An analysis of selected sociological writings of Robert Ezra Park

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AN ANALYSIS OP SELECTED SOCIOLOGICAL WHITINGS OP ROBERT EZRA PARK

A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Department of Sociology The University of Southern California

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts

by James Horwitz June 1950

UMI Number: EP65682

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T his thesis, w ritte n by

JAMES HORWITZ under the guidance of h5,JS.... F a c u lty Co m m ittee, and app ro ved by a l l its members, has been presented to and accepted by the C o u n c il on G ra d u ate S tudy and Research in p a r t ia l f u l f i l l ­ ment of the requirements f o r the degree of

Master of Arts

Faculty Committee

/

C hairm atvV

j

TABLE OP CONTENTS CHAPTER I.

PAGE

I N T R ODUCTION...........

1

The s t u d y ....................................

1

Statement of the problem.... ................

1

Importance of the s t u d y .................. 2 Methodology

..................................

Sources of data and method ofprocedure

II.

4

. .

4

Organization of thesis . ... ................

6

Statement of limitations ...................

7

BIOGRAPHICAL N O T E S ............................

9

y Park’s early academic preparation in p h i l o s o p h y ........................... * . .

9

U 'His career in journalism and its relation to his later work as a sociologist. . . . His entrance into the field ofsociology

11

. .

13

£/The social significance of his academic and vocational pursuits in the develop­ ment of his sociology.................

18

III. v MAJOR FIELDS OF I N T E R E S T ................

28

The n e w s p a p e r .......................

28

The urban c o m m u n i t y ............... . Americanization

.........................

Collective behavior

.

.................

44 58 75

iii CHAPTER

PAGE Raee r e l a t i o n s ............................

IV.

SOCIOLOGICAL CONCEPTS. . . . . The social processes Communication

............

100 100

..............................

101

C o m p e t i t i o n ................................

105

Conflict

107

.................

Accommodation

V.

.............

87

.................

Ill

Assimilation ................................

114

SOCIOLOGICAL CONCEPTS,CONTINUED ............

117

The ecological p r o c e s s e s ............

117

P o s i t i o n ....................................

120

f

^

Isolation • .............

122

D o m i n a n c e ..................................

125

, L o c o m o t i o n ........................... i | ^ S u c c e s s i o n ..................................

127

ADDITIONAL CONCEPTS

133

i

VI.

130

..........................

The individual and the p e r s o n .......... Social distance

...................

.

133 137

/ VII.

INDICATIONS OF THE INFLUENCE OF PARK . . . . .

145

tfTII.

SUMMARY AND C O N C L U S I O N S .....................

156

S u m m a r y ....................................

156

C o n c l u s i o n s ................................

159

B I B L I O G R A P H Y ...................

160

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Robert Park will be remembered in history as one of the great American Sociologists.

Largely through his efforts

sociology progressed from social philosophy to an inductive science.

Since the work of Professor Park is conveniently

dated as beginning with World War I and ending with World War II, the present time--shortly after the end of World War II--is an appropriate one for which to make an analysis of his work.

I.

THE STUDY

Statement of the problem.

The purpose of this study

has been to review selected sociological writings of Robert Park, noting original thought where such original thought has occurred, calling attention to particular ideas deemed im­ portant by authorities in the field of sociology, comparing his writing with the work of others in the sociological lit­ erature, and indicating specific contributions Park has made to sociology.

Since Park's writing is more impressive for

its quality than for its bulk, it has also been the aim of this study to give mention to written works in which Park has been influential.

Much of the written work of Park has

2 been projected in collaboration with colleagues.

One of

the aims of this study, therefore, has been to isolate, as far as possible, the specific work of Park; in such cases in which such isolation is not possible, to credit all authors equally.

Finally, it has been the purpose of this

study to discuss selected sociological concepts of Park and their significance for sociology. Importance of the study.

According to Ellsworth

Faris, a partial list of the fields in which Park has made significant contributions would include:

social psychology

and the theory of personality; studies on the community; the city; human ecology; the newspaper as an institution; the social survey as an institution; crowd and public— the field of collective behavior; and ohiefest of all, race relations and the conflicts of cultures* Parkfs rise in the academic world was phenomenal, and within eleven years after his formal entry into sociology, he was elected president of the American Sociological Society. Faris reports, "He (Park) held it better to induce ten men to write ten books than to take time off to write one him­ self."1

It is true that Park did not write much during his

^ Ellsworth Faris,. "Robert E. Park, 1864-1944," American Sociological Review, 9 :323> June, 1944.

3 thirty years in sociology.

His close associate., Ernest

Burgess, says, "More significant than his (Park's) writings were his two other contributions to sociology, namely, the charting of new fields of study and the impress of his research zeal and method upon his students."

A list of the

names of those in sociology who, at some time or other, came under the influence of Dr. Park, reads like a "Who's Who" in the field of sociology.

Included in the list,

compiled by Charles Johnson, are the names of Reuter, Fra­ zier, K. Young, Wirth, Thompson, Doyle, Bogardus, Stonequist, Pierson, Detweiler, and others.

The text Park wrote in

collaboration with Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology,^ has commanded wide attention wherever people have read it.

Park has written authoritatively for the many

sociological journals and his work has been regarded as such by professors of sociology.

The name of Park has been ac­

corded acclaim and recognition.

Ample reason exists for

Burgess calling him "one of the great American sociologists."5

^ Ernest W. Burgess, "The Contribution of Robert E. Park to Sociology," Sociology and Social Research, 29*261, March-April, 19^5* 3 Charles Johnson, "Robert E. Park: In Memorium," Sociology and Social Research, 28:3 5 ^ May-June, 19^4. ^ Robert E. Park, and Ernest W. Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1921). 5 Burgess, op. cit., p. 261.

4 II.

METHODOLOGY

Sources of data and method of procedure.

As yet a

limited amount of subject matter has been penned concern­ ing the life of Robert Park, including a handful of articles appearing in the sociological periodicals shortly after the time of his death in February, 1944.

These were written,

for the most part, in*tribute to Park, and calling attention to the fact that a great loss was incurred in his passing. The New York Times, in its issue of February 8, 1944, in­ cluded a short summary of his life.^

These articles have

been incorporated into the study. The thesis is based upon library research, and the writer has freely availed himself of the materials found in the Los Angeles Public Library and the Doheny Memorial Lib­ rary of the University of Southern California.

The writer

has had verbal contact with many former students of Professor Park.

However, all the material used for the purpose of the

study has been from published sources only.

The sources

consulted have been, in the main, the sociological journals, the published proceedings of the American Sociological Society, and books, which have either been written or edited by Park, or which have been written as a result of his influence.

Obituary in the New York Times, February 8, 1944.

5 Much of the material used in the section of the thesis deal­ ing with Americanization came from Park’s book The Immigrant Press and Its Control,?

and the book Old World Traits Trans­

planted,® which was written by Park in collaboration with Herbert A. Miller.

Similarly, much of the information on

urbanization was gained from The City by Park, Burgess, and others.9

The source for the material on the social processes

and the sociological concepts has been, for the most part, the text by Park and Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology. Many sociologists have, at one time or another, refer­ red to Park in their writings, or have included sections in their books on Park.

Bogardus has included a chapter on

11 Park in his Development of Social Thought.

Burgess, in

editing The Urban Community, saw fit to include a chapter

? Robert E. Park, The Immigrant Press and Its Control (New York: Harper and Brothers^ 1922)• ® Robert E. Park, and Herbert A. Miller, Old World Traits Transplanted (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1921). ^ Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess., and others, The City (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1925). 10 Robert E. Park, and Ernest W. Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1921). Emory S. Bogardus, The'Development of Social Thought (Neft York:' Longman’s, Green and Company, 19W J .

6 written by Park.

12

House has referred to Park in his Range

of Social Theory, a s

have Elliot and Merrill in their

14 Social Disorganization.

The introduction to The New

Social Research by Bogardus, was written by Park.^-5 and others have been consulted.

These

In short, it has been the

plan, to refer to as many authors as was considered feasible, having references in their texts to the work of Park, and by the same token, to consult works deemed important, for one reason or another, by Park.

By resorting to this plan,.the

available material was found not to be sparse, but rather,, in a sense, illimitable. Organization of thesis. with the life of Robert E. Park.

The following chapter deals In chronological order, it

takes up the matter of Park’s early years, indicating his educational and vocational training and interests, and point­ ing out some of the motivating influences in his life.

It

12

Ernest ¥. Burgess, editor, The Urban Community (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1926JT 13 Floyd N. House, The Range of Social Theory York: Henry Holt and Company, 1929}•

(New

^ Mabel A. Elliot, and Francis E. Merrill, Social Disorganization (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, Revised Edition 1941). ■*■5 Emory S. Bogardus, The New Social Research Angeles: Jesse Ray Miller, 1926).

(Los

7 mentions Park as a student of philosophy, his brief, but important, career as a journalist, his four years in Germany culminating with the receiving of a Doctor's degree from the University of Heidelberg subsequent to his return to America, and his entrance into the field of sociology.

Through­

out this chapter an attempt has been made to project some­ thing of the personality of Park, one phase of which has been evident in his great love for humanity. Chapter III concerns itself with the major fields of interest of Park--fields in which he has devoted time during his life, either studying or working in, or fields in which he is considered to be an authority. the social processes. processes.

Chapter IV deals with

Chapter V deals with the ecological

Chapter VI is a discussion of selected sociologi­

cal concepts, wherein credit is paid to th^ original socio­ logical thought of Park. The seventh chapter, dealing with the indications of the influence of Park, credits him, not alone for his written work, but acknowledges his influence as a teacher, indicating which studies have been made as a result of his extraordinary interest in sociology and social research.

The final chapter

summarizes earlier findings. Statement of limitations.

Uppermost in mind in pre­

senting selected sociological writings of Park has been the

8 concern of objectivity, and the concern regarding the representativeness of those writings which have been selected. Much has been omitted.

Any writings not dealt with herein

have been specifically omitted, not because of their quality, but to provide limitations to the study.

CHAPTER II BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES Park1a early academic preparation in philosophy. Robert Ezra Park was born in Harveyville, Pennsylvania, in 1864.

Prom Harveyville, the Park family moved to Redwing,

Minnesota, where young Robert entered school for the first time.

As a young man he spent one year at the University

of Minnesota, following this with four years study at the University of Michigan, where he graduated with a degree in philosophy.

In 1887, shortly after graduation, Park entered

the newspaper world as a reporter. journalism for twelve years.

Park was active in

Discontinuing his journalistic

endeavors, he entered Harvard University, continuing with the study of philosophy.

Upon receiving a Master’s degree

from Harvard, Park went to Europe for one semester's study at the University of Berlin, following this with intensive work at the University of Heidelberg.

Park, in time, re­

ceived the degree, Doctor of Philosophy, from the University of Heidelberg.

The title of his doctoral dissertation reveals

the problem that was uppermost in his thinking during his graduate work.-*-

Park’s doctoral dissertation was Masse und

1 Ernest W. Burgess, ”The Contribution of Robert E. Park to Sociology,” Sociology and Social Research, 2 9 :258, March-April, 19^5*

10 Publikum:

Elne Methodologische und Sozlologische Unter-

suchung Robert Park was a profound scholar.

He had a knowl­

edge of the great books, both new and old.

Louis Wirth has

said of Park: His interest in the solution of problems of human interrelationships was chastened by the recog­ nition of the facts of life and the nature of social change. In his drive to understand and eventually to help solve the problems of human relations, he was as nearly impersonal and selfless as a man can be. 3 Park had no training in sociology.

None of his generation

had,, according to Ellsworth Faris, because there was no one to teach them sociology.

k

Through the study of philosophy Park came into con­ tact with men of great influence.

In his doctor's disserta­

tion, Crowd and Public, he acknowledges his indebtedness to them.

Park knew intimately such men as John Dewey, William

James, Royce, Munsterberg, Windelband, Santanyana, and Simmel.

2 Robert E. Park, Masse und Publikum kerei Lack and Grunau, 1904).

(Bern: Buchdruc-

3 Louis Wirth, source unknown, cited by Charles John­ son, "Robert E. Park: In Memorium,,f Sociology and Social Re­ search, 2 8 :356, May-June, 1944. ^ Ellsworth Faris, "Robert E. Park, 1864-1944," American Sociological Review, 9*323* June, 1944.

11 His career in journalism and its relation to his later work as £ sociologist.

Beginning in 1887 and terminat­

ing in 1898, Park was occupied with journalistic activities, which ran the gamut of jobs from reporter to city-editor. Park’s news writing took him to Denver, New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Detroit.

It was during this period that

he became intimately acquainted with urban living and the particular problems associated with life in the great city. Charles Johnson has pointed out that Park’s final arrival at sociology was the natural outcome of a passionate curiosity about men and their relationships to each other R and to the changing patterns of society. The interest in mankind and the curiosity about man's world arose in Park not merely from his casual observation of local events and his recording them for his readers, but because Park was among that group of newspaper men who became interested for the first time in seeking the underlying facts beneath the surface of ordinary daily happenings. During Park's period of activity in journalism, he witnessed a major change in the fourth estate, a change which took the form of a rise in the importance of news and feature

5 Charles Johnson, "Robert E. Park: In Memorium,” Sociology and Social Research, 28:354, May-June, 1944.

12 stories, accompanied by a decline in the emphasis of the editorial, which at that time had been a vital tool of the partisan press.

