Chapter XXI

. This phenomena is to be sharply distinguished from ossification, which is the hardening of social life into rigid forms.[XXIII-30] Groups often become unduly solidified. The salvation of such a situation lies in individuation, which is a process of pulverizing social lumps and releasing the action of their members.[XXIII-31] Any movement that develops that spirit of personal liberty leads to individuation.

“Commercialization is the increasing subjection of any calling or function to the profits motive.”[XXIII-32] The various factors which hold the profits motive in check are: (1) pleasure in creative

## activity; (2) pride in the perfection of one’s product; (3) the desire

to live up to accepted standards of excellence; (4) abhorrence of sham in one’s work; (5) interest in the welfare of the customer; (6) the social service motive. The profits motive, however, receives support from many social tendencies, notably: (1) the increasing distance between producer and consumer; (2) the growing differentiation between principals and subordinates; (3) the increasing importance of capital in the practice of an art or occupation.

Professor Ross has set forth a valuable exhibit of the canons of social reconstruction.[XXIII-33] (1) Reforms must not do violence to human nature. (2) They must square with essential realities. (3) They should be preceded by a close sociological study of the situation which it is planned to change. (4) Reforms should be tried out on a small scale before being adopted on a large scale. (5) A reform should be the outcome of a social movement. (6) Under a popular government, reforms should move according to legal and constitutional methods.

In regard to the improvement of social institutions, Professor Ross rests his argument on the importance of standards. “Standards are, perhaps, the most important things in society.”[XXIII-34] Although invisible and intangible they reveal, better than anything else, the quality of a society.

The current standards of the family may be improved through imparting sound ideals of marriage, through fixing these ideals everywhere in social tradition, and through making “the social atmosphere frosty toward foolish and frivolous ideals of marriage.”[XXIII-35] Young people may well be taught to look upon divorce as a moral shipwreck. Loyalty to the state or society has its origin in the obedience of children to parents in the family. A sound family life, thus, is rated by our author as the bulwark of society.

In regard to industry, it is pointed out that the principle of the sovyet is associated in an entirely accidental way with Bolshevism.[XXIII-36] The sovyet may well be judged on its own merits. The principle upon which citizens may be grouped for purposes of securing representation in government is not yet settled. Is a given geographical area a better unit for securing representation than occupational areas?

State socialism is objected to by Professor Ross on the grounds that it leaves the citizens so remote “from that which most vitally concerns him, viz., the regulation of the industry in which he works, that his yearly vote may be a mere fribble and he little better than a state serf.”[XXIII-37] Guild socialism, on the other hand, urges that each branch of industry shall organize itself democratically, and that the state shall be organized not with provinces and localities as semi-autonomies but with industries exercising a degree of autonomy. Our author endorses the general shift which is occurring at the present time from the coercive side to the service side of industrial life.

Professor Ross has deduced several important sociological principles of general import. These he calls the principle of anticipation, the principle of simulation, the principle of individualization, and the principle of balance.

By the principle of anticipation, he means that a known policy of an institution will come to be anticipated by the members of the institution and will result in modifying behavior.[XXIII-38] Unfair advantage is often taken of people on the basis of this principle. For example, children frequently count on favor and leniency. The false beggar’s whine is often effective. It is in this connection that genuine social reform differs from a common conception of charity, for the former method fits people to run, clears their course, and incites them to make the race,[XXIII-39] while the latter fails to render assistance of permanent value.

The principle of simulation refers to the common tendency of “the unworthy to simulate every type or trait which has won social approval, in order to steal prestige from it.”[XXIII-40] Commercial competition has produced adulterations, misbrandings, counterfeiting. There is the professional athlete, who sometimes poses as a sincere enthusiast for physical development. Politicians are often expert dissemblers.

The principle of individualization refers to giving individuality a reasonable chance for growth. As society grows more complex, institutions more ossified, and life more standardized, the average individual is increasingly in danger of being crushed; at least, his opportunities for self-expression grow more slim. There is need of constant vigilance in education in allowing for individual differences, in industry for safeguarding the laborer in expressing his personality in his work, in government in permitting free discussion.

The principle of balance is stated by Professor Ross as follows: “In the guidance of society each social element should share according to the intelligence and public spirit of its members and none should predominate.”[XXIII-41] There has been in the past, and even now there is in all countries, a bitter struggle taking place between classes apparently on the basis that some one class should rule all the other classes. Society has suffered immeasurably in this way. Sometimes society has been the victim of the rulership of the dead, of the rulership of masculinism, of clericalism, of militarism, of commercialism, of legalism, of leisure class ascendancy, of intellectualism, of proletarianism, but always by one class lording it over the weaker classes until some one of the weaker classes acquires strength enough to overthrow the class in power.

