecine struggle. Under these circumstances propaganda, in the sense of an insidious exploitation of the sources of dissension and unrest, may as completely change the character of wars of peoples as they were once changed by the invention of gunpowder.

In this field there is room for investigation and study, for almost all attempts thus far made to put advertising on a scientific basis have been made by students of individual rather than social psychology.

4. Revivals, Religious and Linguistic

For something more than a hundred years Europe has experienced a series of linguistic and literary revivals, that is to say revivals of the folk languages and the folk cultures. The folk languages are the speech of peoples who have been conquered but not yet culturally absorbed by the dominant language group. They are mostly isolated rural populations who have remained to a large extent outside of the cosmopolitan cultures of the cities. These people while not wholly illiterate have never had enough education in the language of the dominant peoples of the cities to enable them to use this alien speech as a medium of education. The consequence is that, except for a relatively small group of intellectuals, they have been cut off from the main current of European life and culture. These linguistic revivals have not been confined to any one nation, since every nation in Europe turns out upon analysis to be a mosaic of minor nationalities and smaller cultural enclaves in which the languages of little and forgotten peoples have been preserved. Linguistic revivals have, in fact, been well-nigh universal. They have taken place in France, Spain, Norway, Denmark, in most of the Balkan States, including Albania, the most isolated of them all, and in all the smaller nationalities along the Slavic-German border—Finland, Esthonia, Letvia, Lithuania, Poland, Bohemia, Slovakia, Roumania, and the Ukraine. Finally, among the Jews of Eastern Europe, there has been the Haskala Movement, as the Jews of Eastern Europe call their period of enlightenment, a movement that has quite unintentionally made the Judeo-German dialect (Yiddish) a literary language.

The actual effect has been different from what was expected. It is difficult, and for the masses of the people impossible, to learn through the medium of a language that they do not speak. The results of the efforts to cultivate Swedish and Russian in Finland, Polish and Russian in Lithuania, Magyar in Slovakia and at the same time to prohibit the publication of books and newspapers in the mother-tongue of the country has been, in the first place, to create an artificial illiteracy and, in the second, to create in the minds of native peoples a sense of social and intellectual inferiority to the alien and dominant race.

The effect of the literary revival of the spoken language, however, has been to create, in spite of the efforts to suppress it, a vernacular press which opened the gates of western culture to great masses of people for whom it did not previously exist. The result has been a great cultural awakening, a genuine renaissance, which has had profound reverberations on the political and social life of Europe.

Investigation of these linguistic revivals and the nationalist movement that has grown out of them indicates that there is a very intimate relation between nationalist and religious movements. Both of them are fundamentally cultural movements with incidental political consequences. The movement which resulted in the reorganization of rural life in Denmark, the movement that found expression in so unique an institution as the rural high schools of Denmark, was begun by Bishop Grundtvig, called the Luther of Denmark, and was at once a religious and a nationalist movement. The rural high schools are for this reason not like anything in the way of education with which people outside of Denmark are familiar. They are not technical schools but cultural institutions in the narrowest, or broadest, sense of that term.[317] The teaching is “scientific,” but at the same time “inspirational.” They are what a Sunday school might be if it were not held on Sunday and was organized as Mr. H. G. Wells would organize it and with such a bible as he would like to have someone write for us.[318]

The popular accounts which we have of religious revivals do not at first suggest any very definite relations, either psychological or sociological, between them and the literary revivals to which reference has just been made. Religious revivals, particularly as described by dispassionate observers, have the appearance of something bizarre, fantastic, and wild, as indeed they often are.

What must strike the thoughtful observer, however, is the marked similarity of these collective religious excitements, whether among civilized or savage peoples and at places and periods remote in time and in space. Frederick Morgan Davenport, who has collected and compared the materials in this field from contemporary sources, calls attention in the title of his volume, Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, to this fundamental similarity of the phenomena. Whatever else the word “primitive” may mean in this connection it does mean that the phenomena of religious revivals are fundamentally human.

From the frantic and disheveled dances of the Bacchantes, following a wine cart through an ancient Greek village, to the shouts and groans of the mourners’ bench of an old-time Methodist camp-meeting, religious excitement has always stirred human nature more profoundly than any other emotion except that of passionate love.

In the volume by Jean Pélissier, The Chief Makers of the National Lithuanian Renaissance (Les Principaux artisans de la renaissance nationale lituanienne), there is a paragraph describing the conversion of a certain Dr. Kudirka, a Lithuanian patriot, to the cause of Lithuanian nationality. It reads like a chapter from William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience.[319]

It is materials like this that indicate how close and intimate are the relations between cultural movements, whether religious or literary and national, at least in their formal expression. The question that remains to be answered is: In what ways do they differ?

5. Fashion, Reform and Revolution

A great deal has been written in recent times in regard to fashion. It has been studied, for example, as an economic phenomenon. Sombart has written a suggestive little monograph on the subject. It is in the interest of machine industry that fashions should be standardized over a wide area, and it is the function of advertising to achieve this result. It is also of interest to commerce that fashions should change and this also is largely, but not wholly, a matter of advertising. Tarde distinguishes between custom and fashion as the two forms in which all cultural traits are transmitted. “In periods when custom is in the ascendant, men are more infatuated about their country than about their time; for it is the past which is pre-eminently praised. In ages when fashion rules, men are prouder, on the contrary, of their time than of their country.”[320]

The most acute analysis that has been made of fashion is contained in the observation of Sumner in Folkways. Sumner pointed out that fashion though differing from, is intimately related to, the mores. Fashion fixes the attention of the community at a given time and place and by so doing determines what is sometimes called the Spirit of the Age, the Zeitgeist. By the introduction of new fashions the leaders of society gain that distinction in the community by which they are able to maintain their prestige and so maintain their position as leaders. But in doing this, they too are influenced by the fashions which they introduce. Eventually changes in fashion affect the mores.[321]

Fashion is related to reform and to revolution, because it is one of the fundamental ways in which social changes take place and because, like reform and revolution, it also is related to the mores.

Fashion is distinguished from reform by the fact that the changes it introduces are wholly irrational if not at the same time wholly unpredictable. Reform, on the other hand, is nothing if not rational. It achieves its ends by agitation and discussion. Attempts have been made to introduce fashions by agitation, but they have not succeeded. On the other hand, reform is itself a fashion and has largely absorbed in recent years the interest that was formerly bestowed on party politics.