Park regarded "news” as a great dynamic of

public opinion and action, yet he realized its shortcomings in its application toward the solving of social problems. He was aware that one of the limitations of the newspaper was that it could not furnish basic knowledge about the nature of our complex society, and concluded that something more was needed and that this something more was research. Park's first love was the newspaper, and throughout his life it remained ever close to his heart.

Burgess writes concern­

ing this: He perceived in news and its interpretation, a significant medium of popular education and social action. One of his lifelong interests was to bring the research of the sociologist into significant liaison with the news story of the journalist— an objective to which he gave increasing thought in his later years. Park's interest in urban living, immigration, communi­ cation, and race relations can be traced to his work in the newspaper field.

In later years, after having become a pro­

fessor of sociology, he wrote such articles as "Morale and 7

the News,"'

"Reflections on Communication and Culture,"

Q

6 Burgess, op. cit., p. 2577 Robert E. Park, "Morale and the News," The American Journal of Sociology, 47:360, Nov., 1941. 8 Robert E. Park, "Reflections on Communication and Culture," The American Journal of Sociology, 44:187* Sept., 1938.

13 flThe Yellow Press,"9

"The Foreign Language Press and Social

Progress/ ’10

"The Natural History of the Newspaper/ ’11 and 12 ’’The News and the Power of the Press.’’ His entrance into the field of sociology.

The years

beginning with the turn of the century and ending with World War I indicate a time of increased social consciousness * as reflected in the Nation’s press, and by the numbers engaged in social welfare work and social reform activities.

In

1914, at the age of fifty, Park, at the persuasion of his friend, William I. Thomas, entered the field of sociology.1^ Not long after, he accepted the invitation of Albion W. Small to become a member of the faculty of the University of Chicago. Park, throughout his newspaper days, had been intensely interested in social conditions.

However, according to Erie

9 Robert E. Park, "The Yellow Press," Sociology and Social Research, 12:3* Sept.-Oct., 1927. 10 Robert E. Park, "The Foreign Language Press and So­ cial Progress," Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Worlc, 1920:4937 1920. 11 Robert E. Park, "The Natural History of the News­ paper," The American Journal of Sociology, 29:273* Nov., 1923» 12 Robert E. Park, News and the Power of the Press," The American Journal of Sociology, 47:1* July* 1941. 13 Emory S. Bogardus, The Development of Social Thought (New York: Longman’s, Green,and Company, 194BJ* p. 523*

14 F. Young, he had no Interest in social reform as such. This he came to regard as merely another social phenomenon 14 requiring scientific analysis. Burgess has disclosed the fact that Park came to the study of sociology with a powerful motivation to find in the psychological and social sciences the knowledge that would enable man to change his world.15

it cannot be assumed that if that knowledge were

found. Park would have partaken of modern social reform activities.

His conception o f •sociology, according to

Faris, was as an objective science, "a basic science of human nature,"--a conception of sociology which.made him opl6 pose any effort to turn it into a propaganda instrument. Park steadfastly opposed what at that time was passing for reform.

He was no stranger to reform movements, having al­

ready witnessed the futile efforts of the partisan press. He came to sociology convinced that reform efforts arrived nowhere unless they took into account the process of social change.

^ Erie F. Young, "A Sociological Explorer: Robert E. Park," Sociology and Social Research, 28:437* JulyAug., 1944.

^5 Burgess, op. c_it., p. 235. 16 paris, 0p. pit., p. 324.

15 According to Paris, Park steadfastly insisted that sociologists roust not become agitators for this would only mean partisanship, the loss of the scientific temper,, and above all the loss of that influence and authority which objective science should command . ^

What* then* was the

compulsion which ultimately led Park into sociology?

His

friend and colleague, Ernest Burgess, has answered, MThe motivation which led Park into sociology was twofold: intellectual curiosity to understand human nature and society, and an impelling drive to secure the knowledge necessary for fundamental social changes.1*^® Bogardus directs attention to the fact that when Park became a professor of sociology, the field was still largely in the control of social philosophy, but that Park protested against this.

Moreover, he reacted vehemently to armchair

philosophizing based on previous armchair philosophizing.*^^ Park’s originality was due in large part to his in­ timate acquaintance with human beings and social situations. He loved people and regarded them as much more than statisti­ cal entities.

In a statement issued at the time of the

17 „ , Paris, op. cit., p. 324. I® Burgess, oj>. cit., p. 2 5 7 . 19 Bogardus, ojp. cit., p. 523*

16 Pacific Coast survey (1923-2 5 ) he reveals: The Pacific Coast survey is an expression of a new point of view. We are beginning to talk about human nature because we see that we deal with human beings* not blocks of wood. The extent to which the white man can change his prejudices and the Asiatic his habits and traditional think­ ing largely determines their usefulness as Ameri­ cans. But the clamps of prejudice must be removed and the foreigner must have a reasonable time literally to change his mind" and assimilate him­ self in a new social matrix.20 Burgess, in writing on Park as a sociologist, said, "He possessed in unusual degree an interest in concrete experience, both for its own value and for its meaning and function in arriving at generalizations."

Burgess also

stated in regard to Park’s qualifications for sociology, "He had a great drive for scientific investigation and an extraordinary gift for stimulating and guiding the research „21 of his students. Park’s decision to enter sociology was a wise one.

Robert Park was filled with a zeal to secure

adequate preparation for any task he undertook, and though he arrived upon the scene of sociology with having taken relatively few formal courses in the discipline, he possessed the frame of mind, that attitude toward science, and that

20 Obituary in the New York Times, February, 19^4. 21 Burgess, o£. cit., p. 2 56 .

17 chain of past experiences’.which could only indicate success. By 1920, when students swarmed hack to the Chicago campus, they found Park as the outstanding member of the sociology department.

Park was no speechmaker, according to Faris,

and profound and stimulating as his lectures were, it was fortunate that his reputation did not depend on them.

His

practice was to make appointments with each of his students and to have protracted interviews with each one of them, learning the student’s background and interests, and planning 22 definite problems for investigation. Each of Park’s courses was oriented to

research and every student was as­

signed a project for investigation, either in the literature or in field study. An editorial, appearing in Sociology and Social Re­ search almost immediately following Park’s death, affirms: "The most outstanding contribution to the field of sociology was in social research, for Dr. Park was primarily a research m a n . ”2 3

In an article on sociology In the United States, Bernard has written, concerning the Department of Sociology at Chicago.

He says,

pp

Faris

oj>. cit., p. 324.

^3 Editorial, ’’Robert Ezra Park 1864-1944,” Sociology and Social Research, 28:309* March-April, 1944.

18 After Thomas, for ten years, the Department at Chicago was turned largely into a city editor’s office on an academic scale, and the graduate students were put to work reporting systematically interesting sociological.news and in making ecologi­ cal community analyses. ^ In the same article Bernard states, Park brought the city editor’s chair into the sociological office and directed some of the best journalistic reporting of sociological news of our d a y . ^ 5 In spite of the age factor, Park’s entrance into the field of sociology marked the beginning of an important and successful career.

In a series of statistical studies

Lehman has shown that scientists, including social scientists, make their major contributions before the age of forty.

On

the contrary, all the sociological publications of Park-with the exception of his doctoral dissertation which appeared when he was forty-four--were written after he was fifty. The social significance of his academic and vocational pursuits in the development of his sociology.

Dr. Emory

Bogardus has written in his Development of Social Thought,

2^ L. L. Bernard, "An Interpretation of Sociology in the United States," Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society, 25;fr3 May, 1931* 25 Ibid., p. 54. 2° Burgess, o£. cit., p. 255, citing Lehman, source unknown.

19 The thinking of persons about social life falls into three categories: (l) that involving the advancement of human groups as groups; (2) that referring.to the manipulation of human be­ ings to the gain of a special clique or group; and* (3 ) that which aims to analyze the underlying social processes and laws irrespective of the effects of such analyses or the uses to which they are put.27 Of the three categories mentioned by Bogardus, the first and third contain within their scope the social thought of Robert Park.

From the social proverbs of early primitive

man to the conceptual approach is the gamut of social thought. \ Park formulated a conceptual system based on the classifica­ tion of human experiences..

He was joint author with Burgess 28 in the writing of Introduction to the Science of Sociology which utilizes the conceptual approach and deals with "social interaction,”

"human nature,” "isolation," "competition,”

"conflict,” and so forth.

According to Bogardus,

Sociological concepts are permeating the farther­ most reaches of personal living and societal control. A history of social thought is a history of the processes involved in the socializing of human atti­ tudes and values, presaging a human society in which personal achievement and group progress are equally and supremely sought.29 .

Emory S. Bogardus, The Development of Social Thought (New York: Longman's, Green and Company, 19"f8T7 P- 3* Robert E. Park, and Ernest W. Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology (Chicago: The University of Chi­ cago Press, I92TT. Bogardus, ojd. cit., p. 653.

20 The conceptual system was for Park the sociological frame of interpretation of events in the lives of human b e ­ ings.

Park saw an advantage in substituting concepts and

a logical sequence for the actual course of ©vents.3^

The

conceptual order makes the actual order intelligible,, and accordingly, as the hypothetical formations correspond to the actual course of events, prediction becomes possible. Park, in discussing the scientific method as a tech­ nique for-social science, affirms this. Science is the result of an effort to discover among things that turn up in our experience the relation of cause and effect; to base thereon gen­ eral rules which enable us to predict what is likely to happen in other similar eases. It is the business of sociology, in studying human affairs, to look for these same relations of cause and effect; to lay down general rules which enable us to predict from the existence of the situation A the succeeding situa­ tion B. On the basis of such general observations, even if they are never formulated with the logical precision here indicated, all formal methods or organ­ isations for the control or improvement of social life must rest.31 Durkheim maintains that there exists a relationship

30 Robert E. Park, "News as a Form of Knowledge: A Chapter in the Sociology of Knowledge," The American Journal of Sociology, 45t673«

^ Robert E. Park, "informal Conference: Is it Possible for American Sociologists to Agree Upon a Construc­ tive Program?" Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society, 8 :167, 1914.

21 between sociology and philosophy.

He rejects the assump­

tion that sociology need rest on any philosophical presup­ positions.

However, he claims that although sociology

does not depend on philosophy, philosophy does incorporate ^2 many elements of sociology. There is no doubt that the study of philosophy influenced Park in the development of his sociology, as did his career in journalism.

Also

important in Park's thought was his emphasis on the value of actual experience for the sociologist,,

and his appre­

ciation and understanding of scientific technique as the only satisfactory approach toward dealing with social con­ ditions. 33

"it is necessary," Park asserts, "in order to

deal practically with human beings, to understand individual men and women.

The practical sociologist must have the

ability to enter the inner life and share the feelings and sentiments of all sorts of people." Park realized that with the application of scientific methods to the investigation of social phenomena, and es­ pecially with the application of sociological findings, there exists a tendency to substitute machinery and technique in 32 Harry Elmer Barnes, An Introduction to the History of Sociology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1945), p. 501. 33 Park, o p . cit., p. 167. 34

park,

o jd.

cit., p. 167 .

22 the place of sympathy and common sense In dealing with human beings.

He regarded problems of human nature as

naturally fundamental to all other social problems.

Human

nature, according to Park, is a suitable subject for socio­ logical investigation since It is regarded as a product of social intercourse.35 Park, in his own life, exemplified the value of sig­ nificant interaction between concrete experience and general­ ization.

According to his colleague* Ernest Burgess, Park

stressed the cultural significance of intimate acquaintance with human behavior, particularly emphasizing its value in the exploratory stages of research.3^

The significance of

"experiences” to Park was their value as sources, perhaps the best, from which his students could gain a knowledge and an understanding of the attitudes of strange and unassimilated peoples.37 Communication, the process by which an experience is transmitted from one individual to another and by which these

35 Robert E. Park, and Ernest W. Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1921), p. 47. 3^ Ernest W. Burgess, "The Contribution of Robert E. Park to Sociology," Sociology and Social Research, 29:260, March-April, 19^5. 37 Robert E. Park, "Experience and Race Relations,” in Bogardus1, A History of Social Thought (Los Angeles: Press of Jesse Ray Miller, 1928), p. 6 39 .

23 same individuals get a common experience, was referred to by Park as the typical social process.

He says, "Communi­

cation, if not identical with, is at least a form of social* interaction."3® "For my first interest in Philosophy I am indebted to Prof. John Dewey of Columbia University," wrote Park in his doctoral dissertation Crowd and Public.39

in "The Con­

cept of Position in Society," a paper read at the 1924 meet­ ing of the American Sociological Society, he quoted John Dewey on the nature of communication. Society, as John Dewey has remarked, exists in and through communication, and communication involves not a translation of energies, such as seems to take place between individual social units, for example, in suggestion or imitation, two of the terms to which sociologists have at various times sought to reduce all social phenomena; but rather communication involves a transformation in the individuals who thus communi­ cate. And this transformation goes on unceasingly with the accumulation of individual experiences in individual minds.40 Whether Park's interest in communication as the ideal social process can be credited to Dewey is not known.

It is known

3® Park and Burgess, ojd. cit., p. 3 6 . 39 Translated from German, Robert E. Park, Masse und Publlkum (Bern: Buchdriickerei Lack and Grunau, 1904), p . 112. The City P. 131.