The socio-psychological thought of Professor Ross has penetrated the farthermost reaches of human life. It has been stated in lucid, stimulating language. It has commanded the attention of socially-thinking persons in many lands. It has defined the field of sociology, giving the psychological approach.

Special attention may be given to the concept of “the great society” as used by Graham Wallas. The Great Society is a name for current human society, the product of mechanical inventions, industrial production, commercial expansion, democratic evolution--highly organized and intricately complex. It is ruled, in the main, by men “who direct enormous social power without attempting to form a social purpose,” and it is composed to a surpassing degree of individuals who recognize the power of society but dimly and who often treat society with distrust and dislike.[XXIII-42]

Mr. Wallas substitutes organization for organism as a fundamental social concept. He makes a distinction between thought organizations, will organizations, and happiness organizations. Thought organizations are those institutions in society whose main function is the organization of thought, such as discussion groups, ranging from a philosophical club to an ordinary committee that is called together to plan new legislation. At this point Mr. Wallas asserts that he has attended perhaps 3000 meetings of municipal committees, of different sizes and for different purposes, and that he is sure that at least half of the men and women with whom he has sat “were entirely unaware that any conscious mental effort on their part was called for.”[XXIII-43] They attended in the same spirit that many persons attend church, namely, in the spirit that if they merely attend they are doing their duty, and that some good must come of it.

Will organization comes into existence because of imperfect social machinery. In industry three types of will organizations are striving for mastery--the institution of private property, represented by the individualists; the state, represented by collectivists; labor organizations, represented perhaps by syndicalists. There is urgent need for “the invention of means of organizing the conflicting wills of individuals and classes within each nation more effective than reliance upon any single ‘principle,’ whether representation, property, or professionalism.”[XXIII-44]

The organization of happiness has not proceeded far. Efficiency has supplanted happiness as a modern god. The ideal of making money has shadowed the ideal of making people happy. A social system organized on the basis of happiness avoids both destitution and superfluity, employs the Mean as the standard for the representation of all social interests as well as for all faculties of individuals, avoids the Extreme in all things.[XXIII-45]

The writings of Charles A. Ellwood deal particularly with that part of sociological thought which rests upon psychological theory. Professor Ellwood defines a society as “a group of individuals carrying on a collective life by means of mental interactions.”[XXIII-46] As a result of mental interactions, co-ordination or co-adaptation of the

## activities of the members is effected.

The psychological basis of social interactions is found in such characteristics of the individual as spontaneity, instincts, emotions, consciousness, mind. Organisms possess spontaneity, that is, movements are set up in them without the apparent aid of external causes.[XXIII-47] The organism, however, is dependent largely upon the environment for the development of its potentialities, “but the essential ground for the beginning of its activities lies within--in its own organic needs.” Instincts, the product of natural selection, represent preformed neurological pathways that developed “in response to the demands of previous life conditions.” The emotions, also hereditary, are complexes of feelings and sensations. The desires are complex combinations of feelings and impulses which are accompanied by an awareness of the objects that will satisfy the impulse.[XXIII-48] Consciousness develops to solve problems which the instincts cannot meet. At first, consciousness is largely a selective activity. It develops, however, into a highly complex agency for mastering the problems of life and the universe. Mind is a product of the social life-process. It has arisen under conditions of association.

One of the most fundamental phases of the associational process is communication. The need of acting together has given rise to intercommunicative symbols.

Professor George H. Mead has given a thoroughgoing discussion of communication, language, and the consciousness of meaning.[XXIII-49] He begins with a social situation, where the actions of one person serve as stimulations to other persons, whose responses in turn act as stimulations to the first person. Thus life is a series of

## actions, stimulations, responses, resultant stimulations--these

## activities constitute gestures or symbols with meanings. Symbols and

the consciousness of meaning of these symbols are the main elements in communication.

Communication, says Professor Ellwood, is “a device to carry on a common life-process among several distinct, though psychically interacting, individual units.”[XXIII-50] This definition probably emphasizes unduly the “individual units,” which are doubtless a product, in part, of the stream of social life. Suggestion is an elemental, but quick form of communication, related in its simpler phases to sympathetic emotion. Imitation is a common mechanism whereby

## actions and ideas spread. Communication in the form of oral and written

language is the chief mechanistic factor in securing social change.

