412 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
Sociology is the science of social organization. ' As such its endeavor is to explain the relation of the individual to society, to trace out the workings of the psychic acts of individuals as they build up groupal structures, establish social institutions, and lead forward social change. As such it also studies the reactions of social groups, social institutions, and social change upon the individual."
Sociology is the master science of a large group of special economic sciences, those dealing with the methods of human association. Human association is a process of economic selection, and the groups which constitute the concrete forms of organiza- tion are held together by the economic choices of individuals. Utility is the causal principle running through all social processes. Utility is an economic principle. Hence economics is the master science of psychical activities.
" To make society intelligible we must accept the principle of economic selection, or utility, as the universal law of social causation, and, in our science of society, we must abandon the unscientific attempt of the earlier sociology to wrest the laws of physical causation into an impossible explanation of the ideological phenomena of men in society." SIDNEY SHERWOOD, Annals of the American Academy, September 1897.
Public Baths in Europe. In 1794 Liverpool established a bath house at public expense for the benefit of the people. Since then they have been very exten- sively established in England and on the continent of Europe.
" Within two years appropriations have been made by New York, Chicago, Bos- ton, Buffalo, and the town of Brookline, Mass., for the erection and maintenance of public bath houses. It is probable that the policy thus inaugurated will become gen- eral and popular wherever in this country large numbers of people are crowded together under conditions unfavorable to cleanliness, comfort, and health."
European experience points to the fact " that the establishment of public wash- houses in connection with bath houses of the combined swimming and cleanliness type is not so common as in the early years of its movement. The experience of Glasgow .... at least suggests the advisability, where public wash houses are provided, of making them numerous, small, self-contained, and of locating them in the heart of thickly settled districts. The success of the movement in Germany for establishing people's and workmen's baths of the shower bath type suggests that the multiplication of the simpler and less expensive forms of baths establishments is the wisest policy to be pursued by American cities in their first attempts to provide the working classes who have not bathing facilities in their own homes with adequate baths for cleansing and refreshment." EDWARD MUSSEY HARTWELL, Bulletin of the Department of Labor, July 1897.
The Mob Mind. "A mob . . . . is a crowd of people showing a unanimity due to mental contagion." It is marked by mental instability and is under the influ- ence of suggestion.
"The inhibitive power which measures our ability to go our own way undisturbed grows with the variety and number of suggestions that reach us." Yet men who can readily throw off the thousand suggestions of everyday life will be quite swept away by the reiteration of a single idea from all sides.
The first orientation of minds is brought about by some object, spectacle, or event. Three results follow: "(i) By mere contagion the feeling extends to others till there is complete unanimity ; (2) each feels more intensely the moment he per- ceives the rest share his feeling ; (3) the perceived unison calls forth a sympathy that makes the next agreement easier, and so paves the way for the mental unity of the crowd." Mob formation thus takes time. Presence is not necessary. City popula- tions exhibit the familiar characteristics of the mob apart from any thronging.
"With the telegraph to collect and transmit the expressions and signs of the rul- ing mood, and the fast mail to hurry to the eager clutch of waiting thousands the still damp sheets of the morning daily, remote people are brought, as it were, into one another's presence. Through its organs the excited public is able to assail the indi- vidual with a mass of suggestions almost as vivid as if he actually stood in the midst of an immense crowd." Formerly no large population could at the same moment be