There has been a great deal written about reforms but almost nothing about reform. It is a definite type of collective behavior which has come into existence and gained popularity under conditions of modern life. The reformer and the agitator, likewise, are definite, temperamental, and social types. Reform tends under modern conditions to become a vocation and a profession like that of the politician. The profession of the reformer, however, is social, as distinguished from party politics.

Reform is not revolution. It does not seek to change the mores but rather to change conditions in conformity with the mores. There have been revolutionary reformers. Joseph II of Austria and Peter the Great of Russia were reformers of that type. But revolutionary reforms have usually failed. They failed lamentably in the case of Joseph II and produced many very dubious results under Peter.

A revolution is a mass movement which seeks to change the mores by destroying the existing social order. Great and silent revolutionary changes have frequently taken place in modern times, but as these changes were not recognized at the time and were not directly sought by any party they are not usually called revolutions. They might properly be called “historical revolutions,” since they are not recognized as revolutions until they are history.

There is probably a definite revolutionary process but it has not been defined. Le Bon’s book on the Psychology of Revolution, which is the sequel to his study of The Crowd, is, to be sure, an attempt, but the best that one can say of it is that it is suggestive. Many attempts have been made to describe the processes of revolution as part of the whole historical process. This literature will be considered in the chapter on “Progress.”

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. DISORGANIZATION, SOCIAL UNREST, AND PSYCHIC EPIDEMICS

A. Social Disorganization

(1) Cooley, Charles H. Social Organization. Chap. xxx, “Formalism and Disorganization,” pp. 342-55; chap. xxxi, “Disorganization: the Family,” pp. 356-71; chap. xxxii, “Disorganization: the Church,” pp. 372-82; chap. xxxiii, “Disorganization: Other Traditions,” pp. 383-92. New York, 1909.

(2) Thomas, W. I., and Znaniecki, Florian. The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. Monograph of an immigrant group. Vol. IV, “Disorganization and Reorganization in Poland,” Boston, 1920.

(3) ——. The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. Vol. V, “Organization and Disorganization in America,” Part II, “Disorganization of the Immigrant,” pp. 165-345. Boston, 1920.

(4) Friedländer, L. Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire. Authorized translation by L. A. Magnus from the 7th rev. ed. of the Sittengeschichte Roms. 4 vols. London, 1908-13.

(5) Lane-Poole, S. The Mohammedan Dynasties. Charts showing “Growth of the Ottoman Empire” and “Decline of the Ottoman Empire,” pp. 190-91. London, 1894.

(6) Taine, H. The Ancient Régime. Translated from the French by John Durand. New York, 1896.

(7) Wells, H. G. Russia in the Shadows. New York, 1921.

(8) Patrick, George T. W. The Psychology of Social Reconstruction. Chap. vi, “Our Centripetal Society,” pp. 174-98. Boston, 1920.

(9) Ferrero, Guglielmo. “The Crisis of Western Civilization,” Atlantic Monthly, CXXV (1920), 700-712.

B. Social Unrest

(1) Brooks, John Graham. The Social Unrest. Studies in labor and socialist movements. London, 1903.

(2) Fuller, Bampfylde. Life and Human Nature. Chap. ii, “Change,” pp. 24-45. London, 1914.

(3) Wallas, Graham. The Great Society. A psychological analysis. Chap. iv, “Disposition and Environment,” pp. 57-68. New York, 1914. [Defines “the baulked disposition,” see also pp. 172-74.]

(4) Healy, William. The Individual Delinquent. A textbook of diagnosis and prognosis for all concerned in understanding offenders. “Hypomania, Constitutional Excitement,” pp. 609-13. Boston, 1915.

(5) Janet, Pierre. The Major Symptoms of Hysteria. Fifteen lectures given in the medical school of Harvard University. New York, 1907.

(6) Barr, Martin W., and Maloney, E. F. Types of Mental Defectives. “Idiot Savant,” pp. 128-35. Philadelphia, 1920.

(7) Thomas, Edward. Industry, Emotion and Unrest. New York, 1920.

(8) Parker, Carleton H. The Casual Laborer and Other Essays. Chap. i, “Toward Understanding Labor Unrest,” pp. 27-59. New York, 1920.

(9) The Cause of World Unrest. With an introduction by the editor of The Morning Post (of London). New York, 1920.

(10) Ferrero, Guglielmo. Ancient Rome and Modern America. A comparative study of morals and manners. New York, 1914.

(11) Veblen, Thorstein. “The Instinct of Workmanship and the Irksomeness of Labor,” American Journal of Sociology, IV (1898-99), 187-201.

(12) Lippmann, Walter. “Unrest,” New Republic, XX (1919), 315-22.

(13) Tannenbaum, Frank. The Labor Movement. Its conservative functions and social consequences. New York, 1921.

(14) Baker, Ray Stannard. The New Industrial Unrest. Its reason and remedy. New York, 1920.

(15) MacCurdy, J. T. “Psychological Aspects of the Present Unrest,” Survey, XLIII (1919-20), 665-68.

(16) Myers, Charles S. Mind and Work. The psychological factors in industry and commerce. Chap. vi, “Industrial Unrest,” pp. 137-69. New York, 1921.

(17) Adler, H. M. “Unemployment and Personality—a Study of Psychopathic Cases,” Mental Hygiene, I (1917), 16-24.

(18) Chirol, Valentine. Indian Unrest. A reprint, revised and enlarged from The Times, with an introduction by Sir Alfred Lyall. London, 1910.

(19) Münsterberg, Hugo. Social Studies of Today. Chap. ii, “The Educational Unrest,” pp. 25-57. London, 1913.

(20) ——. American Problems. From the point of view of a psychologist. Chap. v, “The Intemperance of Women,” pp. 103-13. New York, 1912.

(21) Corelli, Marie. “The Great Unrest,” World Today, XXI (1912), 1954-59.

(22) Ferrero, Guglielmo. The Women of the Caesars. New York, 1911.

(23) Myerson, Abraham. The Nervous Housewife. Boston, 1920.