Robert E. Park, "Magic, Mentality, and City Life," (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1925),

24 that Park regarded the concept of Platonic idea as the 41 most fundamental tool of modern scientific thought * and that he accepted Dewey’s conception of communication. Park regards

as a natural science any science which

operates with hypotheses and seeks to state facts in such a way that they can be compared and verified by further observation and experiment.

He emphasizes in his writings

the difference between the facts of history and natural science and the differences in the aim of history and the natural sciences.

This distinction was made by the German

philosopher Windelband, who was one of Park’s professors at Heidelberg, and later confirmed by Munsterberg, whom he had as a professor at Harvard.

4p

At a conference of the

American Sociological Society, Park, in citing Windelband, stated: Windelband said, as I remember, that there was a fundamental difference, not only in the method, but in the aim of what he called the historical and natural sciences, including among the natural sciences sociology and psychology. He pointed out that there

^ The City P. 131.

Robert E. Park, "Magic, Mentality, and City Life," (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1925)>

Robert E. Park, "informal Conference: Is it Pos­ sible for American Sociologists to Agree Upon a Constructive Program?" Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociologi­ cal Society, 8:168,1914.

25 was a fundamental difference between a historical and natural science fact. The difference consists in this: The historical fact has a location and a date and it occurs once onvly. A fact of natural science, however, is one that can be repeated and heiice one that can be tested by experience. The significance of the distinction is this: The fact of natural science is of such a character that it enables us to predict, it enables us to use our knowledge about one object to determine how we should behave toward all objects of that same class.^3 Sociology, as Fark sees it, differs from history in that it ignores time and place considerations, that is, sociology attempts to arrive at natural laws and general­ izations in regard to human nature and society, irrespec­ tive of time and place.

The relationship between the two

is one of uniqueness. As soon as historians seek to take events out of their historical setting, that is to way, out of their time and space relations, in order to compare them and classify them; as soon as historians begin to emphasize the typical and representative rather than the unique character of events,.history ceases to be history and becomes sociology. ^ In brief, sociology takes events out of their historical settings, in order to compare and classify them, to see them in processional forms, to put them into conceptual frameworks, and to emphasize the typical and representative. As has been previously indicated, Park entered sociology at a time when it consisted largely of armchair

^3 Ibid., p. 168. “Sociology and the Social Sciences," p. 8 .

26 philosophizing, and, to a great degree, due to his initia­ tive, developed into an inductive science.

An empirical

and experimental science avoids a purely logical solution of its problems by checking up its calculation at some point with the actual world.

Park was aware of the short­

comings of scholasticism, which invariably tends to sub­ stitute logical consistency— a relation between ideas--for the relation of cause and effect, which is a relation be­ tween things. Park regards sociology as the science of collective behavior.

It does not include within its bounds social-

welfare programs and social-welfare practices.

The social

group, which is W a r d ’s concept, is for Park a determining and limiting factor for sociology.

He alludes to this in

the following: The varied interests, fields of investigation, and practical programs which find at present a place within the limits of the sociological dis­ cipline are united in having one common object of reference, namely, the concept of the social group. All social problems turn out finally to be problems of group life, although each group and ggch type of group has its own distinctive problems Journalism, as well as philosophy, had significance for Park in the development of his sociology..

He regarded

the newspaper as a social institution, since, although the

45 Robert E. Park, "News as a Form of Knowledge," The American Journal of Sociology, 45:673, March, 1940. 46 park, "Sociology and the Social Sciences," p. 47.

27 newspaper is privately owned, it is looked upon as a public servant . ^

”What is needed,” Park said,”is not so much a

history as the natural history of the press--not a record of the fortunes of individual newspapers, but an account of the evolution of the newspaper as a social institution.”^^

7 Robert E. Park, ’’Topical Summaries of Current Literature: The American Newspaper,” The American Journal of Sociology, 32:810, March, 1927. ^

Ibid., p . 806 .

CHAPTER III MAJOR FIELDS OF INTEREST The newspaper.

As a sociologist Park introduced a

realistic and vital approach to the study of news as a factor in public opinion and as related to polular education.

It

is significant that his career in journalism brought him into intimate contact with the urban community.

Similarly, his

interest in the foreign language press was sufficiently broad to include within its scope the Americanization problems of the immigrant, which have been traditionally problems of the urban community.

Park never lost interest in the newspaper.

Throughout his sociological writings are found references to the press, an outstanding example being "Urbanization as Measured by Newspaper Circulation.”

Inrthis article Park

says: The circulations of newspapers, when they are platted on a map, serve to delimit, with exceptional accuracy the limits of the local trade area, and to measure at the same time the extent and degree of dependence of the suburbs upon the metropolis, and of the metropolis upon the larger region which it dom­ inates. Newspaper circulation may be represented schematically in a succession of concentric circles, defining a series of zones--zones of declining circu­ lation, since newspaper circulation, like land values, tends to decline in regular gradients from the center of the city to its circumference; and from the city itself to the limits of the metropolitan area. These gradients of declining newspaper circulation measure the area of urban influence; they measure, in short,

29 the extent and degree of urbanization.'*' Communication, the means by which individuals share in a common experience and maintain a common life, is em­ phasized many times throughout Parkfs sociological writings. Society, he indicates, exists in and through communication. "The history of communication of civilization.

is, in a sense, the history

Language, writing, the printing press, the

telegraph, telephone, and radio, mark epochs in the history o of mankind. The newspaper is the greatest medium of com­ munication within the city.

Park maintains that it is on

the basis of information supplied by the newspaper that public opinion rests.3

"Literacy itself is very largely a product

of modern city life," Park says.

"Books and reading which

used to be, and to a certain extent are yet, a luxury in the country, become a necessity in the city."^

According to Park,

literacy in the urban environment is almost as much a necessity

1 Robert E. Park, "Urbanization as Measured by News­ paper Circulation," American Journal of Sociology, 35:62, July, 1929. ^ Robert E. Park, "The Urban Community as a Spatial Pattern and as a Moral Order,” in Bogardus, History of social Thought, p. 6 3 2 . City

3 Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess, and Others, The (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1925)* p. 39*

^ Robert E. Park, The City, p. 139.

"Magic, Mentality,

and City Life,"

30 as speech itself.

Public opinion, rather than the mores,

becomes the dominant force in social control.

The press

plays an important role in controlling, enlightening, and exploiting public opinion.^

Accordingly, Park wrote,

"Whatever has importance and prestige at the moment has power to direct for a time the currents of public opinion, even if it does not change, in the long run, the trend of events." The press plays an important role in the political process. change.

It is a factor in social control and in social Park describes the political process as beginning

with the rise of some sort of agitation or social unrest and ending finally with some modification of the mores after new laws have been enacted, interpreted, and enforced over a period of time.

It is in the mores that new norms and new

rights are incorporated into the ethos of the society to which they appertain.

The power of the press is that influ­

ence which newspapers exercise in the formation of public 8 opinion and in mobilizing the community for political action.

^ Robert E. Park, "The Natural History of the News­ paper,” The City, p. 81. ^ Tiie City, p. 3 8 . 7 Robert E. Park, "Reflections on Communication and Culture,” American Journal ofSociology, 44:198,September, 1938. O Robert E. Park, "News and the Power of the Press," American Journal of Sociology, 47:1* July, 1941.

31 The role of the press during periods of instability and times characterized by social change is not merely to orient the public in regard to the issues involved but to bring into existence a collective will and a political power which* as it mobilizes the community to act* tends to terminate dis­ cussion.

This is what constitutes the power of the press.

The interpretation which the great mass of newspaper readers finally agrees to put on events during periods of great and rapid change constitutes* according to Park* public opinion.

Q

Public opinion emerges from the discussions of individ­ uals attempting to formulate and rationalize their individual interpretations of the news* with or without the help of the editorial commentator.

"in a democracy*" Park states*

"Where

everyone reads-* and particularly in a period of rapid change and revolution when political opinion and political power are in the making* it is news rather than the editorial that makes opinion."**-®

Park held the view that once public opinion

became fixed and codified* it acted as a stabilizing and conservative force rather than as an innovating one.

11

"The first typical reaction of an individual to the news*" wrote Park*

"is likely to be a desire to repeat it to

9 Ibid., p. 11. 10 Ibid., p. 4. 11 Ibid., p. 2.

32 someone.

This makes conversation, arouses further comment,

and perhaps starts a discussion.

The clash of opinions

and sentiments which discussion invariably evokes usually terminates in some sort of consensus or collective opinion-what we call public opinion.”12

Public opinion, then, is

based finally on the interpretation of events.

The means

by which the public becomes aware of local and national events— the news columns— had, during Park’s day, assumed increased rather than diminished importance as compared with other forms of knowledge,history, for example.

”Ours, it

seems, is an age of news,” Park wrote, "And one of the most important

events in American civilization has been the rise

of the reporter.”1^ Great cities are societies founded on secondary re­ lationships.

It is in such groups where public opinion be-

comes important as a cource of social control.

1 it

Park coined

the term "secondary group” to refer to any group which is not a "primary group."

His definition appeared some time

after the first appearance of Cooley’s book Social Organizat i o n 15 in

which the primary group concept was discussed.

12 Robert E. Park, "News as a Form of Knowledge," The American Journal of Sociology, 45:677* March, 1940. !3 Ibid., p. 6 86 . City

14 Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess, and Others, (Chicago: The University Press, 1925 )> P* 38.

15 Floyd N. House, The Range of Social Theory (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1929) * P» T 4 2 .

The

33 By primary groups I mean those characterized by intimate face-to-face association and cooperation. They are primary in several senses, but chiefly in that they are fundamental in forming the social nature and ideals of the individual. The result of intimate association, psychologically, is a certain fusion of individualities in a common whole, so that one's very self, for many purposes at least, is the common life and purpose of the group. Per­ haps the simplest way of describing this wholeness is by saying that it is a "we"; it involves the sort of sympathy and mutual identification for which "we” is the natural expression. One lives in the feel­ ing of the whole and finds the chief aims of his will in that feeling.16 The relationships in Park's secondary group are in­ direct and impersonal.

They operate under conditions of

individual liberty and individual competition.

In secondary

or cosmopolitan groups one finds a superficial uniformity, a homogeneity in manners and fashion, associated with rela­ tively profound differences in individual opinions, senti­ ments, and beliefs.1^

In spite of the traditional liberties

of speech and action, men the world over have found themselves in a system of economic and political relationships over which they no longer have control.

This Park has attributed to

the expanding means of communication, namely, the press, the radio, the telegraph, and the locomotive.

Conditions of

Charles H. Cooley, Social Organization Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909)/ p. 23.

(New York:

Robert E. Park, "Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups," Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociologi­ cal Society, 8 :67* July, 1914. Robert E. Park and Herbert A. Miller, Old World Traits Transplanted (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1921), p. 261.

34 the lives of men are vitally affected by events occurring without their knowledge, thousands of miles away, according to Park. Local news is an important element of democracy. People are interested most in what to them is most intelli­ gible, and most interesting.

JThe press has taken these faci

tors into account.

Park comments on this observations

The motive, conscious or unconscious, of the press is to reproduce, as far as possible, in the city the conditions of life in the village. In the vil­ lage everyone knew everyone else. Everyone called everyone by his first name. The village was demo­ cratic. Our institutions are fundamentally village institutions. In the village, gossip and public opinion were the main sources of social control.-*-9 The first newspapers were simply devices for organiz­ ing group gossip, and that, to a greater or less extent, they have remained.2^

Park, during his day, first as a reporter,

later as a rewrite man and a city editor, witnessed the rise of the feature story and the human interest story. effected a change in the role of the reporter.

This

Park’s de­

scription of this new role has indicated, for the first time, what may be termed "sociological reporting." It is possible for the journalist to select certain particularly picturesque or romantic incidents and treat them symbolically, for their human interest rather than their individual and personal significance.

^■9 Robert E. Park, "Natural History of the Newspaper," in The City, p. 8 5 . 20 Ibid., p. 83 .

35 In this way news ceases to be wholly personal and assumes the form of art. It ceases to be the record of the doings of individual men and women and be­ comes an impersonal account of manners and l i f e . -*■ The change in the role of the reporter was accompan­ ied by a major change in the press itself.

Newspapers

ceased to be, to the extent that they formerly were, organs of opinion.

The reporter replaced the editor as the domin­

ant figure on the newspaper staff, and the local and national news of the front page exercised greater influence on the reading public through its part in the formation of public opinion than the comments of the editor in the editor­ ial columns.

In Park's opinion, this is an important chapter

in the history of the American press.

pp

With the growing

interest of the public there followed a growing sense of re­ sponsibility on the part of the press.

The press in ceasing

to be merely the extension of the person of its editor or of a political party became in a very real sense, a public servant.

Park wrote:

In a general way one may say that news states the fact, editorial, the truth. The facts may call for reflection, for deliberation, and some­ times for more facts. truth, however, has the character of finality. 3 21 Ibid., p. 84. 22 Robert E. Park, "Topical Summaries of Current Literature: The American Newspaper,” The American Journal of Sociology, 32:809, March, 1927. 23 Robert E. Park, ”Morale and the News,” TheAmeri­ can Journal of Sociology, 47:364, November, 1941.

36 This is the essential difference between news and editorial. News has no influence upon political action or morale.

Its

tendency, Park has indicated, is to disperse and distract attention, thereby decreasing rather than increasing atten­ tion.2^ Park views the newspaper as strictly an urban phenom­ enon.