The contention of Ward that primitive man was anti-social is refuted by Professor Ellwood, who points out that according to social anthropology the so-called anti-social traits of earliest man are not found fully developed among “savages” but among people of later ages. Primitives were characterized by a narrow sociality, confined largely to the family and small groups.[XXIII-51]

Professor Ellwood’s theory of social change is of a two-fold character: unconscious and conscious,--the former being characteristic of the lower stages of social evolution, and the latter, increasingly characteristic of the higher stages.[XXIII-52] The forms of unconscious social change are manifold.

Natural selection tends to crush and destroy the weaker individuals and the weaker groups. Another type of unconscious social change is that which comes through a gradual disuse of certain cultural elements. One generation fails to copy the preceding in all particulars. Another set of sources of unconscious social change is found in the shifting relationships between individuals that is produced by “the increase of population, a new physical environment, a new cultural contact, a new discovery or a new invention.” In fact, Professor Ellwood states that all social changes start in an unconscious way.[XXIII-53]

Conscious change begins with the awareness on the part of one or more individuals that some social habit is not functioning well. Through communication, this awareness spreads from individual to individual. Discussion ensues. At first, discussion is largely critical of the unsatisfactory social situation. The useless or harmful elements in the situation receive first attention. As discussion proceeds, it takes on a more constructive nature, that is, it becomes projective, planful, positive. It suggests a change to be made. It becomes transformed into a more or less stable public opinion, demanding a substitution of a proposed way of doing for the old. The chief elements in guaranteeing conscious readjustments are free communication, “free public criticism, free discussion, untrammeled formation of public opinion, free selection of social policies and social leaders.”[XXIII-54] The selective process in conscious social change is public opinion, whose social function it is to mediate in the transition from one social habit to another.

Conscious social change in Western Civilization is endangered on one hand by an excessive individualism, and on the other by a socialism which threatens to suppress individual initiative and to underemphasize the rôle of mental and moral character. Professor Ellwood urges the importance of an education which will socialize the individual and at the same time develop a high type of personal character.

Social change, also, takes place under socially abnormal conditions, so long as societies fail to keep “a high degree of flexibility in their habits and institutions.”[XXIII-55] Autocratic rulers, propertied classes, ecclesiastical classes, special groups in power, a general intellectual stagnation, are factors which tend to resist institutional flexibility. If this adaptability does not exist, then social conditions will produce revolutions. If the ruling autocracy is so powerful that the lives of all objectors are snuffed out, then revolution is indefinitely postponed. If the energetic forces within a society are hampered greatly in securing constructive opportunities for expression, they become forces of discontent and agents of revolt. If a revolution comes, then much that is worthy in social organization will be obliterated along with the unworthy, confusion will reign and a reversion to the brutal stages of societal life is easily possible.

In his discussion of “the social problem,” Professor Ellwood points out that the good fruits of the World War are in danger of being destroyed by “the blindness and selfishness of some in our socially privileged classes, the fanatic radicalism and class hatred of some of the leaders of the non-privileged.”[XXIII-56] The forces which are combining against making the world safe for democracy today are national imperialism, commercialism, materialistic standards of life, class conflicts, religious agnosticism, and a reckless attitude toward marriage and the family.[XXIII-57] The social problem, from one angle, becomes the problem of training people to live together justly, constructively, and co-operatingly.

As Turgot indicated, the only way to avert social revolution is through suitable and well-timed reforms. Today, the reforms most urgently needed are three-fold: the substitution of an unselfish internationalism for a selfish nationalism, of a spiritual civilization for a rampant materialism, and of a socialized human race for individualized peoples. To bring about these changes is a gigantic task, namely _the_ social problem.

Civilization is a complex of social values. Professor Ellwood’s classification of values is widely different from the analysis that Professor Giddings has made (given in the preceding chapter). According to Professor Ellwood, western civilization is represented by the following groups of social values historically derived: (1) a set of spiritual and ethical values, described by the ancient Hebrews; (2) a set of esthetic and philosophic concepts from the Greeks; (3) a set of administrative and legal forms of Roman origin; (4) a set of personal liberty beliefs of early Teutonic derivation; (5) a scientific spirit and technique, originating during the Renaissance; (6) economic efficiency, born of the industrial revolution; and (7) an extensive group of humanitarian values, the product of the nineteenth century. This vast and complicated Western Civilization needs, however, to remove from its structure the three “rotten pillars” of hyper-individualism, materialism, and selfish nationalism, substituting for each its spiritualized and socialized counterpart.