(24) Mensch, Ella. Bilderstürmer in der Berliner Frauenbewegung. 2d ed. Berlin, 1906.

C. Psychic Epidemics

(1) Hecker, J. F. C. The Black Death and the Dancing Mania. Translated from the German by B. G. Babington. Cassell’s National Library. New York, 1888.

(2) Stoll, Otto. Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Völkerpsychologie. 2d ed. Leipzig, 1904.

(3) Friedmann, Max. Über Wahnideen im Völkerleben. Wiesbaden, 1901.

(4) Regnard, P. Les maladies épidémiques de l’esprit. Sorcellerie, magnétisme, morphinisme, délire des grandeurs. Paris, 1886.

(5) Meyer, J. L. Schwärmerische Greuelscenen oder Kreuzigungsgeschichte einer religiösen Schwärmerinn in Wildensbuch, Canton Zürich. Ein merkwürdiger Beytrag zur Geschichte des religiösen Fanatismus. 2d ed. Zürich, 1824.

(6) Gowen, B. S. “Some Aspects of Pestilences and Other Epidemics,” American Journal of Psychology, XVIII (1907), 1-60.

(7) Weygandt, W. Beitrag zur Lehre von den psychischen Epidemien. Halle, 1905.

(8) Histoire des diables de Loudun. Ou de la possession des Religieuses Ursulines et de la condamnation et du supplice d’Urbain Grandier, curé de la même ville, cruels effets de la vengeance du Cardinal de Richelieu. Amsterdam, 1740.

(9) Finsler, G. “Die religiöse Erweckung der zehner und zwanziger Jahre unseres Jahrhunderts in der deutschen Schweiz,” Züricher Taschenbuch auf das Jahr 1890. Zürich, 1890.

(10) Fauriel, M. C. Histoire de la croisade centre les hérétiques Albigeois. Écrite en vers provençaux par un poête contemporain. (Aiso es la consos de la crozada contr els ereges Dalbeges.) Paris, 1837.

(11) Mosiman, Eddison. Das Zungenreden, geschichtlich und psychologisch untersucht. Tübingen, 1911. [Bibliography.]

(12) Vigouroux, A., and Juquelier, P. La contagion mentale. Paris, 1905.

(13) Kotik, Dr. Naum. “Die Emanation der psychophysischen Energie,” Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens. Wiesbaden, 1908.

(14) Aubry, P. “De l’influence contagieuse de la publicité des faits criminels,” Archives d’anthropologie criminelle, VIII (1893), 565-80.

(15) Achelis, T. Die Ekstase in ihrer kulturetten Bedeutung. Kulturprobleme der Gegenwart. Berlin, 1902.

(16) Cadière, L. “Sur quelques Faits religieux ou magiques, observés pendant une épidémie de choléra en Annam,” Anthropos, V (1910), 519-28, 1125-59.

(17) Hansen, J. Zauberwahn, Inquisition und Hexenprozess im Mittelalter und die Entstehung der grossen Hexenverfolgung. München, 1900.

(18) Hansen, J. Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung im Mittelalter. Bonn, 1901.

(19) Rossi, P. Psicologia collettiva morbosa. Torino, 1901.

(20) Despine, Prosper. De la Contagion morale. Paris, 1870.

(21) Moreau de Tours. De la Contagion du suicide à propos de l’épidémie actuelle. Paris, 1875.

(22) Aubry, P. La Contagion du meutre. Étude d’anthropologie criminelle. 3d ed. Paris, 1896.

(23) Rambosson, J. Phénomènes nerveux, intellectuels et moraux, leur transmission par contagion. Paris, 1883.

(24) Dumas, Georges. “Contagion mentale, épidémies mentales, folies collectives, folies grégaires,” Revue philosophique, LXXI (1911), 225-44, 384-407.

II. MUSIC, DANCE, AND RITUAL

(1) Wallaschek, Richard. Primitive Music. An inquiry into the origin and development of music, songs, instruments, dances, and pantomimes of savage races. London, 1893.

(2) Combarieu, J. La Musique et le magic. Étude sur les origines populaires de l’art musical; son influence et sa fonction dans les sociétés. Paris, 1908.

(3) Simmel, Georg. “Psychologische und ethnologische Studien über Musik,” Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, XIII (1882), 261-305.

(4) Boas, F. “Chinook Songs,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, I (1888), 220-26.

(5) Densmore, Frances. “The Music of the Filipinos,” American Anthropologist, N.S., VIII (1906), 611-32.

(6) Fletcher, Alice C. Indian Story and Song from North America. Boston, 1906.

(7) ——. “Indian Songs and Music,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, XI (1898), 85-104.

(8) Grinnell, G. B. “Notes on Cheyenne Songs,” American Anthropologist, N.S., V (1903), 312-22.

(9) Mathews, W. “Navaho Gambling Songs,” American Anthropologist, II (1889), 1-20.

(10) Hearn, Lafcadio. “Three Popular Ballads,” Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, XXII (1894), 285-336.

(11) Ellis, Havelock. “The Philosophy of Dancing,” Atlantic Monthly, CXIII (1914), 197-207.

(12) Hirn, Yrjö. The Origins of Art. A psychological and sociological inquiry. Chap. xvii, “Erotic Art,” pp. 238-48. London, 1900.

(13) Pater, Walter. Greek Studies. A series of essays. London, 1911.

(14) Grosse, Ernst. The Beginnings of Art. Chap. viii, “The Dance,” pp. 207-31. New York, 1898.

(15) Bücher, Karl. Arbeit und Rhythmus. 3d ed. Leipzig, 1902.

(16) Lhérisson, E. “La Danse du vaudou,” Semaine médicale, XIX (1899), xxiv.

(17) Reed, V. Z. “The Ute Bear Dance,” American Anthropologist, IX (1896) 237-44.

(18) Gummere, F. B. The Beginnings of Poetry. New York, 1901.

(19) Fawkes, J. W. “The Growth of the Hopi Ritual,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, XI (1898), 173-94.

(20) Cabrol, F. Les origines liturgiques. Paris, 1906.

(21) Gennep, A. van. Les Rites de passage. Paris, 1909.

(22) Pitre, Giuseppe. Feste patronali in Sicilia. Palermo, 1900.

