Social control; a survey of the foundations of order

Front matter

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

Preface

The foundation of this book was laid in a series of articles under the title " Social Control," contributed to the American Journal of Sociology between March, 1896, and May, 1898. After protracted researches abroad, the series was taken up again, and seven supplementary articles have since appeared. To the ever generous appreciation and encouragement of the editor, Dr. Albion W. Small, is due not only the publication of the articles, but also in large measure the stimulus to round and complete the studies into their present form.

All these studies fall within one narrow tract in the province of Sociology. Social Psychology, which term I apply to the branch of knowledge that deals with the psychic interplay between man and his environing society, falls into two subdivisions. One of these. Social Ascendency, deals with the domination of society over the individual ; the other. Individual Ascendency, — embracing such topics as invention, leadership, the r61e of great men, — deals with the domination of the individual over society. Social Ascendency is fur-

vii

PREFACE

ther divided into Social Influence, — mob mind, fashion, convention, custom, public opinion, and the like, — and Social Control. The former is occupied with the social domination which is without intention or purpose; the latter is concerned with that domination which is intended and which fulfils a function in the life of society. This work, therefore, deals with only one subdivision in the field of Social Psychology.

In this book I seek to determine how far the order we see all about us is due to influences that reach men and women from without, that is, social influences. I began the work six years ago with the idea that nearly all the goodness and conscientiousness by which a social group is enabled to hold together can be traced to such influences. It seemed to me then that the individual contributed very little to social order, while society contributed almost everything. Further investigation, however, appears to show that the personality freely unfolding under conditions of healthy fellowship may arrive at a goodness all its own, and that order is explained partly by this streak in human nature and partly by the influence of social surroundings. As I now conceive it my task is, therefore, first, to separate the individual's contribution to social order from that of society, and, second, to bring to light everything that is contained in this social contribution.

In taking up this task I have had no other thought than to see things as they are and to

PREFACE

report what I see. I am not wedded to my hypotheses nor enamoured of my conclusions, and the next comer who, in the true scientific spirit, faces the problems I have faced and gives better answers than I have been able to give, will please me no less than he pleases himself.

EDWARD ALSWORTH ROSS.

Lincoln, Nebraska.

March, 1901,

IX

Contents

PAGE

Preface v

Part I The Grounds Of Control Chapter

I. The Problem

II. The Role of Sympathy

in. The ROle of Sociability .

IV. The R6le of the Sense of Justice

V. The ROle of Individual Reaction .

VI. Natural Order

VII. The Need of Social Control .

VIII. The Direction of Social Control .

I

7 14 23 36 41

49 62

IX. The Radiant Points of Social Control 77 PART II

THE MEANS OF CONTROL

X. Public Opinion 89

XI. Law io6

XII. Belief 126

XIII. Social Suggestion 146

XIV. Social Suggestion {continued) — Educa-

tion 163

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

XV. Social Suggestion {concluded) — Custom i8o

XVI. Social Religion ..... 196

XVII. Personal Ideals — The Type . . 218

XVIII. Personal Ideals — The Ideal . . 234

XIX. Ceremony . . . i. . . . 247

XX. Art 257

XXI. Personality 275

XXII. ENLlGHTfeNMENT 29I

XXIII. Illusion 304

XXIV. Social Valuations 325

XXV. The Genesis of Ethical Elements —

Selection and Survival . . . 338 XXVI. The Genesis of Ethical Elements —

The Elite 350

XXVII. The Maintenance of Ethical Elements 360

Part III The System Of Control

XXVIII. Class Control 376

XXIX. The Vicissitudes of Social Control . 395

XXX. The System of Social Control . .411

XXXI. The Limits of Social Control . .417

XXXII. The Criteria of Social Control. . 428

XXXIII. Conclusion 432

Partial List of Authorities Cited Index .......