The city to him is not merely a statistical aggregate,

and not a mere political and administrative unit. tures the city as a place where men live

He pic­

under certain con-

ditions--conditions which give them characteristic manners and a style of life which distinguishes them from their rural neighbors.

One of the distinguishing habits is the one of

reading the daily

n ewspaper.

Park traced the circulation of news from its point of origin to the consumer.

In so doing, he answered the two­

fold question, "How and why does news spread?”

The manner

in which news circulates, Park suggests, is typical of one way in which cultural diffusion takes place.

Cultural traits

are assimilated only as they are understood, and they are understood only as they are assimilated.

In general, news

circulates widely in every direction in proportion as it is interesting and intelligible. 24 Robert E. Park, "Moraldzand the News,” Hjz374. Robert E. Park, “Urbanization as Measured by News­ paper Circulation,11 The American Journal of Sociology, 35*64, July, 1929.

37 Some news items travel farther and more rapidly than others. This is true even when all or most of the physical obstacles to communication have been overcome. The reason of course is simple enough. It is bound up with the inevitably egocentric charac­ ter of human beings and the ethno-centric character of human relations generally. An event is important only as we believe we can do something about it. It los&s importance in proportion as the possibility of doing that something seems more remote. There is a definite relation between commerce and news, as viewed by Park.

The centers of trade, the cities, are in­

variably the centers of news.

The news comes first to the

trade centers and from there is diffused, first, to the local community and then, according to its interests and importance, to the ends of the earth.

Park by no means

solved the problem of news circulation fully to his own satisfaction.

He says, "The question of how and why and

under what circumstances news circulates is an important one and deserves more attention than has yet been given to it.1’2? Park is well aware of the limitations to the circula­ tion of news.

With fervor, he admonishes that portion of

the public who assume the press to be deficient in its news distribution: Discussions of the deficiencies of the press often proceed on the implicit assumption that the communication of news from one cultural area to another--from the Orient to the Occident, for

Robert-E. Park, "Reflections on Communication and Culture,” The American Journal of Sociology, 44:200, September, 1938. * 27 Ibid., p. 199.

38 example, ,or from Berlin to New York--is an opera­ tion as simple as the transportation of a commodity like'bricks.2° Park further replies: One can, of course, transport words across cultural marches, but the interpretations which they receive on two sides of a political or cul­ tural boundary will depend upon the contest which their di-fferent interpreters bring to them. That context, in turn, will depend rather more upon the past experience and present temper of the people to whom the words are addressed than upon either the art or the good will of the persons who report them.29 In 1925 Park wrote that the newspapers were about as good as they could be.

At that time he expressed the idea

that if improvement was to be brought about it would come only through education of the readers and possibly through a better organization of political information.

,fBut first

of all,” he wrote, ”We must learn to look at political and social life objectively and cease to think of it wholly in moral terms!

In that case we shall have less news, but

better newspapers.30 The foreign-language press in America also held Park’s interest, not alone as a factor in the communication of news but as a contributing element in the assimilation of the

"Reflections on Communication and Culture,” p. 198. ^

Loc. cit.

3° "The Natural History of the Newspaper,” p. 9 7 .

39 immigrant.

Park was well aware of the claims of the

editors of the foreign-language papers, who asserted that their papers served as media through which American ways and American ideals were transmitted to the immigrant. Park felt that the assimilation of the immigrant could be hastened or retarded depending on the content of the Of foreign-language newspapers. ”Some immigrant heritages,” he wrote, "are so different from our own that their expres­ sion in the press is likely to instigate action that is inimical to our national purposes, or that interferes with our social machinery.”32 To Park it occurred that the foreign-language press was a phenomenon of immigration, and that if there were no non-English-speaking arrivals, in a few years there would be no immigrant press.

Accordingly, since the foreign-

language press depends upon new arrivals for its welfare, its existence is largely determined by the immigration policy. Inevitably, as the older immigrants learn the language of the country, their press is replaced by the English-language press.

There are many reasons for the existence of the

foreign-language press.

trol

Its main value to the immigrant is,

31 Robert E. Park, The Immigrant Press and Its Con­ (New York: Harpers and Brothers, 1922), p. 359* 32 ibid., p. 448.

40 perhaps, to satisfy his desire for expression in his mother tongue.

Almost all that he knows about social, political,

and economic issues, he gets indirectly through the medium of his press.

Mother tongue is the natural basis of human

association and organization.

Park feels that one of the

best ways to Americanize the immigrant is to invite the immigrant's cooperation and to use his own institutions in the process, including as an institution of major importance, the foreign-language press.

33

Language and religion represent to the immigrant, to a large degree, his heritage from the old country. he attempts to preserve in America.

These

At the same time he

is anxious to participate in the common life and find a place in the American community.

In these two motives lie the

problem of the foreign-language press and its solution.3^ The immigrant in the American urban setting develops an in­ tense sense of national solidarity in terms of his native country.

This tends to destroy his provincialism.

In Europe

the limits of his interests and feelings of unity were the limits of the province in which he lived.

An America, for

the first time, he feels the importance of being a Pole, an Italian, or a Jugoslavian, etc., and he develops a strong

33 ibid., p. 449. 3^ ibid., p. 467.

41 nationalistic spirit in terms of his mother country.

The

immigrant press plays a major role in prolonging national­ ism, and in so doing provides further curbs to assimilation. Concerning this, Park asserts: There is an intrinsic connection between the desire to preserve national identity and the written mother tongue. This feeling is most defined among members of the "oppressed” races, who have identified their struggle for political recognition with their struggle for their own press. However, it has been observed that nationalism is never in effective exist­ ence without a free press. Under these circumstances it is intelligible that foreign-language newspapers in America should frequently be inspired by national­ ist motives and that editors should seek to use the press as a means of preventing assimilation.35 Park further states: The nationalistic tendencies of the immigrant find their natural expression and strongest stimulus in the national societies, the Church, and the foreignlanguage press--the institutions most closely connected with the preservation of the racial languages. In these the immigrant feels the home ties most strongly; they keep him in touch with the political struggle at home and even give him opportunities to take part in it. Both consciously and unconsciously they might be expected to center the immigrants interests and activi­ ties in Europe and so keep him apart from American life.3° Park indicates that in the European peasant village from which the immigrant came, life is relatively fixed and settled, and that custom and tradition provide the exigencies of daily life.

35 ibid., p. 5 9 . 36 ibid., p . 5 0 .

for all

Moreover, conduct is based

42 on face-to-face relationships, gossip.

that is to say, neighborly

In America, where there are vast distances and

no tradition, the peasant discards his habits and acquires "ideas” and organizes.

His organizations are the embodi­

ment of his new needs and his new ideas.

All immigrant

groups have organizations and almost every immigrant organ­ ization publishes some sort of a paper. 37 It seemed fairly clear to Park at the time of the writing of The Immigrant Press and Its Control (1922) that what the foreign-language press actually did was to facili­ tate the adjustment of the foreign born to the American e n ­ vironment .

The result of this adjustment is something

neither American,

38 according to present standards, or European.

The distribution of the foreign-language press likewise o c ­ cupies Park's attention.-

The place of publication locates

with considerable accuracy the principal immigrant settle­ ments in the United States, and makes it possible to outline "cultural areas” in which the influences of certain immi­ grant groups are more pronounced than

e l s e w h e r e .

39

It is

37 Robert E. Park, ”The Foreign Language Press and Social Progress," National Conference of Social Work, 1920: 494, 1920. ^

Immigrant Press and Its Control, p.

87.

39 Robert E. Park, "Immigrant Heritages," National Conference of Social Work, 1921:492, 1921.

43 Park’s opinion that the quality and character of each immigrant group, as well as its size, affects its press. He wrote, "Whether they become urban or rural dwellers, whether they:enter stationary or transient occupations, whether they are accustomed to read or not, all will in40 fluence their reliance upon and support of their own press. People who speak the same language find it conven­ ient to live together.

Mother tongue, rather than country

of birth, is the basis of association and organization., Park shows that our great cities are mosaics of little lan­ guage colonies, which maintain almost a separate cultural lil existence within the cosmopolitan life of the city. Park realizes the importance of language to the im­ migrant, and the role it plays in maintaining cohesiveness of the immigrant colony.

The importance of the foreign-

language press, in Park’s opinion, is not to be minimized, since it plays so important a role in changing the immigrant's sentiments and attitudes toward his home country and toward the United States.

Because of the major role played by the

foreign language press, either in enhancing or in retarding lip Americanization, it is a power to be reckoned with.

^ The Immigrant Press and Its Control, p. 327* ^ " T h e Foreign Language Press and Social Progress," P. ^93. 42The Immigrant Press and Its Control, p. 359*

44 The urban community.

The city is a geographical*

ecological* and economic unit. of the civilized man.

It is the natural habitat

Moreover, it is a cultural area

characterized by its own peculiar cultural type.

It is

rooted in the habits and customs of the people who inhabit it.

City life provides for the wide diversification of

interests of mankind* whether these interests be cultural or vocational.

In the vast unconsieous cooperation of city

life one finds the opportunity to pursue the vocation of his choice.

It is here that he can develop his own peculiar

talents* for the city offers a market for the special talents of individual men. J The city is important to Park* since he regards it as the ideal laboratory for the investigation of collective behavior.

It is his view that the city is not merely a

physical mechanism and an artificial construction* but rather* a state of mind* a body of customs and traditions* and a system of organized sentiments and attitudes.^

The city is

a product of nature* and particularly of human nature.

It

is involved in the vital processes of the people who compose it.

Ii !

o J Robert E. Park* Ernest W. Burgess* and Others* The City (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press* I925)* p. 1 2 . 44 Ibid.* p. 1.

45 In the city human relations are likely to be im­ personal and rational.

Relationships are of a secondary

nature and are defined in terms of vocational and economic interests.

Personal competition, a feature of the city’s

labor market, tends to select for each special task the individual who is best suited to perform it. In the city every vocation, even that of a beggar, tends to assume the character of a profession and the discipline which success in any vocation imposes, together with the associations that it enforces, em­ phasizes this tendency--the tendency, namely, not merely to specialize, but to rationalize o n e ’s occupa­ tion and to develop^a specific and conscious technique for carrying it on. 5 Park views the city as a laboratory in which human nature and the social processes could be conveniently studied. in excess.

The city reveals the good and bad in human nature The city tends to lay bare those human characters

and traits which are ordinarily obscured and suppressed in smaller communities.

The city offers opportunity to the

exceptional and abnormal types of man.

The creative person

can flourish best in the urban environment and it is here that the unadjusted individual finds refuge.

To quote from

Park: In a small community it is the normal man, the man without eccentricity or genius, who. seems most likely to succeed. The small community often toler­ ates eccentricity. The city, on the contrary, re­ wards it. Neitherthe criminal, the defective, nor

ibid., p. 14.

46 the genius has the same opportunity to develop his innate disposition in a small town that he invariably finds in a great city. Park indicates that the city is rooted in the cus­ toms and habits of the people who inhabit it.

He further

discloses that the city possesses a moral as well as physical organization,

and that these two mutually interact

in characteristic ways to mold and modify one another.

But

what is there about the habits and customs of urban resi­ dents which is so strikingly different from the habits and customs of the non-urban dwellers?

Park replies to this by

pointing out that the mentality of modern man is based upon the machine and upon the application of- science to all the interests of life.

Park makes a distinction between the

culture of modern civilized man and that of his primitive contemporaries.

Secondary group relationships, character­

istic of urban living, differentiate the secular society from the folk dulture, wherein face-to-face relationships exist and direct participation in the common life of, the village community is characteristic.^ The city, particularly the great city, is the center of trade and commerce.

The organization of the city is

determined by the size of its population, and its distribution within the city area.

its concentration Within this area

the traditional control of the folk culture has been re­ placed by what Park has called "freedom of the city.”

^7 Ibid., p. 130 .

47 Changes in the h abits, sentiments, and character of the urban population follow changes in the industrial organ­ ization and distribution of the population.

The physical

or ecological organization of the community, according to Park, responds to and reflects the occupational organiza­ tion.

Social selection and segregation, which create the

natural groups,

determine at the same time the natural

areas of the city.1*® Park divulges much on the growth of the city.

Ex­

pansion of the urban community is accompanied by changes in the character of the towns and villages absorbed by it. Park indicates that expansion occurs along automobile highways and lines of railway transportation.

Distances

to the center of the city are often measured in terms of the length of time it takes to reach it and not in the number of actual miles.

The influence which the city exercises is

greatest at its center,

and diminishes in proportion to the

distance from the center.

The character of the outlying

communities is determined in great part by the relationship existing between the particular community and the great city. Within the fifty-mile zone of Chicago, for e x ­ ample, every city has its character determined in great part by its relation to the metropolis. • There

^ Robert E. Park, "The Concept of Position in Society^" Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society,

20 :7 , 1925.

48 are, for example, satelite cities, where the heavier industries are located, residential sub­ urbs, gold settlements, and so-called dormitory towns. There are harbors of refuge, also, in which vice and crime seek safety, particularly during periods of reform in cities. Every suburb exists because it performs for the city some func­ tion which the city cannot perform for itself so well or so economically.49 During the course of time the various sections of < the city take on something of the character and qualities of their inhabitants.

Each separate part of the city is

inevitably stained with the peculiar sentiments of its population.