(23) Murray, W. A. “Organizations of Witches in Great Britain,” Folk-Lore, XXVIII (1917), 228-58.

(24) Taylor, Thomas. The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries. New York, 1891.

(25) Tippenhauer, L. G. Die Insel Haiti. Leipzig, 1893. [Describes the Voudou Ritual.]

(26) Wuensch, R. Das Frühlingsfest der Insel Malta. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der antiken Religion. Leipzig, 1902.

(27) Loisy, Alfred. Les mystères païens et le mystère chrétien. Paris, 1919.

(28) Lummis, Charles F. The Land of Poco Tiempo. Chap. iv, “The Penitent Brothers,” pp. 77-108. New York, 1893.

(29) “Los Hermanos Penitentes,” El Palacio, VIII (1920), 3-20, 73-74.

III. THE CROWD AND THE PUBLIC

A. The Crowd

(1) Le Bon, Gustave. The Crowd. A study of the popular mind. London, 1920.

(2) Tarde, G. L’Opinion et la foule. Paris, 1901.

(3) Sighele, S. Psychologie des Aulaufs und der Massenverbrechen. Translated from the Italian by Hans Kurella. Leipzig, 1897.

(4) ——. La foule criminelle. Essai de psychologie collective. 2d ed., entièrement refondue. Paris, 1901.

(5) Tarde, Gabriel. “Foules et sectes au point de vue criminel,” Revue des deux mondes, CXX (1893), 349-87.

(6) Miceli, V. “La Psicologia della folla,” Rivista italiana di sociologia, III (1899), 166-95.

(7) Conway, M. The Crowd in Peace and War. New York, 1915.

(8) Martin, E. D. The Behavior of Crowds. New York, 1920.

(9) Christensen, A. Politics and Crowd-Morality. New York, 1915.

(10) Park, R. E. Masse und Publikum. Bern, 1904.

(11) Clark, H. “The Crowd.” “University of Illinois Studies.” Psychological Monograph, No. 92, XXI (1916), 26-36.

(12) Tawney, G. A. “The Nature of Crowds,” Psychological Bulletin, II (1905), 329-33.

(13) Rossi, P. Le suggesteur et la foule, psychologie du meneur. Paris, 1904.

(14) ——. I suggestionatori e la folla. Torino, 1902.

(15) ——. “Dell’Attenzione collettiva e sociale,” Manicomio, XXI (1905), 248 ff.

B. Political Psychology

(1) Beecher, Franklin A. “National Politics in Its Psychological Aspect,” Open Court, XXXIII (1919), 653-61.

(2) Boutmy, Émile. The English People. A study of their political psychology. London, 1904.

(3) Palanti, G. “L’Esprit de corps. (Remarques sociologiques.)” Revue philosophique, XLVIII (1899), 135-45.

(4) Gardner, Chas. S. “Assemblies,” American Journal of Sociology, XIX (1914), 531-55.

(5) Bentham, Jeremy. Essay on Political Tactics. Containing six of the principal rules proper to be observed by a political assembly, in the process of forming a decision: with the reasons on which they are grounded; and a comparative application of them to British and French practice. London, 1791.

(6) Tönnies, Ferdinand. “Die grosse Menge und das Volk,” Schmollers Jahrbuch, XLIV (1920), 317-45. [Criticism of Le Bon’s conception of the crowd.]

(7) Botsford, George W. The Roman Assemblies. From their origin to the end of the Republic. New York, 1909.

(8) Crothers, T. D. “A Medical Study of the Jury System,” Popular Science Monthly, XLVII (1895), 375-82.

(9) Coleman, Charles T. “Origin and Development of Trial by Jury,” Virginia Law Review, VI (1919-20), 77-86.

C. Collective Psychology in General

(1) Rossi, P. Sociologia e psicologia collettiva. 2d ed. Roma, 1909.

(2) Straticò, A. La Psicologia collettiva. Palermo, 1905.

(3) Worms, René. “Psychologie collective et psychologie individuelle,” Revue international de sociologie, VII (1899), 249-74.

(4) Brönner, W. “Zur Theorie der kollektiv-psychischen Erscheinungen,” Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, CXLI (1911), 1-40.

(5) Newell, W. W. “Individual and Collective Characteristics in Folk-Lore,” Journal of American Folk-Lore, XIX (1906), 1-15.

(6) Campeano, M. Essai de psychologie militaire individuelle et collective. Avec une préface de M. Th. Ribot. Paris, 1902.

(7) Hartenberg, P. “Les émotions de Bourse. (Notes de psychologie collective).” Revue philosophique, LVIII (1904), 163-70.

(8) Scalinger, G. M. La Psicologia a teatro. Napoli, 1896.

(9) Burckhard, M. “Das Theater.” Die Gesellschaft. Sammlung Sozial-Psychologische Monographien, 18. Frankfurt-am-Main, 1907.

(10) Woolbert, C. H. “The Audience.” “University of Illinois Studies.” Psychological Monograph, No. 92, XXI (1916), 36-54.

(11) Howard, G. E. “Social Psychology of the Spectator,” American Journal of Sociology, XVIII (1912), 33-50.

(12) Peterson, J. “The Functioning of Ideas in Social Groups,” Psychological Review, XXV (1918), 214-26.

IV. MASS MOVEMENTS

(1) Bryce, James. “Migrations of the Races of Men Considered Historically,” Contemporary Review, LXII (1892), 128-49.

(2) Mason, Otis T. “Migration and the Food Quest: A Study in the Peopling of America,” American Anthropologist, VII (1894), 275-92.

(3) Pflugk-Harttung, Julius von. The Great Migrations. Translated from the German by John Henry Wright. Philadelphia, 1905.

(4) Bradley, Henry. The Story of the Goths. From the earliest times to the end of the Gothic dominion in Spain. New York, 1888.

(5) Jordanes. The Origin and Deeds of the Goths. English version by Charles C. Mierow. Princeton, 1908.

(6) Archer, T. A., and Kingsford, C. L. The Crusades. New York, 1894.

(7) Ireland, W. W. “On the Psychology of the Crusades,” Journal of Mental Science, LII (1906), 745-55; LIII (1907), 322-41.

(8) Groves, E. R. “Psychic Causes of Rural Migration,” American Journal of Sociology, XXI (1916), 623-27.