443 449

5ui

SOCIAL CONTROL PART I

THE GROUNDS OF CONTROL

Chapter I The Problem

A CONDITION of order at the junction of crowded city thoroughfares implies primarily an absence of collisions between men or vehicles that interfere one with another. Order cannot be said to prevail among people going in the same direction at the same pace, because there is no interference. It does not exist when persons are constantly colliding one with another. But when all who meet or overtake one another in crowded ways take the time and pains needed to avoid collision, the throng is orderly. Now, at the bottom of the notion of social order lies the same idea. The members of an orderly community do not go out of their way to aggress upon one another. Moreover, whenever their pursuits interfere they make the adjustment necessary to escape collision, and make it according to some conventional rule, (if the weaker of two hunters that have brought down the same stag avoids a fight by yielding up the game, there is peace, but no order. ) But if the dispute is settled according to the rule that "first struck" decides

B I the ownership of game, the solution is an orderly one. Similarly, there is order when teamsters shun collision by conforming to " the law of the road," or miners settle the ownership of claims according to priority of " pegging out."

The denser the traffic that is handled without confusion at a busy corner, the higher is the grade of order. Likewise, the more that the smooth running of social machinery implies the frequent breaking off or turning aside of individual activities, the more perfect is the social order. Successful cooperation, therefore, bespeaks a high grade of social order, inasmuch as each of the cooperators must unfold specific activities within precise limits, and the results therefrom are enjoyed or shared according to some recognized principle. Hierarchical organization is still more a test of orderliness, inasmuch as in the sharing of unlike burdens and the division of unequal benefits men are more apt to fall afoul of one another.

The severest test of the regime of order occurs when, as in war or government, individuals are incited to a common effort, the benefits of which are shared in common. The sacrificing of one corps of an army to save the rest, or the placing of the public burdens upon the non-governing classes, is recognized as putting the severest strain on discipline. In general, the absence of hostile encounter is a mark of social order, since it implies that interferences are adjusted according to some rule. (But extreme division of social labor and high organization is the surest sign of order, since it requires the nice adjustment of multifarious activities according to some prearranged plan. )

The readiness of men to disturb the peace or to violate rules in the pursuit of their personal interests depends upon their mental make-up. The

THE PROBLEM

peaceable turn aside from collision, while the pugnacious welcome it. The easily contented readily accommodate their desires and actions to the customary restrictions, but the enterprising are always pressing against and trampling upon barriers. The passive strive only to satisfy old wants, and are therefore much stronger in resistance than in offence. The aggressive are insatiate and put forth as much energy to seize what they have not, as to keep what they have. (^In a passive race, once order is established, the individual keeps to his prescribed orbit from sheer inertia. In an aggressive race order is perpetually endangered by the unruliness of the individual, and can be maintained only through the unremitting operation of certain social forces, i

Now, it is the purpose of this inquiry to ascertain how men of the West-European breed are brought to live closely together, and to associate their efforts with that degree of harmony we see about us. Social order, even among the passive, unambitious Hindoos, presents a problem for solution. But it is a much more serious problem among the dolichocephalic blonds of the West. The restless, striving, doing Aryan, with his personal ambition, his lust for power, his longing to wreak himself, his wilHngness to turn the world upside down to get the fame, or the fortune, or the woman, he wants, is under no easy discipline. The existence of order among men of this daring and disobedient breed challenges explanation. Especially is this true of the European man in America or Australia. (The same selective migrations that made the Teuton more self-assertive than~the docile Slav or the quiescent Hindoo, have made the American more strong-willed and unmanageable than even the West-European. )

To many, no doubt, a survey of the foundations of social order will appear superfluous. Most of us take order for granted, and are hardly more aware of it than we are of the air we breathe. Order being the universal and indispensable condition of all our social structures, we give no more thought to it than to the force of cohesion that keeps our machinery from flying into bits. Those to whom the fact is brought home by the persistence of a delinquent class assume, nevertheless, that the social fabric rests on a law-abiding disposition which is natural to all but the slant-browed few.