The neighborhood is more than an expression

denoting geographical location. with a culture of its own,

It may be a language colony

It may be a vice area.

be commercial, industrial, or residential.

It may

At any rate, it

is a locality with sentiments, traditions, and a history of its own.

Park observes that within the neighborhood the

continuity of the historical processes is somehow maintained, and that the life of every locality moves on with a certain momentum independent of the larger circle of life about i t . ^ Within the natural area of the city the local popula­ tions and local institutions tend to group themselves in some characteristic pattern.

This natural grouping is de­

pendent upon geography, land values, and lines of communication 49 Robert E. Park, "Urbanization as Measured by News­ paper Circulation," The American Journal of Sociology, 35: 6 5 , July, 1929. 50 The City, p. 6 .

^9 The actual plan of a city is never a mere artifact.

To

some extent the plan of the city is always a product of nature.

Park feels., however, that community planning is

a factor in communal efficiency.

He conveys:

Everywhere the community tends to conform to some pattern, and this pattern invariably turns out to be a constellation of typical urban areas, all of which can be geographically located and specific­ ally defined.51 Accordingly, there are forces at work within the limits of the urban community which tend to bring about an orderly and typical grouping of its population and institutions. Modern means of transportation and communication, improved methods of construction, and the newspaper, have helped to bring about greater mobility and concentrated populations. Human ecology is the science which seeks to isolate and to describe those forces which tend to bring about an orderly distribution of persons and institutions.*^ The city tends to assume a radial compact form. The urban center has come into more complete possession of the area surrounding it with the increase of transportation. The city is no longer dependent upon the river and the rail­ road for its existence, however, it remains, the center of

Robert E. Park, uThe Urban Community as a Spatial Pattern and as a Moral Order," in Bogardus, History of Social Thought (Los Angeles: Press of Jesse Ray Miller, I92BT, p .6 31 • The City, p. 2.

50 trade.

As such it dominates the surrounding areas.

The

city tends to take the form of a series of concentric circles, beginning with the central business district, and extending to the outermost suburbs.

These different regions,

located at different relative distances from the center, are characterized by different degrees of mobility of the population.53 The area of greatest mobility is the business center. The major hotels are found here.

The most expensive property

is located in the business center.

Land values are reckoned

in terms of mobility of population.

The highest land values

exist where the largest number of people pass in the course of twenty-four hours.

This area empties itself at night and

fills itself in the morning. The area immediately surrounding the business area is the urban slum.

It is here that the casuals dwell.

jacent to this is the rooming-house area. the artist’s quarter.

Ad­

Here is found

The Bohemians; the transient adventur­

ers, and the unsettled young folk of the city dwell here. The apartment house area, which is next, contains the delicatessen shops.

Small families reside here.

Furth­

est from the down-town area is found the area of duplex apart­ ments and single dwellings.

Here the home owners live.

Here

53 nThe Urban Community as a Spatial Pattern and as a Moral Order,11 p. 630.

as in the slums * many children are to be found. Charles Galpin has shown how one can accurately determine the boundaries of a given area having as its center a given settlement.

This is done by plotting on

a map the patrons of particular businesses and social institutions.

The program outlined by Park in his paper

"Suggestions for the Investigation of Behavior in the City Environment"^ was suggested in part by the work of Galipn.^5

A community consists of a collection of people oc­ cupying a more or less clearly defined area.

More than a

collection of people, however, the community is a collec­ tion of institutions.

The institutions are final and de­

cisive in distinguishing the community from other social constellations.

A factor in the growth of the community

is the social selection and segregation of the population. Park expresses this in the following: One of the incidents of the growth of the com­ munity is the social selection and segregation of the population, and the creation, on one hand, of natural social groups, and on the other, of natural social areas. We have become aware of this process

5^ Robert E. Park, "Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the City Environment,” The American Journal of Sociology, 20:277* March, 1915. 55 Charles Josiah Galpin, "The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community," Agricultural Experiment Station of the University of Wisconsin, Research Bulletin, No. 3^* May, 1915-

52 of segregation in the case of the immigrants, and particularly in the case of the so-called histori­ cal races, peoples who, whether immigrants or not, are distinguished by racial marks. The Chinatowns, the Little Sicilies, and the other so-called "ghettos" with which students of urban life are familiar are special types of a more general species of natural area which the conditions and tendencies of city life inevitably produce.56 Galpin’s article points out that (1) the actual community as determined by'social intercourse, communication, and interests often transcends -the political and administra­ tive limits of the city, and thp^fc (2) the interaction tends to take place within the area of trade relationships and the area of common interests.

Trade comes first but politi­

cal and social institutions soon follow.57 The individual man in the city is compelled to con­ centrate his energies upon the task which he is best fitted to perform.

In the city man is liberated from the control

of circumstance which so dominates primitive man.

Vocational

specialization in a dynamic society implies interdependence of vocational groups.

Park observes:

A social organization is thus created in which the individual becomes increasingly dependent upon the community of which he is an integral part. The effect, under conditions of personal competition, of

56 „ ‘ The Concept of Position in Society, p. 6. 57 ’’Urbanization as Measured by Newspaper Circula­ tion," P. 61.

53 this increasing interdependence of the parts is to create in the industrial organization as a whole a certain sort of social solidarity, but a solidarity based, not on sentiment and habits, but on community of interests, In the city everyone, with the exception of the Bohemian, does what he can do, rather than-the thing he would like to do.

In this respect the occupational

organization, like the ecological, is the product of com­ petition.

Park says that the struggle to live determines

not only the place of residence of the individual, but his occupation as well.

Urban living enforces an individual­

ization and a deversification of tasks.

The individual

focuses his attention upon some small area of the common human experience .59 The effect of the urban environment is to intensify all effects of crises.

It is this that led Park to believe

that the* city was the ideal laboratory for the investigation of human behavior.

He pointed out that under the disinte­

grating influences of city life, the church, the school, and the family are greatly modified.

Park concluded that

increased vice and crime in cities arose as a result of the restraints of the primary group.

Commercial vice is indig­

enous in cities under contitions of instability and

The City, p. 1 5 .

59 "The Concept of Position in Society," p. 3 .

54 disorganization.

Park concludes:

The problems of city government have become* with the growth and organization of city life* so complicated that it is no longer desirable to leave them to the control of men whose only qualifications for handling them consists in the fact that they have succeeded in gaining office through the ordi­ nary machinery of ward politics.60 Park regards civilized man in the urban environment as a suitable and interesting object of investigation.

His

interest in the city was transmitted to his students at the University of Chicago,

During the time that he was a pro­

fessor at Chicago the Trustees of the University saw fit to establish The University of Chicago Sociological Series which was devoted primarily to the publication of books showing the newer developments in sociological study in America.

The emphasis was on research.

Eagerly Professor

Park’s students investigated particular aspects of urban living in the city of Chicago.

The outcome of this socio­

logical reporting was the publication of many significant books on the urban community.

The editors of the series

were Robert E. Park* Ernest ¥. Burgess* and Ellsworth Faris. Included in the Series were The G h e t t o ^ by Louis Wirth* The Gold Coast and the Slum°^ by Harvey Zorbaugh, and The

b0 The City, p. 34. Louis Wirth, The Ghetto (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press* 1928).

62 Harvey Zorbaugh, The Gold Coast and the Slum (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press* 1929).

55 Gang^3 by Frederick Thrasher.

In each of the books

mentioned, Park has written the Introduction. Zorbaugh's book, a sociological study of Chicago's Near North Side, Is important in that it is a study of an area wherein physical distances do not coincide with social distances.

On the one hand are found members of

the Chicago "upper-crust," and on the other, the urban slum dwellers.

With the best of good intentions these

people cannot become neighbors in the usual sense, since there is too great a divergence of interests and heritages. This is the situation which constitutes the specific prob­ lem and the central theme of Zorbaugh's study,

The Gold

Coast and the Slum does not aim at a solution but more clearly defines the problem.

Park expounds:

Our political system is founded upon the con­ viction that people who live In the same locality have common interests, and that they therefore can be relied upon to act together for their common . welfare. This assumption, as it turns out, is not valid for large cities. The difficulty of maintain­ ing in the city the intimate contacts which in the small town insured the existence of a common purpose and made concerted action possible is certainly very great.64 Chicago's Near North Side, according to Park, is characteristic of many large cities.

Here many people of

divergent types are found huddled together.

63 Frederick Thrasher, The Gang University of Chicago Press, 1927). 64 Wirth, op. cit., p. l x .

Although they

(Chicago: The

56 live in close proximity with one another, they share few interests.

There is little if any mutual understanding

of each other’s way of life and collective action is hardly possible. The book The Ghetto, by Louis Mirth is the result of an investigation of one of the so-called "natural areas" of Chicago.

Although the terra "Ghetto" is one that is no

longer applied by sociologists to Jews alone, M i r t h ’s book deals with the Jewish Community iri Chicago.

The natural

areas of the city are those regions whose locations, charac­ ter, and functions have been determined by the same forces which have determined the character and functions of the city as a whole.

This is a way of saying that natural areas

are the habitats of natural groups, and that the character of the city is finally determined by the character of its occupants.

Park affirms:

Our great cities turn out, upon examination, to be a mosaic of segregated peoples--differing in race, in culture, or merely in cult--each seeking to pre­ serve its peculiar cultural forms and to maintain its individual and unique conceptions of life. Every one of these segregated groups inevitably seeks, in order to maintain the integrity of its own group life, to impose upon its members some kind of moral iso­ lation. 6§ Thrasher’s book The Gang is significant in that it locates the urban gang within the urban community.

The in­

vestigation is a study of 1,313 gangs in the city of Chicago. 63 Mirth, ojd. c i t ., p. ix.

57 It is the slum, the city wilderness, which provides the gang its natural habitat. Every city has its bohemias and its hobo.hemias, its gold coasts and its slums.

Similarly, Little

Italys, Little Sicilys, Bronzevilles, and Latin Quarters exist in all the great cities.

According to Park, the

areas such as the rooming house area, the slums, and the Latin Quarter are to be regarded as areas of transition. During the course of a lifetime much change occurs in the city.

The young people in the rooming house area, the

majority of whom are women, will eventually find their place in the community. of first settlement.

For the Jews the slum is the area

The Latin Quarter, with its little

theatres, smart book shops, and radical clubs, will see many people come and go in the course of a very few years. Park views the city as an organism and not merely as a collection of physical structures.

The city, as an

organism, has natural growth and a momentum of its own. Park writes: . . .the city as it exists is very largely the product of tendencies of which we have as yet little knowledge and less control. Under the influence of these forces, and within the limitation which geog­ raphy and historical accident impose, the city is steadily assuming a form that is not conventional merely, but typical. In short, the city is not merely an artifact, but an organism. Its growth is funda­ mentally and as a whole, natural, i.e., uncontrolled

58 and undesigned. The forms it tends to assume are those which represent and correspond to the func­ tions that it is called upon to p e r f o r m . 86 The great city is fertile field for the sociological investigator.

The work of Park and his students has by no

menas exhausted the possibilities for further study.

Studies

of the type included in the Chicago Sociological Series are significant in that they give further clarification to the problems of urban living.

Throughout his writings on the

urban community Park indicates that there is much concern­ ing the city which requires further sociological research and analysis. Americanization.

Americanization is the process of

social assimilation by which the immigrant in the United States comes to participate in the common life of the nation and to identify himself with it in thought and feeling.

It

involves the social adjustment of the immigrant to the American environment.

Park and Burgess use the word "Ameri­

canize11 as a particularized form of the word "assimilate." The concept of assimilation, according to Park and Burgess, gets its meaning from its relation to the problem of immi­ gration.

The word "Americanize" describes the process by

which the culture of America is transmitted to the adopted.

66 wirth, 6£. cit., p. x.

59 citizen.

£Lr7

Park defines assimilation as that process by

which peoples of diverse racial origins and different cultural heritages achieve a cultural solidarity enabling them to sustain a national existence. States this is a gradual process.

In the United

The immigrant in America

is considered assimilated as soon as he has acquired the language and the social ritual of the community in which he takes up residence.

This enables him to participate in

economic and political l i f e . ^

Americanization is this

participation of the immigrant in the life of the community in which he lives.

Participation is both the medium and

the goal of assimilation. Shortly after World War I studies in methods of Americanization were made by qualified individuals through­ out the country.

This was made possible by funds furnished

by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Its purpose was

to extend among the people of the United States a knowledge of their government and their obligations to it.

The studies

resulted in eleven published volumes on the immigrant and his adjustment to American life.'

Park's contribution to the

^ Robert E. Park, and Ernest W. Burgess, Introduc­ tion to the Science of Sociology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1921), p . 73? •

^ Robert E. Park, "Social Assimilation," Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1930), p.“ 2^1.

6o Carnegie studies on Americanization consisted of The Immi­ grant Press and Its C o n t r o l ^

and the book he wrote to­

gether with Herbert A. Miller* Old World Traits Trans­ planted. ^ Park is interested in the heritages of the immigrant. He attempts to answer the question,

"What does the immigrant

bring with him and what does he leave behind?"

According

to Park, the immigrant brings a language, a body of customs, habits, and traditions, and various sentiments and interests. At home the immigrant had status based on the recognition of his group.

He also had a sense of personality based on

his recognition of his role in the group.

The immigrant

brings with him a self-consciousness, a group consciousness, and a national consciousness.