(9) Woodson, Carter G. A Century of Negro Migrations. Washington, 1918. [Bibliography.]

(10) Fleming, Walter L. “‘Pap’ Singleton, the Moses of the Colored Exodus,” American Journal of Sociology, XV (1909-10), 61-82.

(11) Bancroft, H. H. History of California. Vol. VI, 1848-59. Chaps. ii-ix, pp. 26-163. San Francisco, 1888. [The discovery of gold in California.]

(12) Down, T. C. “The Rush to the Klondike,” Cornhill Magazine, IV (1898), 33-43.

(13) Ziegler, T. Die geistigen und socialen Strömungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Berlin, 1899.

(14) Zeeb, Frieda B. “Mobility of the German Woman,” American Journal of Sociology, XXI (1915-16), 234-62.

(15) Anthony, Katharine S. Feminism in Germany and Scandinavia. New York, 1915. [Bibliography.]

(16) Croly, Jane (Mrs.). The History of the Woman’s Club Movement in America. New York, 1898.

(17) Taft, Jessie. The Woman Movement from the Point of View of Social Consciousness. Chicago, 1916.

(18) Harnack, Adolf. The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries. Translated from the 2d rev. German ed. by James Moffatt. New York, 1908.

(19) Buck, S. J. The Agrarian Crusade. A chronicle of the farmer in politics. New Haven, 1920.

(20) Labor Movement. The last six volumes of The Documentary History of American Industrial Society. Vols. V-VI, 1820-40, by John R. Commons and Helen L. Sumner; Vols. VII-VIII, 1840-60, by John R. Commons; Vols. IX-X, 1860-80, by John R. Commons and John B. Andrews. Cleveland, 1910.

(21) Begbie, Harold. The Life of General William Booth. The Founder of the Salvation Army. 2 vols. New York, 1920.

(22) Wittenmyer, Annie (Mrs.). History of the Women’s Temperance Crusade. A complete official history of the wonderful uprising of the Christian women of the United States against the liquor traffic which culminated in the Gospel Temperance Movement. Introduction by Frances E. Willard. Philadelphia, 1878.

(23) Gordon, Ernest. The Anti-alcohol Movement in Europe. New York, 1913.

(24) Cherrington, Ernest H. The Evolution of Prohibition in the United States of America. A chronological history of the liquor problem and the temperance reform in the United States from the earliest settlements to the consummation of national prohibition. Westerville, Ohio, 1920.

(25) Woods, Robert A. English Social Movements. New York, 1891.

(26) Zimand, Savel. Modern Social Movements. Descriptive summaries and bibliographies. New York, 1921.

V. REVIVALS, RELIGIOUS AND LINGUISTIC

A. Religious Revivals and the Origin of Sects

(1) Meader, John R. Article on “Religious Sects,” Encyclopedia Americana, XXIII, 355-61. [List of nearly 300 denominations and sects.]

(2) Articles on “sects,” Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, XI, 307-47. [The subject and author of the different articles are “Sects (Buddhist),” T. W. Rhys Davids; “Sects (Chinese),” T. Richard; “Sects (Christian),” W. T. Whitley; “Sects (Hindu),” W. Crooke; “Sects (Jewish),” I. Abrahams; “Sects (Russian),” K. Grass and A. von Stromberg; “Sects (Samaritan),” N. Schmidt; “Sects (Zoroastrian),” E. Edwards. Bibliographies.]

(3) United States Bureau of the Census. Religious Bodies, 1906. 2 vols. Washington, 1910.

(4) ——. Religious Bodies, 1916. 2 vols. Washington, 1919.

(5) Davenport, Frederick M. Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals. A study in mental and social evolution. New York, 1905.

(6) Mooney, James. “The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890.” 14th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (1892-93), 653-1136.

(7) Stalker, James. Article on “Revivals of Religion,” Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, X, 753-57. [Bibliography.]

(8) Burns, J. Revivals, Their Laws and Leaders. London, 1909.

(9) Tracy, J. The Great Awakening. A history of the revival of religion in the time of Edwards and Whitefield. Boston, 1842.

(10) Finney, C. G. Autobiography. London, 1892.

(11) Hayes, Samuel P. “An Historical Study of the Edwardean Revivals,” American Journal of Psychology, XIII (1902), 550-74.

(12) Maxon, C. H. The Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies. Chicago, 1920. [Bibliography.]

(13) Gibson, William. Year of Grace. Edinburgh, 1860. [Irish revival, 1859.]

(14) Moody, W. R. The Life of Dwight L. Moody. New York, 1900.

(15) Bois, Henri. Le Réveil au pays de Galles. Paris, 1906. [Welsh revival of 1904-6.]

(16) ——. Quelques réflexions sur la psychologie des réveils. Paris, 1906.

(17) Cartwright, Peter. Autobiography of Peter Cartwright, the Backwoods Preacher. Cincinnati, 1859.

(18) MacLean, J. P. “The Kentucky Revival and Its Influence on the Miami Valley,” Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications, XII (1903), 242-86. [Bibliography.]

(19) Cleveland, Catharine C. The Great Revival in the West, 1797-1805. Chicago, 1916. [Bibliography.]

(20) Rogers, James B. The Cane Ridge Meeting-House. To which is appended the autobiography of B. W. Stone. Cincinnati, 1910.

(21) Stchoukine, Ivan. Le Suicide collectif dans le Raskol russe. Paris, 1903.

(22) Bussell, F. W. Religious Thought and Heresy in the Middle Ages. London, 1918.

(23) Egli, Emil. Die Züricher Wiedertäufer zur Reformationszeit. Zürich, 1878.

(24) Bax, Ernest Belfort. Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists. New York, 1903.

(25) Schechter, S. Documents of Jewish Sectaries. 2 vols. Cambridge, 1910.

(26) Graetz, H. History of the Jews. 6 vols. Philadelphia, 1891-98.

(27) Jost, M. Geschichte des Judenthums und seiner Sekten. 3 vols. Leipzig, 1857-59.

(28) Farquhar, J. N. Modern Religious Movements in India. New York, 1915.

(29) Selbie, W. B. English Sects. A history of non-conformity. Home University Library. New York, 1912.

(30) Barclay, Robert. The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth. London, 1876. [Bibliography.]