But it would be, in truth, much juster to assume a state of disorder. We ought to take for granted that men living in propinquity will continually fall afoul of one another. We ought to expect in the normal person not, it is true, the malice, lust, or ferocity of the born criminal, but certainly a natural unwillingness to be checked in the hot pursuit of his ends. Whenever men swarm in new places, — Dutch Flat, Kimberly, Siberia, Skagway, — the maai-to-man struggle stands out naked and clear, and the slow emergence of order out of disorder and violence presents itself as the attainment of a difficult and artificial condition. Could we abstract from such communities the training received in older societies, the thrift that recognizes disorder as a blight upon prosperity, and the ready revolver which discourages aggression by equalizing men, we might arrive at a notion of the state in which the men of to-day, despite their high facial angle, would find themselves, if they were remanded to the zero point of social development.

Starting from this point, we must face the problem. By what means is the human struggle narrowed and limited ? How has violence been purged away from it ? Hpw has the once brawling torrent

THE PROBLEM

of conflicting personal desires been induced to flow smoothly in the channels of legitimate rivalry, or even for a time to vanish underground in those numerous cooperations where conflict is absent until it comes to dividing the results ?

It is a common delusion that order is to be explained by the person's inherited equipment for good conduct, rather than by any control that society exercises over him. Once it was held that normal human beings are born with a set of commandments etched upon the soul. When evidence accumulated as to the startling contrasts in the moral ideas of different times and peoples, the moralists contented themselves with declaring that the soul is, at least, endowed with a sense of oughtness. When the emptiness of this theory was demonstrated, and formalism was convicted of overlooking the emotional elements that lie behind conduct, there arose the theory that man's nature is constituted out of egoism and altruism. This in time was seen to be much the same as defining milk as a combination of whey and curd. Then came the charming tales of the mutual aid of ants, beavers, and prairie dogs, suggesting the existence of certain social instincts which moralists found it very convenient to use in explaining human society.

We are not yet sure, however, that man is the "good ape" Buffon supposed him to be. There is reason to beheve that our social order is by no means a mere hive or herd order. It seems to be ^fabric, rather than a growth.

But, in any case, it is important to know what human nature can furnish in the cause of social harmony. The gulf between private ends and public ends, between the aims of the individual and the aims of his fellows, is bridged from both sides, and we must know what abutments and

I S.OCIAL CONTROL

spans are provided by the individual himself, if we are to measure the extent of the moral engineering that must be undertaken by society. It is our business, therefore, before entering upon the consideration of the social factors of order, to take stock of the moral capital of the person. We shall, first of all, ascertain the r61e of sympathy, of sociability, of the sense of justice, and of resentment, in establishing and maintaining social order.

Chapter II The Role Of ^sympathy

Sympathy, Sociability, Justice — these are the "mothers" to which, Faust-like, we must repair for the secret of natural goodness. For we are no longer free to reduce altruism to an extremely refined egoism, or to pronounce illusory the pains and pleasures felt on beholding the experiences of another. The metaphysical, strictly egoistic " self " of Helvetius or D'Holbach turns out to be a myth, ^hose cunning architects. Selection and Heredity, are quite competent to build into the nervous system sympathetic promptings as well as selfish appetites^ In the light of the facts collected by many workers, it is no longer difficult to trace the slender stem of altruism rising from the lower levels of mammalian life side by side with the thicker and rougher trunk of egoism.

The beginnings of sympathy lie in the later developments of the reproductive function. With the advent of the helpless mammalian young, sym pathy acquires a high value for survival and irrapidly generated. In the human species the dependence of the young on the self-sacrifice of the parents is great, and the feehng of tenderness for the helpless becomes all-important. Those lacking in this quality do not leave so many children as the self-sacrificing, and so are crowded out and replaced. Thus has been developed in woman, in connection with her child-rearing function, a power of sympathy so great that travellers among savages have learned to throw themselves, when in straits, on the pity of females.

I Besides family selection, social selection works in many ways to put a premium on the more amiable type of man. We know that women, being less quarrelsome, learned to associate before their male companions did. ) It is probable that, likewise, the more peaceable strains of men betook themselves to group life sooner than did the rest. ''Now, other things being equal, the larger and better-knit the group, the better its chances of success in conflict with other group^. While this may not favor the mild and gentle, it tends, at least, to put at a disadvantage the man of savage and solitary mood.