In short, the immigrant is

aware of his status in his own group, aware of the status of his group among other groups, and aware of the status of his national group among other nations. dependent on this whole complex of ideas.

His personality is The measure of

self-consciousness turns out inevitably to be the measure of assimilation.

As the immigrant becomes Americanized his

habits and customs change until he no longer regards himself, or Is regarded by others, as different. ^9 Robert E. Park, The Immigrant Press and Its Con­ trol (New York: Harpers and Brothers, 1922). 70 Robert E. Park, and Herbert A. Miller, Old World Traits Transplanted (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1921).

61 The fever of Immigration Is highly contagions. Once it strikes a peasant village in Europe people will continue to emigrate until all, for whom it is possible, have left.

In America- the immigrant settles in a neighbor­

hood or on a particular street which is virtually a colony of the village in Europe.

Eventually more people from the

same province in Europe emigrate to the new neighborhood in America.

America is a mosaic of little language colon-

. ies...Park comments: During a peaceful invasion covering a period of a hundred years, nearly every language group in the civilized world has established colonies in this country, little cultural centers which are trying to maintain in the midst of us tradi­ tions and a language of their own.71 One reason the immigrant lives in a colony is be­ cause he has no choice.

The first contacts between Americans

and immigrants produce antagonism due to the strangeness of the values of the immigrant as viewed by Americans, and to the strangeness of the American values as viewed by immi­ grants.

Mutual prejudice is one of the most serious hinder-

ances to assimilation.

In the colony, which is frequently

nothing more than a transplanted village, the immigrant begins to participate in American life. ize.

All immigrant groups organ­

His status and recognition from the American "world”

71 Robert E. Park, "immigrant Heritages," National Conference of Social Work, 1921:492.

62 comes to him first through his participation in the insti­ tutional life of his own groups

An important aspect of

the organizational life of the immigrant community is the publication of its own newspaper. Each immigrant brings to America an individual correlation of the wishes which rule human conduct.7^

The

wishes referred to are the four wishes of Thomas: the urge for security, the urge for new experience, the urge for response, and the urge for recognition.73 the desire for recognition predominates. be the wish for security.

in one immigrant In another it may

The individual organization of

wishes is what is called character.

Each immigrant group

as a whole brings to Americana marked character.

Park

throws light upon this in the following: The individual has wishes which can be realized only in association with other human beings, but when human beings come together there is a conflict of wishes. Consequently, every man cannot have abso­ lutely what he wants, but must modify, qualify, and regulate the expression of his wishes. The organiza­ tion of society has always a double character: it makes possible the gratification of the individual’s wishes, and even the multiplication of them, but at the same time it requires that his wishes shall be gratified only in "usual” ways, that their expression shall be so regulated as not to interfere unfairly

^

^orld Traits Transplanted, p . 8 l .

73 William I. Thomas, and Florian Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (New York: Knopf, 1927), Vol. 1, p. 7 3 .

63 with the expression of the wishes of others. All standards of behavior, all moral and legal codes, all penalties for disorder and crime,, all appre­ ciations and rewards which a society bestows on a xpressions of this effort Conformity in any population is secured by all members accepting a common definition of the situation. In a secular society absolute conformity is never fully achieved.

Social and individual disorganization is typi­

cal of the urban community.

In the American urban envir­

onment the habits of the immigrant tend to break down. Park shows that the new situation in which the immigrant finds himself is in the nature of a crisis.

The immigrant

has the alternative of reorganizing his life positively, by adopting new habits and new standards to meet the new sit­ uation, or to repudiate the old habits without reorganiz­ ing his life.

The latter choice leads to demoralization.^

The immigrant upon becoming Americanized, becomes something neither European or American, but a third and new product. The attitude of the immigrant toward Americanization- is frequently determined by the type of experiences which has led him to come to America. The second generation will be the "real" Americans.

^

Old World Traits Transplanted, p. 26.

75 Ibid., p. 60.

Children do not resist taking over those elements of a foreign culture which an adult alien finds difficult to understand and assimilate. the parents are not inherited.

The cultural complexes of It is the American culture

that is transmitted to the children.

Children of immigrants

take over all the local culture patterns of the native population.

Park illustrates:

Most of the native sons among the Chinese in California are outrageously American in their manners and in their sentiments. It is only in later life, if at all, that they revert to the ancestral tradi­ tion and acquire a secondary racial loyalty.76 In spite of the fact that it is always easier to transmit our language to the immigrant than any of our ideas, the foreign language persists in the immigrant colony. One of the reasons for this is the publication and distribu­ tion of the foreign-language press and its emphasis on nation alism.

Some of the clergy, editors, and organization heads

among the immigrants, have thought of the United States as a region to be colonized by Europeans.

The viewpoint

is that each language group will maintain its own language and culture in America, using English as a lingua franca and means of communication among the different nationalities.

7^ Robert E. Park, "Culture and Culture Trends," Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society,

19:26, 1925. 77 The Immigrant Press and Its Control, p. 60.

65 In Europe the immigrant participated in primarygroup relationships.

According to Park, the primary

group constitutes the most important form of social life for the immense majority of mankind.

Primary group organ­

ization arises spontaneously in all classes of society. Upon leaving Europe the immigrant comes to a society organized on secondary relationships. true of cities.

This is especially

Actually, the immigrant comes to friends

in America, and finds some sort of Primary group.

But the

new community is only a loose aggregation of acquaintances. When the newcomer is met at the boat by relatives or friends, the first thing he notices is that they have changed In America.

Park observes:

Prom his peasant community, a primary organization, the immigrant comes to a society in a secondary stage of organization in America, based on^business enter­ prise and represented by the state.7° City life has a tendency to destroy the provincial­ ism of the immigrant.

This is replaced by a sense of racial

and national solidarity. factor In this change.

The foreign-language press is a Park, in citing the ease of the

Italian immigrant, mentions: Italian immigrants from all.the provinces, with their historical and dialectic differences, brought together in out great cities, have developed a national

^

Old World Traits Transplanted, p. 43*

66 feeling and sense of solidarity that did not exist in Italy.'9 The case.of the immigrant Jew is unique.

He has

no native country in the sense that the Italian,, or the Norwegian h & s .

When the Jew changes his nationality he

does so wholeheartedly.

Since he was never fully assimi­

lated in the country of his birth, he stands ready to adapt his culture to American ways.

This he does readily

and though he adapts his distinctive culture to America, he still preserves it against the disintegrating effects on

of the American environment. u Park points out that the immigrant on landing on American soil comes to a society of his own people.

It

is from this cultural matrix that he gains his first im­ pressions of America.

It follows that the character of

this society is of primary influence in determining the extent of the immigrant’s desires to participate in Ameri­ can

life.

The immigrant knows that

if his group is respected

in America, he in turn will be accorded respect. This is

.

81

perhaps the source of the nationalistic movements in America. The nationalistic movements, to some extent, represent an 79 The Immigrant Press and Its Control, p. 2 9 5 . 80 I b i d ., p. 2 92. 81Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess, and Others, The City (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1925), p. litST*

67 effort on the part of the immigrant to participate in American life.

He feels that recognition will come to

him only as a well-respected member of his own national group. The whole struggle for recognition on the part of the immigrant is made as a member of an organization. The immigrant group has an astonishing interest in its own status among the surrounding groups.

Status for the

immigrant group means a general, public, and permanent recognition.

It is this which gives the immigrant group

security in the American community. ization is a primary group.

The immigrant organ­

As such it maintains the

security of the individuals who have been incorporated into it.

However, within this group there is little place

for individual initiative and responsibility, new experi­ ence, and individual recognition.

The immigrant feels him­

self a person to the extent that he has been incorporated Do into an organization. ^ Assimilation of the immigrant is retarded by preju­ dice.

In the article, "Racial Assimilation in Secondary

Groups," Park remarks: Peoples we know intimately we respect and esteem. In our casual contact with aliens, however,

World Traits Transplanted, p. 38 .

68 it is the offensive rather than the pleasing traits that impress us.°3 Our first impressions of the immigrant accumulate and reinforce our natural prejudices.

There is a reluc­

tance on the part of people to treat others who seem dif­ ferent as equals.

Park has pointed out that most cultural

conflicts are precipitated by the fact that some excep­ tional and otherwise amiable individual was ill treated,, not because of his individual deserts, but simply because he was identified with some racial or cultural minority regarded as inferior.

Once the alien experiences the wrong

to which his fellow nationals have been subjected, he will make their cause his own. have certain compensations.

The oppressed nationalities Within their own group they

experience human dignity and maintain an adequate sense of security.

However, cultural conflicts often manifest them­

selves in family disorganization, in delinquent behavior, and in personal disorganization.^ To make the transition from one culture to another is not an easy matter.

Life histories of immigrant peoples

reveal the inner moral conflicts to which they have been subjected.

These facts are indicative of the intimate

83 Robert E. Park, "Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups," Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociologi­ cal Society, 8:71 * Robert E. Park, "Personality and Culture Conflict," Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society,

25:10b, 1930.

6g relationship existing between the personality of the in­ dividual and the cultural tradition of the group in which he holds membership.

To Park, cultural conflict seems

to be an incident of cultural assimilation.

The phrase

“melting pot" refers to those people who are in transit. In giving up one culture they are taking on the elements of another.

This is the case of the marginal man who finds

himself on the margins of two cultures, and not fully or permanently accommodated to e i t h e r . H e

may, for example,

observe patterns of one culture in his daily commercial life, and patterns of another culture within his home.

The

effect of culture conflict is especially trying in the lives of the children of immigrants.

The patterns of cul­

ture at school may be altogether different than the tradi­ tional behavior patterns observed in the home.

This may be

a grave source of conflict for the child and may result in delinquency or personal disorganization. In America the immigrant has the opportunity to ad­ just with a high degree of rapidity. characteristic of Western culture. increased communication.

5 Ibid., p. 109.

Individualism is This is largely due to

There is a tendency in America

70 for the individual to construct a scheme of life based on the intelligent use of all values disregarding allegiance to particular persons or places.

Park main­

tains that the extent and importance of the kind of homogeneity that individuals of the same nationality ex­ hibit have been greatly exaggerated.

In fact, the United

States has been able to absorb every sort of normal human difference, with the exception of the purely external ones such as skin color.

In American aliens have been able to

assimilate with ease and rapidity. Park suggests a classification of immigrants accord­ ing to their attitudes toward participation in American life. Park denotes: Every group has developed in the course of its experience a certain fund of values particular to itself and a set of attitudes toward these values. The object, the practice, the institution, is the value; the feeling toward it is the attitude.87 Park, in making his classification of immigrants, used the value concept of W. I. Thomas, who has defined values as those things in the natural or social environment which have acquired a meaning for the members of a group.

Atti-

OQ

tudes are tendencies to act toward these objects.

Park

88 "Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups,” p. 68. 87 Old World Traits Transplanted, p. 3* 88 Thomas and Znaniecki, op. cit., Methodological Note [N.P.]

71 calls the fund of attitudes and values which an immigrant group brings to America— the totality of its sentiments and practices— its "heritage."^9

According to Park*s

classification immigrants fall into four types:

the settlers*

the colonists* the migrant industrials* and the exotics. This thesis has incorporated a summary of Park*s descriptions. The colonists are defined by Park as those in whom the memories of home are* from our standpoint* mined."

"6verdeter-

The colonist does not nor ever wishes to forget

his allegiance to his home country.

He feels that the

values of the land which nurtured him are superior to the values of the land which will adopt him.

He is careful to

let you know that he is contributing more to America than it is contributing to him. The migrant industrial is a. mobile person.

He is

not quite settled but will become so depending on his voca­ tional success.

The exotic is the most isolated from par­

ticipation in American life. place of residence.

America to him is merely a

He will be perpetually alien and

voluntarily so. The settlers are those who came to America to remain in America.

^

They have taken up residence on land* and have

^orld Traits Transplanted,, p.4.

72 practiced farming for a livelihood in the Middle-west. The settlers consist largely of Germans, Swedes, Hol­ landers, and Flemish. The immigrant colonies foreign populations live in isolation.

Each colony maintains its, own political

and social organization.

This is the condition under which

the immigrant has succeeded in perpetuating his own social ritual and his own moral order under the influence of the American environment.

Divergent cultural groups live in

relations which Park describes as symbiotic.

Although they

live in physical contiquity, within the same local economy, they live in more or less complete moral isolation.

In

time the immigrant seeks to escape from this symbiotic re­ lationship in order that he may participate more actively in the social life of the people about him.

It is then

that he becomes aware of the social distance that sets him apart from the dominant culture group.

Under these circum­

stances acculturation becomes involved with the struggle for status.

Everything that marks the immigrant’as different--

manners, accent, dress, habits--makes the struggle for status difficult.

Culture conflict heightens self-consciousness,

both in those who are classed as aliens, and in those who count themselves native.

90

90 Robert E , Park, "Reflections on Communication and Culture,” The American Journal of Sociology, 44:202, Septem­ ber, 1938.

73 Park feels that the immigrant heritages can be used as useful agents in the assimilation process.

He

also suggests that immigrants are open to the influence of the traditions and customs of America having left the control of the primary group relationships of their native provinces.

Our system of government is based on the par­

ticipation of every member, and also on the assumption that all have the ability and the wish to participate. Democracy means participation by all in the common life of the community.^

it is ParkTs view that the immigrant

can be assimilated only if his attitudes and values, and his conduct of life, could be brought into harmony with ours.