(31) Jones, Rufus M. Studies in Mystical Religion. London, 1909.

(32) Braithwaite, W. C. Beginnings of Quakerism. London, 1912.

(33) Jones, Rufus M. The Quakers in the American Colonies. London, 1911.

(34) Evans, F. W. Shakers. Compendium of the origin, history, principles, rules and regulations, government, and doctrines of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing. With biographies of Ann Lee, William Lee, James Whittaker, J. Hocknell, J. Meacham, and Lucy Wright. New York, 1859.

(35) Train, J. The Buchanites from First to Last. Edinburgh, 1846.

(36) Miller, Edward. The History and Doctrines of Irvingism. Or of the so-called Catholic and Apostolic Church. 2 vols. London, 1878.

(37) Neatby, W. Blair. A History of the Plymouth Brethren. London, 1901.

(38) Lockwood, George B. The New Harmony Movement. “The Rappites.” Chaps. ii-iv, pp. 7-42. [Bibliography.]

(39) James, B. B. The Labadist Colony of Maryland. Baltimore, 1899.

(40) Dixon, W. H. Spiritual Wives. 2 vols. London, 1868.

(41) Randall, E. O. History of the Zoar Society from Its Commencement to Its Conclusion. Columbus, 1899.

(42) Loughborough, J. N. The Great Second Advent Movement. Its rise and progress. Nashville, Tenn., 1905. [Adventists.]

(43) Harlan, Rolvix. John Alexander Dowie and the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church in Zion. Evansville, Wis., 1906.

(44) Smith, Henry C. Mennonites of America. Mennonite Publishing House, Scotdale, Pa., 1909. [Bibliography.]

(45) La Rue, William. The Foundations of Mormonism. A study of the fundamental facts in the history and doctrines of the Mormons from original sources. With introduction by Alfred Williams Anthony. New York, 1919. [Bibliography.]

B. Language Revivals and Nationalism

(1) Dominian, Leon. Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe. New York, 1917.

(2) Bourgoing, P. de. Les Guerres d’idiome et de nationalité. Paris, 1849.

(3) Meillet, A. “Les Langues et les nationalités,” Scientia, XVIII, (1915), 192-201.

(4) Rhys, John, and Brynmor-Jones, David. The Welsh People. Chap. xii, “Language and Literature of Wales,” pp. 501-50. London, 1900.

(5) Dinneen, P. S. Lectures on the Irish Language Movement. Delivered under the auspices of various branches of the Gaelic League. London, 1904.

(6) Montgomery, K. L. “Some Writers of the Celtic Renaissance,” Fortnightly Review, XCVI (1911), 545-61.

(7) ——. “Ireland’s Psychology: a Study of Facts,” Fortnightly Review, CXII (1919), 572-88.

(8) Dubois, L. Paul. Contemporary Ireland. With an introduction by T. M. Kettle, M. P. London, 1908.

(9) The Teaching of Gaelic in Highland Schools. Published under the auspices of the Highland Association. London, 1907.

(10) Fedortchouk, Y. “La Question des nationalités en Austriche-Hongrie: les Ruthenes de Hongrie,” Annales des nationalités, VIII (1915), 52-56.

(11) Seton-Watson, R. W. [Scotus Viator, pseud.] Racial Problems in Hungary. London, 1908. [Bibliography.]

(12) Samassa, P. “Deutsche und Windische in Sudösterreich,” Deutsche Erde, II (1903), 39-41.

(13) Wace, A. J. B., and Thompson, M. S. The Nomads of the Balkans. London, 1914.

(14) Tabbé, P. La vivante Roumanie. Paris, 1913.

(15) Louis-Jarau, G. L’Albanie inconnue. Paris, 1913.

(16) Brancoff, D. M. La Macédoine et sa population Chrétienne. Paris, 1905.

(17) Fedortchouk, Y. Memorandum on the Ukrainian Question in Its National Aspect. London, 1914.

(18) Vellay, Charles. “L’Irredentisme hellénique,” La Revue de Paris, XX (Juillet-Août, 1913), 884-86.

(19) Sands, B. The Ukraine. London, 1914.

(20) Auerbach, B. “La Germanization de la Pologne Prussienne. La loi d’expropriation,” Revue Politique et Parlementaire, LVII (1908), 109-125.

(21) Bernhard, L. Das polnische Gemeinwesen im preussischen Staat. Die Polenfrage. Leipzig, 1910.

(22) Henry, R. “La Frontière linguistique en Alsace-Lorraine,” Les Marches de l’Est, 1911-1912, pp. 60-71.

(23) Nitsch, C. “Dialectology of Polish Languages,” Polish Encyclopaedia, Vol. III. Cracow, 1915.

(24) Witte, H. “Wendische Bevölkerungsreste in Mecklenburg,” Forschungen zur deutschen Landes- und Volkskunde, XVI (1905), 1-124.

(25) Kaupas, A. “L’Église et les Lituaniens aux États-Unis d’Amérique,” Annales des Nationalités, II (1913), 233 ff.

(26) Pélissier, Jean. Les Principaux artisans de la renaissance nationale lituanienne. Hommes et choses de Lituanie. Lausanne, 1918.

(27) Jakstas, A. “Lituaniens et Polonais.” Annales des nationalités, VIII (1915), 219 ff.

(28) Headlam, Cecil. Provence and Languedoc. Chap. v, “Frédéric Mistral and the Félibres.” London, 1912.

(29) Belisle, A. Histoire de la presse franco-américaine. Comprenant l’historique de l’émigration des Canadiens-Français aux États-Unis, leur développement, et leur progrès. Worcester, Mass., 1911.

VI. ECONOMIC CRISES

(1) Wirth, M. Geschichte der Handelskrisen. Frankfurt-am-Main, 1890.

(2) Jones, Edward D. Economic Crises. New York, 1900.

(3) Gibson, Thomas. The Cycles of Speculation. 2d ed. New York, 1909.

(4) Bellet, Daniel. Crises économique. Crises commerciales. Crises de guerre. Leur caractères, leur indices, leurs effects. Paris, 1918.

(5) Clough, H. W. “Synchronous Variations in Solar and Terrestrial Phenomena,” Astrophysical Journal, XXII (1905), 42-75.