The nature of social control, according to the analysis by Professor E. C. Hayes, is “to secure the completed and most harmonious realization of good human experience, regarded as an end in itself.”[XXIII-58] Social control should prevent activities which do not bear the test of reason, and should elicit those which stand that test, when judged by their own intrinsic value and by their effect upon other values. This statement of the purpose of social control is similar to that of other standard interpretations of the matter.

There are two types of social control.[XXIII-59] The first is control by sanctions, and the second by social suggestion, sympathetic radiation, and imitation. Social sanctions refer to proffered rewards and threatened punishments. Professor Hayes, however, makes not law but personality the ultimate basis of social order. Repression of crime is a correct social procedure but of a distinctly lower grade than the movement to raise the moral character of those who never go to prison. _The_ problem of social control is to take the instinctive tendencies of each individual when he is young and make them over into a disposition that is characterized by the four following traits: (1) reliability, or honesty; (2) controlled animalism, or temperance regarding eating, drinking, and other animal propensities; (3) steadiness in endeavor; (4) the social spirit, or justice.[XXIII-60]

Professor Hayes’ statement on the agencies of social control is similar in purport to the list that Professor Ross has given. Education is considered the chief agency of social control. Education can determine the direction of ambition; education can shift the emphasis in social valuations. Professor Hayes recognizes the import of heredity and how the degree of individual achievement is “more dependent upon heredity than upon the directions of effort.” Society, however, has the power to decide which of its members shall develop as far as their potential abilities will permit, and also the power to determine the direction the activities of its members shall take.[XXIII-61]

Among educational agencies of control the family ranks first.[XXIII-62] The power of the family at its best in building personality is comparable to the influence in this connection of all other agencies combined. The profession of mother-work is more important to society than any other profession.

The social psychology of business enterprise, of the leisure classes, of the machine process, of industry and workmanship have been indicated by Thorstein Veblen. The unique, incisive work of Mr. Veblen is presented in several books, chief of which are his _Theory of the Leisure Class_, _Theory of Business Enterprise_, and _Instinct of Workmanship_. Mr. Veblen’s ideas can best be illustrated by referring to his “canons.”

The Canon of Pecuniary Emulation describes the restless straining of certain individuals in society to outdo one another in the possession of wealth.[XXIII-63] Such possession is interpreted as conferring honor on its possessor. Wealth becomes intrinsically honorable. The Canon of Pecuniary Beauty refers to the impression that things are beautiful in proportion as they are costly.[XXIII-64] The marks of expensiveness come to be regarded as beautiful features.

The Canon of Conspicuous Consumption is a term which describes a method of showing off one’s wealth by an elaborate consumption of goods.[XXIII-65] Conspicuous consumption is seen more in matters of dress than in any other line of consumption. The Canon of Conspicuous Leisure is the rule which some people are following when they live a life of leisure as the readiest and most conclusive evidence of pecuniary strength.[XXIII-66] Sometimes a man keeps his wife frittering her time away in a doll’s house in order to show his wealth status.

The Canon of Leisure Class Conservatism is Veblen’s label for the conservative tendencies of the wealthy. Those whom fortune has greatly favored are likely to be content with things as they are. Such people are averse to social change, for social innovation might upset their comfortable existence. They have a dominant material interest in letting things alone.

Mr. Veblen’s Canon of Pecuniary Efficiency means that many persons conceive of efficiency largely in terms of price. The person who can induce his fellows to pay him well is accounted efficient and serviceable.[XXIII-67] The man who gains much wealth at little cost is rated high in his neighbor’s esteem. The investor who at the turn of his hand reaps $100,000 in a stock or bond deal is praised widely. In other words, there is a common tendency to rate people high in direct proportion to the amount of money that they are able to extract from the aggregate product.

The Canon of Bellicoseness refers to the enthusiasm for war which the hereditary leisure class displays. The very wealthy, not being obliged to work for a living, find that time drags. Therefore, they seek excitement and relief from ennui, and find these conditions in various things, especially in war.

The Canon of Pecuniary Education covers the tendency to demand “practical” education, which, upon examination, is education that will guarantee individual success. “Success,” for which education is to fit young people, turns out to be, in the eyes of the practical man, a pecuniary success. “Practical” means useful for private gain. The test that many persons would give to a course in education is this: Will it help one to get an income? The Canon of Pecuniary Thinking denotes that many occupations lead to habits of pecuniary thought. For numbers of people the beginning and end of their more serious thought is of a pecuniary nature.

The Canon of Machine Process Thinking is that mechanical employments produce a type of thinking that is based more or less on material cause and effect. The Machine knows neither morality nor dignity nor prescriptive right. The machine process laborers, working in a world of impersonal cause and effect, “are in danger of losing the point of view of sin.”