The wish of Americans to assimilate the immigrant

means that Americans are willing to make the newcomer a part of the social organization of America^

The aim of

Americanization is not the subjugation of the immigrant, but his assimilation.

Assimilation, takes place more readily

when the new relationships breed new loyalties from the old heritages.

If the immigrant is understood in terms of his

heritage, less mental conflict will ensue.

Thus, he will

assimilate easily, providing, of course, that no conditions are imposed for citizenship which he cannot possibly ful­ fill.

91 Qld World .Traits Transplanted, p. 261 .

74 Park believes that it is equally as important for Americans to gain a knowledge of other peoples as it is t

for other peoples to gain a knowledge of Americans.

He

urges Americans to become familiar with the cultural heritages of foreign peoples.

This is equally as important,

he points out, as immigrants learning American History. In an address delivered before the American Sociological Society, in 1917* he remarked: It seems to me that the real problem of the foreigner, so far as education is concerned, is to devise means to transmit to him the content as well as the external form of American life. This would suggest that we should encourage the study of Ameri­ can history. This will help, no doubt. But America, in view of all the races and peoples which we have incorporated into our body politic, lies in the future rather than In the past. As the ends of the earth have come together in America, we have become, against our wills, a world's melting-pot. For us the international situation has now become a domestic problem. It would, therefore, seem quite as import­ ant that we should, through schools and in the course of the educational process, make ourselves acquainted with the heritages and backgrounds of the foreign peoples, as it is important that immigrants should become acquainted with our national history. So far as Americanization is undertaken by the schools, efforts should be directed, it would seem, toward maintaining and creating a mutual understanding among our peoples rather than toward perpetuating, as we have been disposed to do in the past, a sentimental and ceremonial patriotism based on a reverent and u n ­ critical contemplation of our national heritages, which, as compared with those of other peoples, are not likely to impress the unbiased outsider as having great value.92 92 Robert E. Park, "Education in its Relation to the Conflict and Fusion of Cultures: with Special Reference to the Problems of the Immigrant, the Negro, and Missions," Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society, 13:62, 1918.

75 Collective behavior.

The term "collective behav­

ior" is used to label the area of sociological interest including within its scope such topics as crowds, publics, mass behavior, public opinion, propaganda, reform move­ ments, fashion, etc.

It concerns itsel'f with group activity.

The dominance of a mood or impulse is the most elementary form of integration by which mere aggregates of individuals assume the character of social groups.

Collective behavior

is the behavior of individuals under the dominance of a common or collective mood.

The shared mood results as the

product of social interaction.

Collective action of every

sort requires some sort of communication, according to Park.93 tion.

The group mind is always the product of communica­ Park comments further:

Not only does communication involve the creation, out of experiences that are individual and private, of an experience that is common and public but such a common•experience becomes the basis for a common and public existence in which every individual, to greater or lesser extent, participates and is himself a part. Furthermore, as a part of this common life, there grows up a body of custom, convention, tradi­ tion, ceremonial, language, social ritual, public opinion, in short all that Sumner includes under the term "mores" and all that ethnologists include under the term "culture."94 93 Robert E. Park, "Symbiosis and Socialization: A Frame of Reference for the Study of Society," The American Journal of Sociology, 45:5, July, 1939* 94 Robert E. Park, and Ernest ¥. Burgess, Introduc­ tion to the Science of Sociology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1921), p. 37*

76 Socialization and social organization are brought about by the cooperation of two fundamental types of interaction.

These are the process of individuation and

the process of integration.

The will to join with others

in collective action is one of the elementary motives that move mankind. In an article called ^Morale and the Mews" Park says: The consciousness and the excitement of par­ ticipation in great events constitutes one of the exhilarating and satisfying of human experiences. In the reverbation which such participation in­ variably arouses in other minds the action of every individual participant acquires a new dignity and a new glory as well as an added moral support.95 Individuals acting collectively, under the influence of a mood or impulse, are aware of one another's presence regardless of the social distance between them.

Under

this condition there is a mutual exchange of influences, the thought and action of one influencing the thought and action of another.

The term "social contagion" refers

to the rapid dissemination of a mood characteristic of collective behavior.

Circular reaction is the natural

mechanism for collective behavior.

It is the form of

interstimulation wherein A influences B, and B influences

95 Robert E. Park, "Morale and the News," The Ameri­ can Journal of Sociology, ^7:361, November, 19^1.

77 A.96

Park points out that in "like response to like

stimulus," can be found the beginning of concerted action. This is Gidding!s theory, which Park adopted as an explana­ tion of collective behavior. mental social fact.

He has called this the funda­

The closely related concepts of homo­

geneity and like-mindedness, according to Park, are explana­ tions of the social behavior of men. Social unrest in a crowd is the most elementary form of collective behavior.

Social unrest arises as a result

of people having unsatisfied desires or dispositions.

I t ’s

significance is that it represents a breaking up of an established routine and paves the way for new collective action.

The unrest in one individual is very rapidly trans­

mitted to another.

In a short period of time individuals

move around amongst one another in an aimless and random fashion.

This is the milling process.

Park was interested in the nature of collective behavior long before he became a sociologist.

In his doc­

toral dissertation Masse und Publikum he described the crowd and the public.97

crowd is any chance collection of

9^ Park and Burgess, op. cit., p. 32, citing Franklin Henry Giddings, The Concept and Methods of Sociology (St. Louis: Congress of Arts and Science, Universal Exposition, 1904), p. 7 8 9 . 97 Robert E. Park, Masse und Publikum: Eine Methodologische und Soziologische Untersuchung (Bern: Buchdruckerei Lack and Grunau7 1904).

78 individuals.

However, in the sociological sense, a

collection of individuals constitutes a crowd only when a condition of rapport has been established.

A group

consciousness implies a certain loss of self-control on the part of the individual.

Nevertheless, impulses long

repressed in the individual may find an expression in the crowd.

The organization of the crowd is only finally

effected when the attention of the individuals who compose it becomes focused on some particular objective.

Park

says, “This object thus fixed in the focus of the attention of the group tends to assume the character of a collective representation.11

The meanings which become attached to

the particular idea are collective because they are caused by the interaction of the members of the crowd.

Park has

used Durkheim’s concpet of collective representation to explain the collective idea and the collective sentiment attached to it?® A society is capable of action. crowd in this respect.

It differs from a

A crowd, which consists of a group

of persons gathered at one particular spot at a given moment, is incapable of action.

As it takes on a more formalized

structure and the elements of a more rigid social organiza­ tion it assumes the character of a society. 98 Park and Burgess, op. c i t ., p. 89^* citing Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, [N.P.]

79 Tarde was the first writer to distinguish between the crowd and public in a paper nLe Public et la foule" published in La Revue de Paris in 1898.99

According to

Tarde, the public is a product of the printing press. Its limits are determined by the limits of the circulation of the printed word.

The crowd, on thei other hand, is

limited by the distance that the voice will carry or that the eye can see.

According to Tarde's definition the pub­

lic presupposed a higher stage of social development In which suggestions are transmitted in the form of ideas. Interaction takes the form of discussion in a public. There is no discussion in a crowd.

Crowds act on impulse.

Mob behavior is characteristic of the unorganized crowd. A crowd upon encountering another crowd will either go to pieces or become a conflict group.

A crowd emerges

into a conflict group upon undergoing some modification of character.

When negotiations take place between two con­

flict groups--they constitute a public.

The history of

almost any single social movement--the play movement, the settlement movement, the birth control movement--begins with social unrest.

Social unrest is first communicated,

99 Tarde, " L ’Public et la foule," La Revue de Paris, Paris, 1901, p. 6, cited by Park and Burgess, op. cit.,

p . 868.

80 then takes form in crowd and mass movements, and finally crystallizes in institutions.

Every social movement

exhibits this progressive change in character.1Q0 cation makes concerted action possible.

Communi­

In contrast to

the casual and undirected milling of the crowd, it helps to bring about a mutual responsiveness and a group co­ hesiveness. Public opinion exists in and through communication. It occurs through the give and take of discussion.

Park

expresses this: When individuals come together under certain cir­ cumstances , the opinions and sentiments which they held as individuals are modified and changed under the influence of the new contacts. Out of the fermen­ tation which association breeds, a new something (autre chose) is produced, an opinion and sentiment, in other words, that is not the sum of, and not like, the sentiments and opinions of the individuals from which it is derived. This new sentiment and opinion is public, and social, and the evidence of this is the fact that it imposes itself upon the individuals concerned as something more or less external to them. They feel it either as an inspiration, a sense of personal release and expansion, or as an obligation, a pressure and an inhibition.1^1 Institutions and social structures of every sort may be regarded as products of collective behavior.

Park and Burgess, op. c it., p. 87^. 101 park and Burgess, op. cit., p. 3^*

In

fact, sociology, as it is ordinarily conceived, is primarily concerned with the nature and natural history of institutions.

Park further indicates that the subject

matter of sociology has to do with the processes by which social institutions develop.

109

The institutions which

arise as a result of a social movement may develop in response to some necessity.

A flood, a famine, or a war

may bring about new institutions. arises in response to urgent needs.

Collective action often Institutions are the

accumulated effects of tradition and custom.

An institution

may be regarded as firmly established when the community and the public in which and for which it exists claim as a right the services to which they have become accustomed.

IC R

A close relationship exists between the personali­ ties of the individual members of a given social group and the social organization and structure of the group.

The

same forces which cooperate to create the characteristic social organization and the accepted moral order of a given society determine

at the same time the character

of the

in­

dividuals who compose that society. 102 "Symbiosis and Socialization,11 p. 6. 103 Ibid., p. 7. 104 Robert E. Park, "Human Nature and Collective B e ­ havior," The American Journal of Sociology, 32:736, March,

1927.

82 Every social group has, or tends to have, its own culture.

The culture of a particular society imposes its

patterns upon its members, giving to each that particular individuality which characterizes the members of that society.

The permanence of social institutions depends

upon their structure, the division of labor within them, and upon some degree-of specialization in the individuals who compose the group.

Park conveys this idea:

In the last analysis social solidarity is based on sentiment and habit. It is the sentiment of loyalty and the habit of what Sumner calls "concur­ rent action," that gives substance and insures .unity . . to the state, as to every other type of social group. This sentiment of loyalty has Its basis in a modus vivendi, a working relation and mutual understanding, of the members of the group. Social institutions are not founded in similarities any more than they are founded In differences, but in relations, and in the mutual interdependence of parts. When these relations have the sanction of custom and are fixed in individual habit, so that the activities of the group are running smoothly, personal attitudes and sentiments, which are the only forms in which individ­ ual minds collide and clash with one another, easily accommodate themselves to the existing situation.105 In the article "Symbiosis and Socialization" Park describes the community as a constellation of interacting individuals.

The interaction of individuals within a com­

munity takes the form of competition.

However, there are

some types of communities which are Incapable of collective

Robert E. Park, and Herbert A. Miller, Old World Traits Transplanted (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1921), p. 69 •

83 action.1*^

Chicago’s Near North Side, sometimes referred

to by sociologists as "The Sociological Grand Canyon of America,’1 is an example.

Here, as in other cities, people

live in a conditionrof interdependence.

The relationships

on the Near North Side are symbiotic, however, and not social in the usual sense.

The individual members of Chicago’s

Near North Side are quite incapable, or at least have not shown themselves to be capable of, collective action. ’’Symbiosis" is a term borrowed by the sociologists from the biologists.

It is ordinarily defined as the living

together Of distinct and dissimilar species, especailly when the relationship is mutually beneficial.

Symbiotic relation­

ship among human beings is an association in which widely scattered individuals unconsciously compete and co-operate. The individuals may be separated either by physical or by social distances.

In human society the exchange of goods

and services and the specialization of labor enforced by economic competition performs the function which, in the plant community, is performed by symbiosis.

The immigrant may live

for a time in a relationship which is essentially symbiotic. During this period he does not feel the pressure of the customs and expectations of the new society.

His mere presence,

however, is disturbing to those who maintain crystalized

"Symbiosis and Socialization,” p. 3*

84 attitudes toward the customs, conventions, and ideals of the society.

Regardless how discreet the behavior of the

immigirisnt might be, conflict will ensue should he show too great a detachment for the customs, conventions, and ideals of the society. -^7 The community, according to Park's view, is more than a mere aggregation of individuals.

It is an organism.

The

community is distinguished from a mere aggregation by its capacity for concerted action. concerted action.

Its structure facilitates

It is the capacity for concerted action

that gives a community the character of a society, according to Park. Park compares the role of the group ideology to the role that the individual's conception of himself plays in the development of his personality.

The person is the individ­

ual plus his conception of himself and his role in society. The individual's conception of himself is always a more or less accurate reflection of his status in one or more social groups.

109

In a collective unit the group ideology seems to

perform the same role in the functioning of the unit that the individual's conception of himself performs in the function of his personality.

Park speaks of this:

107 Ibid., p. 23. 108 "Human Nature and Collective Behavior," p. 735109 "Symbiosis and Socialization," p. 9-

85 As the individual’s conception of himself pro­ jects his acts into the future and in that fashion serves to control and direct the course of his career, so in the case of a society its ideology may be said to direct, control, and give consistency, in the vicissitudes of a changing world, to its collective acts. 13.0 All problems of social life are at the same time problems of the individual; and by the same token, all problems of the individual are at the same time problems of the group.