(6) Clayton, H. H. “Influence of Rainfall on Commerce and Politics,” Popular Science Monthly, LX (1901-2), 158-65.

(7) Mitchell, Wesley C. Business Cycles. Berkeley, Cal., 1913.

(8) Moore, Henry L. Economic Cycles: Their Law and Cause. New York, 1914.

(9) Hurry, Jamieson B. Vicious Circles in Sociology and Their Treatment. London, 1915.

(10) Thiers, Adolphe. The Mississippi Bubble. A memoir of John Law. To which are added authentic accounts of the Darien expedition and the South Sea scheme. Translated from the French by F. S. Fiske. New York, 1859.

(11) Wiston-Glynn, A. W. John Law of Lauriston. Financier and statesman, founder of the Bank of France, originator of the Mississippi scheme, etc. London, 1907.

(12) Mackay, Charles. Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. 2 vols. in one. London, 1859. [Vol. I, the Mississippi scheme, the South Sea bubble, the tulipomania, the alchymists, modern prophecies, fortune-telling, the magnetisers, influence of politics and religion on the hair and beard. Vol. II, the crusades, the witch mania, the slow prisoners, haunted houses, popular follies of great cities, popular admiration of great thieves, duels and ordeals, relics.]

VII. FASHION, REFORM, AND REVOLUTION

A. Fashion

(1) Spencer, Herbert. Principles of Sociology. Part IV, chap. xi, “Fashion,” II, 205-10. London, 1893.

(2) Tarde, Gabriel. Laws of Imitation. Translated from the 2d French ed. by Elsie Clews Parsons. Chap. vii, “Custom and Fashion,” pp. 244-365. New York, 1903.

(3) Simmel, G. Philosophie der Mode. Berlin, 1905.

(4) ——. “The Attraction of Fashion,” International Quarterly, X (1904), 130-55.

(5) Sumner, W. G. Folkways. “Fashion,” pp. 184-220. Boston, 1906.

(6) Sombart, Werner. “Wirtschaft und Mode,” Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens. Wiesbaden, 1902.

(7) Clerget, Pierre. “The Economic and Social Rôle of Fashion.” Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1913, pp. 755-65. Washington, 1914.

(8) Squillace, Fausto. La Moda. L’abito è l’uomo. Milano, 1912.

(9) Shaler, N. S. “The Law of Fashion,” Atlantic Monthly, LXI (1888), 386-98.

(10) Patrick, G. T. W. “The Psychology of Crazes,” Popular Science Monthly, LVII (1900), 285-94.

(11) Linton, E. L. “The Tyranny of Fashion,” Forum III (1887), 59-68.

(12) Bigg, Ada H. “What is ‘Fashion’?” Nineteenth Century, XXXIII (1893), 235-48.

(13) Foley, Caroline A. “Fashion,” Economic Journal, III (1893), 458-74.

(14) Aria, E. “Fashion, Its Survivals and Revivals,” Fortnightly Review, CIV (1915), 930-37.

(15) Thomas, W. I. “The Psychology of Woman’s Dress,” American Magazine, LXVII (1908-9), 66-72.

(16) Schurtz, Heinrich. Grundzüge einer Philosophie der Tracht. Stuttgart, 1871.

(17) Wechsler, Alfred. Psychologie der Mode. Berlin, 1904.

(18) Stratz, Carl H. Die Frauenkleidung und ihre natürliche Entwicklung. Stuttgart, 1904.

(19) Holmes, William H. “Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art,” Fourth Annual Report of the U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology, 1882-83, pp. 437-65. Washington, 1886.

(20) Kroeber, A. L. “On the Principle of Order in Civilization as Exemplified by Changes of Fashion,” American Anthropologist, N.S., XXI (1919), 235-63.

B. Reform

(1) Sumner, W. G. Folkways. “Reform and Revolution,” pp. 86-95. Boston, 1906.

(2) Patrick, G. T. W. The Psychology of Social Reconstruction. Chaps. i-ii, “Psychological Factors in Social Reconstruction,” pp. 27-118. Boston, 1920.

(3) Jevons, William S. Methods of Social Reform. And other papers. London, 1883.

(4) Pearson, Karl. Social Problems. Their treatment, past, present, and future. London, 1912.

(5) Mallock, W. H. Social Reform as Related to Realities and Delusions. An examination of the increase and distribution of wealth from 1801 to 1910. New York, 1915.

(6) Matthews, Brander. “Reform and Reformers,” North American, CLXXXIII (1906), 461-73.

(7) Miller, J. D. “Futilities of Reformers,” Arena, XXVI (1901), 481-89.

(8) Lippmann, Walter. A Preface to Politics. Chap. v, “Well Meaning but Unmeaning: The Chicago Vice Report,” pp. 122-58. New York, 1913.

(9) Stanton, Henry B. Sketches of Reforms and Reformers, of Great Britain and Ireland. 2d rev. ed. New York, 1850.

(10) Stoughton, John. William Wilberforce. London, 1880.

(11) Field, J. The Life of John Howard. With comments on his character and philanthropic labours. London, 1850.

(12) Hodder, Edwin. The Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G., as Social Reformer. New York, 1898.

(13) Atkinson, Charles M. Jeremy Bentham, His Life and Work. London, 1905.

(14) Morley, John. The Life of Richard Cobden. Boston, 1890.

(15) Bartlett, David W. Modern Agitators. Or pen portraits of living American reformers. New York, 1855.

(16) Greeley, Horace. Hints toward Reforms. In lectures, addresses, and other writing. New York, 1850.

(17) Austin, George L. The Life and Times of Wendell Phillips. New ed. Boston, 1901.

(18) Hill, Georgiana. Women in English Life. From medieval to modern times. Period III, chap. v, “The Philanthropists,” Vol. II, pp. 59-74; Period IV, chap. xi, “The Modern Humanitarian Movement,” Vol. II, pp. 227-36. 2 vols. London, 1896.

(19) Yonge, Charlotte M. Hannah More. Famous women. Boston, 1888.

(20) Besant, Annie. An Autobiography. 2d ed. London, 1908.

(21) Harper, Ida H. The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony. Including public addresses, her own lectures and many from her contemporaries during fifty years. A story of the evolution of the status of woman. 3 vols. Indianapolis, 1898-1908.

