THE AMERICAN
JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
THE ERA OF SOCIOLOGY.
Sociology has a foremost place in the thought of modern men. Approve or deplore the fact at pleasure, we cannot escape it. Examination of the fact in a few of its relations will properly introduce a statement of the aims of this Journal.
I. In our age the fact of human association is more obtrusive and relatively more influential than in any previous epoch. Modern men are made aware in more ways than former generations that their lot is affected by the existence of other men. Wherever the proportion of laborers in the extractive industries is diminishing and the proportion of people occupied with intermediate processes of production and consumption is correspondingly increasing, it would be surprising if the change were not accompanied by some modifications in men’s views about the relative importance of the physical and the social elements in the conditions of human existence. As industries become diversified, as division of labor and competition become territorial and international, not less than individual, as occupations are more visibly affected by the actions of distant persons, as communication becomes accurate and rapid between groups of men industrially related though geographically separate, perception of dependence upon physical conditions ceases to be the dominant factor in human calculation. Perception of subjection to human devices or of advantage to be won by personal combinations becomes decisive.