/Again, the level of social endowment is raised by the slow elimination of the quarrelsome./ The bullies kill one another, or they are extinguished by the combined action of the peaceable, or else they are disposed of by the agents of authority. In any case there is a weeding-out process, which works in favor of adaptation. Moreover, as soon as men have a free choice between warfare and peaceful industry, the disorderly and bloodthirsty spirits are drained away and devoured by the sword, while the more peaceable elements of the population gain a steadily increasing preponderance. It is well to remember, however, that the gentle may likewise be sifted out, being slain or driven off by the violent, or self-eliminated by a mistaken celibacy. Social selections, therefore, have tended to remove the morally extreme types of men, — the ferocious who taking the sword perish by the sword, and the gentle who fail to stand up for their rights. It is not certain that their net

THE r6lE of sympathy

effect is to raise to any great degree the level of sympathetic endowment. An adaptive process that rejects the few worst rather than selects the few best, seems too languid to keep pace with the fresh demands that the growing complexity of social organization is continually making on human nature. Nor may we overlook the fact that selection adapts man to yesterday's conditions, not to to-day's. When the requirements of the social environment are changing a gap is bound to appear, and this will be closed, when possible, by artificial means.

The age-long operation of selection under a great variety of conditions forbids us to look everywhere for the same endowment of sympathy, and leads us to recognize that the human species embraces no small range of moral variety. Very striking are the moral differences between neighboring tribes of red men, or negroes, or the hill folk of India. In history, too, we have the contrast between the kindness and generosity of the Egyptian and the cruelty of the Assyrian or Turk. Now, it is not at all certain that the peoples most successful as social architects are the most sympathetic./' In fact, it is among natural peoples who have made but slight progress in social organization — Veddahs, Arawaks, Innuits, Dhimals — that we find the best social instincts/

When we remember that idylUc gentleness has been found only in island races or in small communities isolated by natural barriers, while the races that have emerged successful from the ages of war and migration on the great open land areas, like the Mississippi Valley or the Eurasian Continent, have been marked by a bellicose rather than a pacific disposition, it is evident that the larger historical aggregations of men have not been based on sympathy. When the curtain rises on our ancestor of_ eighty generations ago, he was a fierce, ^™™v savage living in constant warfare, a wild "^^°P^^ beast" with little love for his kind. Undoubtedly the Teutonic temper has been toned down by the blood-letting of centuries. Through the Dark Ages, the mutual slaughter of untamed nobles. and onhangers cleared away the aggressive spirits and gave the more peaceable industrial type of nian an opportunity to multiply the bonds of social life. But gentleness' is still no salient trait of the European. In endowment for friendly association he is inferior to any one of half a score of races that might be mentioned. In the spontaneous formation of small, peaceable, natural communities the Buriats or the Tahitans leave him far behind. That he, nevertheless, continues ceaselessly to develop his wonderful social organization proves that his order rests upon something else than the social sentiments.

/ Natural affection, while it is not the main pillar of the social edifice, has, no doubt, the leading r61e in forming the family of to-day^ It is sympathy, in the forms of sexual, parental, and conjugal love, that preserves and renews from generation to generation the family relations. ' Besides these services sympathy is valuable to the social group as a stimulus to beneficence. ^With its timely help it mitigates the vicissitudes of the individual life, averts the stroke of misfortune, lessens the smart of disaster, tones down the harsher inequalities of lot, and for the weaker ones, such as women, widows, children, and the aged, softens the rigor of individualistic competition. In its collective' manifestation sympathy fixes the legal status of the feeble and defective classes, and determines the plane of comfort they shall enjoy at public expense. Moreover, it authori-

lO

THE r6lE of sympathy

tatively oversees all disciplines and subordinations. It throws the arm of the law about the more helpless and intervenes actively between husband and wife, parent and child, teacher and pupil, master and servant, policeman and offender, warden and convict, employer and employee. .Nor is sympathy without its services to the economic organization. It smooths daily intercourse, binds together the members of an industrial group, and helps to keep men to the due performance of their appointed tagks.

