Folkways. William Graham Sumner
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political institutions—the pulpit, the newspapers, and the public library—there is a constant reaction by which mores are modified and preserved. The aim of all the institutions and literature in a modern state is to please him. His aim is to get out of them what suits him. The yellow newspapers thrive and displace all the others because he likes them. The trashy novels pay well because his wife and daughters like them. The advertisements in the popular magazines are addressed to him. They show what he wants. The "funny items" are adjusted to his sense of humor. Hence all these things are symptoms. They show what he "believes in," and they strengthen his prejudices. If all art, literature, legislation, and political power are to be cast at his feet, it makes some difference who and what he is. His section of society determines the mores of the whole.
58. "The people." Popular impulses. In a democratic state the great middle section would rule if it was organized independently of the rest. It is that section which constitutes "the people" in the special technical sense in which that expression is current in political use. It is to it that the Jeffersonian doctrines about the "wisdom" of the people would apply. That section, however, is never organized independently; that is to say, "the people" never exist as a body exercising political power. The middle section of a group may be enthused by an impulse which is adapted to its ways and notions. It clings to persons, loves anecdotes, is fond of light emotions, and prides itself on its morality. If a man wins popularity in that section, the impulse which his name can give to it may be irresistible (Jefferson, Jackson). The middle section is greatly affected by symbolism. "The flag" can be developed into a fetich. A cult can be nourished around it. Group vanity is very strong in it. Patriotic emotions and faiths are its favorite psychological exercises, if the conjuncture is favorable and the material well-being is high. When the middle section is stirred by any spontaneous and consentaneous impulses which arise from its nature and ways, it may produce incredible results with only a minimum of organization. "A little prosperity and some ideas, as Aristotle saw, are the ferment which sets the masses in ebullition. This offers an opportunity. A beginning is made. The further development is unavoidable."75
59. Agitation. Every impulse given to the masses is, in its nature, spasmodic and transitory. No systematic enterprise to enlighten the masses ever can be carried out. Campaigns of education contain a fallacy. Education takes time. It cannot be treated as subsidiary for a lifetime and then be made the chief business for six months with the desired result. A campaign of education is undemocratic. It implies that some one is teacher and somebody else pupil. It can only result in the elucidation of popular interests and the firmer establishment of popular prejudice. On the other hand, an agitation which appeals skillfully to pet notions and to latent fanaticism may stampede the masses. The Middle Ages furnished a number of cases. The Mahdis who have arisen in Mohammedan Africa, and other Moslem prophets, have produced wonderful phenomena of this kind. The silver agitation was begun, in 1878, by a systematic effort of three or four newspapers in the middle West, addressed to currency notions which the greenback proposition had popularized. What is the limit to the possibilities of fanaticism and frenzy which might be produced in any society by agitation skillfully addressed to the fallacies and passions of the masses? The answer lies in the mores, which determine the degree of reserved common sense, and the habit of observing measure and method, to which the masses have been accustomed. It follows that popular agitation is a desperate and doubtful method. The masses, as the great popular jury which, at last, by adoption or rejection, decides the fate of all proposed changes in the mores, needs stability and moderation. Popular agitation introduces into the masses initiative and creative functions which destroy its judgment and call for quite other qualities.
60. The ruling element in the masses. The masses are liable to controlling influences from elements which they contain. When crises arise in a democratic state attention is concentrated on the most numerous strata nearest to MN (see the diagram, p. 40), but they rarely possess self-determination unless the question at issue appeals directly to popular interest or popular vanity. Moreover, those strata cannot rule unless they combine with those next above and below. So the critical question always is, in regard to the masses PQRS, which parts of it will move the whole of it. Generally the question is, more specifically, What is the character of the strata above a line through A or B, and what is their relation to the rest of PQRS? If the upper part of the section PQRS consists of employers and the lower part of employés, and if they hate and fight each other, coherence and sympathy in the society will cease, the mores will be characterized by discord, passion, and quarrelsomeness, and political crises will arise which may reach any degree of severity, for the political parties will soon coincide with the class sections. The upper part of PQRS is made up of the strata which possess comfort without luxury, but also culture, intelligence, and the best family mores. They are generally disciplined classes, with strong moral sense, public spirit, and sense of responsibility. If we are not in error as to the movement in civilized states of the present time from the lower into the upper strata of PQRS, by virtue of ambition and education, then it follows that the upper strata are being constantly reënforced by all the elements in the society which have societal value, after those elements have been developed and disciplined by labor and self-denial. The share which the upper strata of the masses have in determining the policy of the masses is therefore often decisive of public welfare. On the other hand, it is when the masses are controlled by the strata next above RS that there is most violent impulsiveness in societal movements. The movements and policies which are characterized as revolutionary have their rise in these classes, although, in other cases, these classes also adhere most stubbornly to popular traditions in spite of reason and fact. Trade unionism is, at the present time, a social philosophy and a programme of policy which has its origin in the sections of the masses next above RS.
The French Revolution began with the highest strata of the masses, and the control of it passed on down from one to another of the lower strata, until it reached the lowest—the mob gathered in the slums of a great city.
61. The mores and institutions. Institutions and laws are produced out of mores. An institution consists of a concept (idea, notion, doctrine, interest) and a structure. The structure is a framework, or apparatus, or perhaps only a number of functionaries set to coöperate in prescribed ways at a certain conjuncture. The structure holds the concept and furnishes instrumentalities for bringing it into the world of facts and action in a way to serve the interests of men in society. Institutions are either crescive or enacted. They are crescive when they take shape in the mores, growing by the instinctive efforts by which the mores are produced. Then the efforts, through long use, become definite and specific. Property, marriage, and religion are the most primary institutions. They began in folkways. They became customs. They developed into mores by the addition of some philosophy of welfare, however crude. Then they were made more definite and specific as regards the rules, the prescribed acts, and the apparatus to be employed. This produced a structure and the institution was complete. Enacted institutions are products of rational invention and intention. They belong to high civilization. Banks are institutions of credit founded on usages which can be traced back to barbarism. There came a time when, guided by rational reflection on experience, men systematized and regulated the usages which had become current, and thus created positive institutions of credit, defined by law and sanctioned by the force of the state. Pure enacted institutions which are strong and prosperous are hard to find. It is too difficult to invent and create an institution, for a purpose, out of nothing. The electoral college in the constitution of the United States is an example. In that case the democratic mores of the people have seized upon the device and made of it something quite different from what the inventors planned. All institutions have come out of mores, although the rational element in them is sometimes so large that their origin in the mores is not to be ascertained except by an historical investigation (legislatures, courts, juries, joint stock companies, the stock exchange). Property, marriage, and religion are still almost entirely in the mores. Amongst nature men any man might capture and hold a woman at any time, if he could. He did it by superior force which was its own supreme justification. But his act brought his group and her group into war, and produced harm to his comrades. They forbade capture, or set conditions for it. Beyond the limits, the individual might still use force, but his comrades were no longer responsible. The glory to