(22) Whiting, Lilian. Women Who Have Ennobled Life. Philadelphia, 1915.

(23) Willard, Frances E. Woman and Temperance. Or the work and workers of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. 3d ed. Hartford, Conn., 1883.

(24) Gordon, Anna A. The Beautiful Life of Frances E. Willard. A memorial volume. Introduction by Lady Henry Somerset. Chicago, 1898.

C. Revolution

(1) Le Bon, Gustave. The Psychology of Revolution. Translated from the French by Bernard Miall. New York, 1913.

(2) Petrie, W. M. F. The Revolutions of Civilisation. London, 1912.

(3) Hyndman, Henry M. The Evolution of Revolution. London, 1920.

(4) Adams, Brooks. The Theory of Social Revolutions. New York, 1913.

(5) Landauer, G. Die Revolution. “Die Gesellschaft, Sammlung sozial-psychologischer Monographien.” Frankfurt-am-Main, 1907.

(6) Thomas, W. I. Source Book for Social Origins. “Crisis and Control,” pp. 13-22. Chicago, 1909.

(7) Ellwood, Charles A. “A Psychological Theory of Revolutions,” American Journal of Sociology, XI (1905-6), 49-59.

(8) ——. Introduction to Social Psychology. Chap. viii, “Social Change under Abnormal Conditions,” pp. 170-87. New York, 1917.

(9) King, Irving. “The Influence of the Form of Social Change upon the Emotional Life of a People,” American Journal of Sociology, IX (1903-4), 124-35.

(10) Toynbee, Arnold. Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century in England. New ed. London, 1908.

(11) Knowles, L. C. A. The Industrial and Commercial Revolutions in Great Britain during the Nineteenth Century. London, 1921.

(12) Taine, H. A. The French Revolution. Translated from the French by John Durand. 3 vols. New York, 1878-85.

(13) Olgin, Moissaye J. The Soul of the Russian Revolution. Introduction by Vladimir G. Simkhovitch. New York, 1917.

(14) Spargo, John. The Psychology of Bolshevism. New York, 1919.

(15) Khoras, P. “La Psychologie de la révolution chinoise,” Revue des deux mondes, VIII (1912), 295-331.

(16) Le Bon, Gustave. The World in Revolt. A psychological study of our times. Translated from the French by Bernard Miall. New York, 1921.

(17) Lombroso, Cesare. Le Crime politique et les révolutions par rapport au droit, à l’anthropologie criminelle et à science du gouvernement. Translated by A. Bouchard. Paris, 1912.

(18) Prince, Samuel H. Catastrophe and Social Change. Based upon a sociological study of the Halifax disaster. “Columbia University Studies in Political Science.” New York, 1920.

TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES

1. Collective Behavior and Social Control

2. Unrest in the Person and Unrest in the Group

3. The Agitator as a Type of the Restless Person

4. A Study of Adolescent Unrest: the Runaway Boy and the Girl Who Goes Wrong

5. A Comparison of Physical Epidemics with Social Contagion

6. Case Studies of Psychic Epidemics: the Mississippi Bubble, Gold Fever, War-Time Psychosis, the Dancing Mania in Modern Times, etc.

7. Propaganda as Social Contagion: an Analysis of a Selected Case

8. A Description and Interpretation of Crowd Behavior: the Orgy, the Cult, the Mob, the Organized Crowd

9. The “Animal” Crowd: the Flock, the Herd, the Pack

10. A Description of Crowd Behavior on Armistice Day

11. The Criminal Crowd

12. The Jury, the Congenial Group, the Committee, the Legislature, the Mass Meeting, etc., as Types of Collective Behavior

13. Crowd Excitements and Mass Movements

14. A Study of Mass Migrations: the Barbarian Invasions, the Settlement of Oklahoma, the Migrations of the Mennonnites, the Treks of the Boers, the Rise of Mohammedanism, the Mormon Migrations, etc.

15. Crusades and Reforms: the Crusades, the Abolition Movement, Prohibition, the Woman’s Temperance Crusades, Moving-Picture Censorship, etc.

16. Fashions, Revivals, and Revolutions

17. The Social Laws of Fashions

18. Linguistic Revivals and the Nationalist Movements

19. Religious Revivals and the Origin of Sects

20. Social Unrest, Social Movements, and Changes in Mores and Institutions

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What do you understand by collective behavior?

2. Interpret the incident in a Lancashire cotton factory in terms of sympathy, imitation, and suggestion.

3. What simple forms of social contagion have you observed?

4. In what sense may the dancing mania of the Middle Ages be compared to an epidemic?

5. Why may propaganda be interpreted as social contagion? Describe a concrete instance of propaganda and analyze its modus operandi.

6. What are the differences in behavior of the flock, the pack, and the herd?

7. Is it accurate to speak of these animal groups as “crowds”?

8. What do you understand Le Bon to mean by “the mental unity of crowds”?

9. Describe and analyze the behavior of crowds which you have observed.

10. “The crowd is always intellectually inferior to the isolated individual.” “The crowd may be better or worse than the individual.” Are these statements consistent? Elaborate your position.

11. In what sense may we speak of sects, castes, and classes as crowds?

12. What do you mean by a social movement?

13. What is the significance of a movement?

14. Why is movement to be regarded as the fundamental form of freedom?

15. How does crowd excitement lead to mass movements?

16. What were the differences in the characteristics of mass movements in the Klondike Rush, the Woman’s Crusade, Methodism, and bolshevism?

17. What are the causes of social unrest?

18. What is the relation of social unrest to social organization?

19. How does Le Bon explain the mental anarchy at the time of the French Revolution?

20. What was the nature of this mental anarchy in the different social classes? Are revolutions always preceded by mental anarchy?

21. What was the relative importance of belief and of reason in the French Revolution?

22. What are the likenesses and differences between the origin and development of bolshevism and of the French Revolution?

23. Do you agree with Spargo’s interpretation of the psychology (a) of the intellectual Bolshevists, and (b) of the I.W.W.?

24. Are mass movements organizing or disorganizing factors in society? Illustrate by reference to Methodism, the French Revolution, and bolshevism.

25. Under what conditions will a mass movement (a) become organized, and (b) become an institution?