Professor Veblen has developed the concept of the instinct of workmanship at considerable length. According to this contention, it is natural for individuals to do, to construct, to achieve, to work. Through activity the individual expresses himself and, in so doing, develops, and attains happiness. Every individual is a center of unfolding impulsive activity; he is possessed of a taste for effective work.[XXIII-68] Labor acquires a character of irksomeness by virtue of the indignity that is falsely imputed to it by a hereditary leisure class.[XXIII-69] It was the instinct of workmanship which brought the life of mankind from the brute to the human plan.

The contributions of Mr. Veblen to social thought are always of a thought-provoking nature. Sometimes they give rise to invidious comparisons, often they antagonize, but as a rule, they are unique. No brief reference such as is given in the foregoing paragraphs can do justice to Mr. Veblen’s pungent criticisms of societal foibles.

It would be a decidedly incomplete treatment of the nature of psycho-sociologic thought that did not make reference to the work of George Elliott Howard, political scientist, historian, sociologist, but above all, social psychologist. In each of the fields in which Dr. Howard has achieved fame, his method of approach is psychological. He has prepared an excellent outline of the field of social psychology, together with a scholarly bibliography of the same. Perhaps the best way to treat Professor Howard’s socio-psychologic thought, is to give a sample of it, as found in his address before the American Sociological Society when he was president of that body. The theme was, “Ideals as a Factor in the Future Control of International Society.” This _magnum opus_ served as an excellent introduction to the series of papers on the subject of social control which were read at the annual meeting of the Sociological Society in 1918, and which have been published together with the presidential address as Volume XII of the Publications of the Society.

By social control, Professor Howard means the standard conception of the “ascendency of the social consciousness.”[XXIII-70] In the same volume, however, Professor Carl Kelsey interprets social control as “the organization and utilization of our wealth and citizens for private purposes.”[XXIII-71] Professor Hutton Webster is inclined to believe that the main feature of primitive social control is “the superstitious fear of the new.”[XXIII-72] Professor F. Stuart Chapin sees the essential element of primitive social ascendency in the pressure upon the individual of social conditions, customs, and conventions.[XXIII-73] Without giving additional interpretations of social control, the reader will be referred directly to Volume XII of the Publications as the best symposium that is available on the subject.

In discussing ideals as a phase of international control, Professor Howard makes clear that certain ideals exert a baneful influence. The ideal of the nation-state appears to be unmoral if not immoral.[XXIII-74] Of four prevailing standards of ethics, namely, personal morality, business morality, national morality for home consumption, and “standards of international morality for use with outlanders,” the scale is descending, and the fourth type is the lowest. Nationalisms have been overdeveloped--at the expense of a needed internationalism.

Another false ideal of which society needs to rid itself is its conception of the function of war and militarism. War is not a good in itself. War as war is not heroic. Race values constitute a third false ideal. “Every race deems itself superior to every other race and every race is mistaken.”[XXIII-75] Race conceit is contrary to the Christian ideal and has steadily been supplanted by the new doctrine of the potential equality of all races.

The ideal of democracy, on the other hand, rings true to the needs of progress. It makes for peace. Democracy, however, must rid itself of blemishes. Hereditary and class privilege must be abolished; political corruption and race riots must be defeated; woman, “the original social builder, the mother of industry, the first inventor of the arts of peace,” must be granted a full voice in social control.

The ideal of education is exceedingly delicate, for it involves the process of the changing of ideals. Education may prepare a people to admire autocracy or to build a self-governing democracy.

Dr. Howard enters a strong plea for social idealism--the most effective that has yet been written.[XXIII-76] “The idealist is the inspired social architect, who dreams a plan for the sanitary or moral cleansing of a great city; the campaign for purging politics of graft; a law for saving little children from the tigerish man of the factory or the sweatshop; a referendum for banishing from the commonwealth the saloon, that chief breeder of pauperism, sin, and crime; a conference for the rescuing from the hands of predacious greed, for the use of the whole people, of the remnant of our country’s natural wealth. The idealist is the statesman--the head of a nation--who dreams a scheme for safeguarding democracy and guaranteeing peace throughout the world.”

It is evident from the introduction to the history of psycho-sociologic thought that has been given in this and the preceding chapter, supported by the materials in the chapters on social conflict and social co-operation concepts, that psycho-sociologic thought holds a place of first rank in the field of sociology. It bids fair to become the central force in social thinking and to lead the social sciences. It deals with the most vital social concepts, namely, groups, personality, behavior, conflict, co-operation, and process. Of all the main approaches to an understanding of societary problems, it promises most.

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