/But after the fullest and frankest recognition has been given to the services of spontaneous altruism, nothing can be clearer than its utter inadequacy. 'Success in social organization implies that each"^ man, whether watched or unwatched, sticks to his appointed work, and interferes with no one else in his worky Each does his special task, trusting that others will do certain things, at certain times, in certain ways, and will forbear from certain other things. This trust would be sadly misplaced if affection and impulse were all that could be relied upon to work our complicated social organization./

Sympathy, as we see it in the family, tends to abolish disparities. The feeling of brotherhood makes for a condition of equality. If, then, society were founded upon sympathy, the enormous inequalities of lot and fate we see about us would be impossible. All Utopias which base the social union on mutual affection arrive at community of goods, or of women, or both. To the unfortunate sympathy presents itself as pity, the impulse to extend aid. To the miserable it presents itself as envy, the impulse to relieve one's distress by dipping into the abundance of another. In both cases, extreme disparity of conditions inspires feel-

II ings which are unfavorable to that disparity. But a differentiating society produces and consecrates stupendous inequalities in condition ; so that, did it trust itself to spontaneous feelings apart from law and morality, it would be ground to powder between compassion and envy, as between the upper and nether millstones, /it is obedience that articulates , the solid, bony framework of social order ; sympa- \ thy is but the connective tissue. As well build a skeleton out of soft fibre as construct social order out of sympathies. ^

/ Not friendly aid, but reliable conduct, is the corner-stone of great organization. Now, sympathy will stay the hand of the wife-beater, but it will not spurn the bribe or spare the lie. It will snatch a child from trampling hoofs, but it will not keep the watchman awake, or hold the contractor to the terms of his agreement. It will nerve the rescuing fireman, but it will not stimulate the official to do his duty. It will relieve the beggar, but it will not stop the adulteration of goods. It will man the lifeboat, but it will not lead men to give just weight, to make true returns of their property, or to slay their country's enemies. /The strength and the weakness of sympathy must now be apparent. Regard for others will protect the circle of kindred and friends, but not those one does not know or care for.' A man's sensibilities may restrain him when the harm of his deed is sure to fall upon a particular individual, but not when it is lost in the vague mass called "the public." ^They will deter him when the evil can be clearly visualized, but not when the consequences are doubtful or indefinite. ; Precarious impulse may produce a settled behavior for persons, but not that steady turning in a prescribed path which is required of every wheel in the social

THE r6lE of sympathy

machine. A person may be tender-hearted, and yet do vast harm by dodging quarantine, or smuggling in coolies, or falsifying news, or stuffing ballot boxes. He will not hurt a fly, and still he will supply explosive kerosene, or contaminated water, to multitudes. He is generous, but will trample upon institutions like marriage, property, the ballot, or free speech, in the pursuit of his ends. ' Sympathy, then, breaks down at just the point where we are increasingly in need of security. ^For our social development is marked by the progressive substitution of fixed impersonal relations for transient personal relations. yTo be "a kind husband, a devoted parent, and a good neighbor " no longer sums up the duty of man. As institutions multiply, it becomes as needful for us to respect them as to love one another. As social machinery gains in importance, the common welfare becomes more vulnerable. With the advent of the time when the most momentous actions will present no more obvious relation to their remote social consequences than does the fingering of the train despatcher to the fate of distant passengers, it will, no doubt, be realized that intermittent sentiment is unable to cope with the problem of subordination, and that other motives must be called in.

n

CHAPTER HI THE ROLE OF SOCIABILITY

Besides sympathy, human nature exhibits certain gregarious instincts which facilitate harmony. These instincts appear as craving for the presence of one's kind, distress at being left alone, nostalgia after separation from mates, and a capacity for social pleasure indicated by mirth, laughter, and festal impulses. These in themselves are no security for good behavior. But they lead to social amusement, play, games, dancing, feasting, and intercourse. These in turn foster friendly interest, spontaneous helpfulness, and a sense of solidarity, all of which conduce to the maintenance of order.

We do not yet know whether our siniian ancestor was most akin to the solitary ape, or to the sociable chimpanzee, but it is safe to say that man was never so thoroughly sociable as the horse, the prairie dog, or the grass-eating animals generally. With even the best strains of man, the gregarious instincts do not seem to have very long roots. ,' His social union comes late and is not easy to maintain. ^ It resembles not so much the colony of beavers, as those packs of wolves or wild dogs which form for hunting, and which frequently break up in a free fight at the sharing of the prey. Those enthusiasts, then, who draw charming lessons from the study of gregarious animals and of social insects, not only fail to give us the

THE r6lE of sociability

clew to human association, but are very apt to lead us quite astray as to the real causes of social order. / It is a paradox of anthropology that the best instances of instinctive adaptation to social Ufe are found among some of the most backward races of men, and at the lowest levels of culture.^ The most astonishing fact brought to light by the ethnologist, is that frequently the savage is not, save in his mode of warfare, " savage " at all, but is, on the contrary, amiable and peaceful^ After a long acquaintance, Europeans hare described Ostyaks, Samoyeds, Eskimos, Dyaks, Aleuts, Papuas, Tunguses, Sioux, and Zunis, as the " gentlest" or the "kindest" races on earth. We find them living in joint families or house communities with an intimacy and peaceableness we cannot attain to. The Hottentots are reported as " all kindness and good will to one another." The Papuas are "sociable and cheerful." "They laugh very much." The Negritos " live in harmony among themselves." The Bushmen are " kind, generous, and hospitable." The Andaman Islanders are declared to be " gentle and amiable in their mutual intercourse." The children of the Siberian savages " never fight." " For a hundred years, one single murder has been committed in the tundra." " Scorning, scolding, and the use of rough words are absolutely unknown in Aleut life."

' Certain shocking practices of primitive folk which were formerly held to indicate great ferocity — abandonment of the old, infanticide, cannibalism, witch-baiting, blood revenge, etc. — are now differently interpreted. On closer examination they are seen to spring from ignorance, superstition, or dire necessity, rather than from callousness. On the whole it is safe to say that, until war and predatory activities break up their early communism, primitive folks show in unusual degree the traits that make order a matter of course. In their simple groups, the bad man, lacking the shelter he enjoys in our vast societies, is steadily eliminated or extruded, until, in the course of ages, the social type of human nature predominates.

It is a far cry from " the friendly and flowing savage," to the men of the West. In the first place, a prolonged struggle in the North Temperate Zone, with a harsh, though not a depressing, natural environment, endows the Teuton with unusual energy and initiative. Then centuries of wanderings in which the strong set forth and the weak and timid stay behind, brings the Teuton to the west of Europe, to the British Isles, and to America, with a courage, enterprise, and self-assertion rare in the history of man. The Teuton becomes the Anglo-Saxon, and therewith less apt for the gregarious life. /Moreover, the constant fighting brought about by his migrations accentuates warlike traits in the Teuton and breeds in him violence and aggression, the propensities of the predatory man./ With conquest and statebuilding begins a protracted regime of force, status, and exploitation, which strengthens self-seeking and clannishness, undermines the primitive instinct pf . friendly association, and leaves an emulative, individualistic stamp upon nearly all the institutions of the Teuton. /Finally, the social deeps are agitated, and the low-lying masses begin to tinge with their far-transmitted sentiments of friendliness and solidarity the Western theory of social relations. /

We cannot tell how the Teuton lived in primitive times, for when the curtain rises he is already a fighting man. But if, like most other savages, he once lived peaceably in little house or village communi-

i6

THE ROlE of sociability

ties, without private property, police or crime, it is certain that he brings the mere wreck of his early social instincts to his latter-day unions. For sixty generations or more, circumstances tended to breed out of him this primitive amiability. Then for a score or so of generations, circumstances have tended to breed out of him some of his acquired ferocity. This double selective process has left in high relief those prideful, self-regarding qualities, which are the soil of noble virtues but not of genial sympathies./ In blood and bone, then, the Western man is individualist, and most so is the American, the product of the last, most Westerly decanting of the Germanic xzz&.y