Every social group has within it the tendency to

create its own type of character.

The character of the

social group is effective in no small way in determining the type of personality of the individual member.

Park

points out that in human society the individual act has a tendency to become a gesture, since what one does is always an indication of what one intends to do.

The individual,

then, does not live a private existence, but a public one. His every act can be anticipated, checked, inhibited, or modified by the gestures of the other members of his social group. It is in this social conflict, in which every individual lives more or less in the mind of every other individual, that human nature and the individual may acquire their most characteristic and human traits. 3-11

3-3-0 Loc. c i t . 3-3-3- "Human Nature and Collective Behavior,11 P. 7 3 8 .

86 Human behavior is socially controlled. behavior is conscious and conventional.

Human

This is the behavior

that is called “conduct.”

It is morally sanctioned and

subjectively conditioned.

Park says,

“This subjectivity,

so characteristic of human nature, is at once a condition and a product of collective life.”

Not only does man have

a conception of himself, but he defines his role and tries to live up to it.

Each member of society participates in

some way, directly or indirectly, in making up the minds and determining the overt acts of his fellow members.

The

craving for participation in a common life--the desire for sympathy, recognition, and understanding--is one of the most lip fundamental traits of human nature. The study of collective behavior has been fruitful for the sociologist.

It has shown ways in which the social order

comes into existence, and revealed the emergence and solidifi­ cation of new forms of collective behavior.

It has shown

how elementary and spontaneous forms of collective groupings develop into organized forms.

Finally, it has helped to

bring about further understanding of elements concerning the individual and the social group heretofor not so clearly understood.

Park phrases it:

112 Ibid., p. 740.

87 This extension of the field of sociological investigation to include the natural history of the ideas, ideologies, intellectual dogmas, and those unconscious understandings Which make concert, collective action, and above all conversation and discussion possible, has brought within the purview of systematic investigation those very elements, in personality and in society, namely, the conceptual and rational, which scholasticism had forever put beyond the sphere of an empirical science and the possibility of a naturalistic explanation.^ 3 Race relations.

Park defines racial antipathy as a

natural repugnancy of qualities, or incompatibility between individuals or groups which are sufficiently differentiated to be called races.-1--1-^

In common parlance the study of race

relations is denoted to be the study of ethnological group relationships.

The term "ethnic group" has been applied to

cultural minorities as well as to racial groups.

Park men­

tions the vagueness harboring around the use of the word "race."

He implies that the lack of a clear, precise,

scientific definition, in this case, need in no way detract. from an intelligent discussion of the subject of race rela­ tions.

The writer has used the term "race relations" as

synonymous with "ethnic group relationships." The individual man is the bearer of a double inherit­ ance, according to Park.

As a member of a race he acquires

*^3 "Symbiosis and Socialization," p. 10. Robert E. Park, and Ernest W. Burgess, Introduc­ tion to the Science of Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1921), p” 63^-

88 and transmits by breeding a biological inheritance.

As a

member of a social group he acquires and transmits by com­ munication a social inheritance.

He has a conception of

himself as a member of a social group.

Similarly, a recip­

rocal conception exists in the minds of other people, whether members of his own group or not.

A common characteristic

of what Park calls conflict and accommodation groups, as distinguished from the family and local community, is a group self-consciousness.

«phe conception that a man forms of

himself seems to depend on his vocation and the role he seeks to play in his community and social group.

One's conception

of one's self is literally tied up with the recognition one is accorded and status one maintains in his social group. The group, on the other hand, has a conception of itself as compared to other groups.

It maintains a social tradition

consisting of particular habits, accommodations, sentiments, attitudes, and ideals. member of the group. transmitted

This is inherited by the individual It is the cultural endowment that is

?by communication.

Park and Burgess have classified the types of social heritages.

.The list consists of the socially acquired traits.

The classification is parallel to Thorndike's classification

115 Ibid., p . 5 1 .

of biologically transmitted traits.

The types'of social

heritages are: (a) (b; jr.) (d)

means of communication, as language, gesture, etc. social attitudes, habits, wishes, etc.; character; social patterns, as folkways, mores, conventions, ideals, etc.; (e) technique; (f) culture (as distinguished from technique, formal organization, and machinery); (g) social organization (primary group life, institu­ tions, sects, secondary groups, e t c . ) . H 7

Park views the problem of race relations as a problem of communication.

The barriers to communication are not

merely differences in language and culture but differences in social status.

Self-consciousness, race consciousness,

and consciousness of kind (Gidding’s concept) are factors in the perpetuation of social distances.

Park indicates that

whenever representatives of different races meet and discover in one another sentiments, tastes, interests, and human quali ties generally that they can understand and respect, racial .*] 1o barriers are undermined and eventually broken down. Race prejudice, according to Park, is a function of visibility.

The races of high visibility, such as the Negro

Edward L. Thorndike, "inventory of Original Tenden cies," The Original Nature of Man (New York: Teacher’s Col­ lege, Columbia University, 1913)*PP• 1-7* -^7 Park and Burgess, op. cit., p. 71. Robert E. Park, 9:133, May, 1926.

"Behind Our Masks," Survey Graphic

90 and the Japanese,, are the natural and inevitable objects of "race prejudice.

Although all other differences can be

taken up in the assimilation process, the visible marks of race persist.

They serve to set the races apart, and to

prolong and intensify the racial conflict.

Concerning preju­

dice as a function of visibility, Park reports: It is a curious thing about human faces that when we look at them, abstractly and disinterestedly, most of them are ugly, some of them uncanny, and all of them are more or less caricatures. It is only as we become aware of the feelings, the passions, and the curiously changing moods which they reflect, that faces become interesting. It is, in fact, only as faces become expressive that the persons behind these 319 living masks assume for us the character of human beings. One reason given by Park as to why the immigrant seems alien and different is because he is more self-conscious and reserved in dealing with non-members of his group than he is in dealing with members of his group.

The degree of self-

consciousness differs according to the degree of difference which exists between the alien and the native American.

In

the case of the Negro and the Japanese, where the physical trait can never be fully absorbed, except by intermarriage, he remains, in a sense, perpetually alien.

Racial self-

consciousness is more intense when there is a more sharply discernable difference between the alien and the native.

It

follows that under such a condition the social distance is also greater.

Race prejudice may be regarded as a phenomenon

119 Ibid., p. 138.

91 of social distance, or as a phenomenon of social status. Race prejudice is like class and caste prejudice--merely one variety of a species.

There is no reason to believe

that attitudes based on race are fundamentally different from any other attitudes.

1?o

The man without prejudices, in all probability, does not exist.

The unprejudiced person is without conviction,

and without character.

Race prejudice is an expression of

resistance to the changing social order. of conservatism.

It is an expression

Negro prejudice, in particular, has arisen

wherever and whenever the Negro has sought a change in status. Upward mobility o£L the part of the Negro has stimulated racial animosities.

Resistance to social change by those clinging

to the conservative side of the attitudinal scale is not an uncommon feature of present day society.

Park says:

All our sentiments, love, loyalty, patriotism, homesickness, contempt, arrogance, hate, are based upon and supported by prejudices. Furthermore, mankind is incurably sentimental, and sentiments and prejudices are part of the stuff from which our human life is made. The thing reduces itself to this, that prejudice, defined in this broad and inclusive way, has its source and origin in the very nature of men and their relation to one another. It gets itself fixed and sublimated in the habits of individuals, and enters into the very structure of society. In short, preju­ dice is an attitude, a social a t t i t u d e . 2-*Robert E. Park, nThe Basis of Race Prejudice,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, l'40s 12, November, I92F.

121 Ibid., p. 12.

92 Park claims that visible distinctions between races will always be supported by racial prejudices.

Social class

differences are inevitably accompanied by differences in attitudes and sentiments.

The problem of race relations

hinges upon the difference in sentiments.

Members of differ­

ing racial groups meet each other for the first time in an atmosphere charged with apprehension.

Curiosity prevails,

and self-consciousness and reserve emerge both actors.

on the part of

A vivid awareness and readiness to act, in ad­

dition to a state of nervous tension, is peculiar to the situation. In 1923 Park directed a race relations survey on the West Coast, sponsored by The Institute of Social and Religious Research.

The Race Relations Survey on the Pacific Coast

was one of the major pieces of social introspection of the time.

The Survey extended from British Columbia to Mexico.

It was a thorough investigation of the matter of race rela­ tions.

It included within its scope the effect of race rela­

tions on other human relationships, namely; economic, political, cultural, and religious.

Collaborating in the Survey were

representatives of the leading colleges and universities on the West Coast, and others having special qualifications and interests related to the problem. of the Survey, Park unveiled:

In describing the purpose

93 It has sought to gain a knowledge which will not so much change opinions as attitudes. It was not the purpose of the survey to crystallize opinion on either side of an issue, but rather to pro­ vide a context in which issues could be discussed in a friendlier spirit; create a situation in which the common, as over 'against sectarian, party, and racial interests, might receive a more deliberate and in­ telligent consideration. ^-22 The of view

race problem on the Pacific Coast from the point

of the Survey was a problem of collective behavior.

Park demonstrated that investigations of race relations eventually tend to focus on the subject of public opinion. The Pacific Coast Survey was intended to be an answer to

i

questions that had been raised in the press and in public discussion.

It attempted to show what public opinion on the

Coast in reference to race relations actually was; how it differed in various regions, and among different classes; and what had been the sources of public opinion on the race question.

In May, 1926, the entire edition of Survey Graphic was devoted to an interpretation of the findings of the Pacific Coast Survey.

It was prepared under the editorial

collaboration of Park and Winifred Raushenbush.

In the issue

appears:

^22 "Behind Our Masks," p. 139* 123 Robert E. Park, "Methods of a Race Survey,!? Journal of Applied Sociology, 10:414, May-June, 1926.

94 This number1- interprets for the first time in an inclusive way some of their findings.in terms of oriental migration and settlement, on the land and in industry, singly“and in communities, the persistence of ancient institutions and the rise of native-born of oriental parentage.^24 The facts indicating the nature and extent of changes that are taking place in the manners and character of the younger'generation of Orientals are probably the most significant that our Race Relations Survey on the Pacific Coast has thus far disclosed. They tend to emphasize and (to) re­ enforce a growing conviction among students of humannature that the most important, if not the most fundamental, differences between nations and peoples, aside from*their physical characteristics, are re­ flected in their manners, in their etiquette, and in the conceptions which they form of themselves. The characteristic traits of people are, in other words, not so much innate qualities as c o n v e n t i o n s . Park indicates that the divergent physical traits of people are obstables to assimilation.

The physical and

racial marks of people acquire a unique significance because they cannot be eradicated.

It is these irremovable traits

such as skin color which' have become the basis of class and caste consciousness in America. The members of a race are recognized as a distinct class when the physical differences are so pronounced that the hybrids constitute a distinguishable physical type.12^

Survey Graphic, May, 1926, p. 133. 125 "Behind Our Masks," p. 138. 126 Robert E. Park, "The Mentality of Racial Hybrids," The American Journal of Sociology, 36:538 January, 1931-

95 The hybrid is a product of divergent racial stocks. the receiver of two equally distinct traditions. cultural as well as a racial hybrid.

He is

He is a

In the case of the

Negro, the cultural tradition which he transmits to his off­ spring in no way can be traced to African origins.

Park

concludes: . . .it seems to me, that the Negro, when he landed in the United States, left behind him almost every­ thing but his dark complexion and his tropical temper­ ament. It is very difficult to find in the South today anything that can be traced directly back to Africa.1^7 The Negro is unique as compared to other peoples in that he brought so little tradition with him that he could transmit and perpetuate in America.

According to Park, no people

have been so utterly cut off and estranged from their ances­ tral land, traditions, and people, as have the Negro. The Negro, during his three hundred years in this country, has not been assimilated. a stranger.

He is still regarded as

Park points out that the reason for this lies

in his physical and racial characteristics. is looked upon as being a stranger.

A divergent type

A class consciousness,

arising because of racial, religious, or cultural differences, makes full and free discussion an impossibility.

When this

^27 Robert E. Park, "Education in its Relation to the Conflict and Fusion of Culture,” Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society, 13:45* 191&.

96 happens, assimilation does not take place. One of the incidents of cultural contact is the inter­ breeding of races.

Amalgamation serves as an index of the

extent to which cultural fusion has taken place.

Civiliza^

tion is a consequence of contact and communication, just as races are the products of isolation and inbreeding.

Park

gives emphasis throughout his sociological writings to those forces which have been decisive in the history of civiliza­ tion, namely: competition, conflict, and co-operation.

He

writes that among the most important influences in deciding the welfare of mankind have been migration and incidental collisions, conflicts, and fusions of peoples and cultures. Park calls this the catastrophic theory of

p r o g r e s s .

The

movements and minglings of peoples often bring sudden and catastrophic changes in customs and habits.

In the course

of time interbreeding takes place between races living in contiguity and sharing the same economy.

Social distances

maintain themselves longer than physical distances but even­ tually they, too, give way.

Contact, competition, accommo­

dation, and assimilation, in the order given, are, according to Park, progressive and irreversible steps in the race relations cycle. 1^8 Robert E. Park, "Social Assimilation,11 Encyclo­ pedia of the Social Sciences (New York: The Macmillan Company, 19 30), 2:203. 129 Robert E. Park, "Human Migration and the Marginal Man*" The American Journal of Sociology, 33*882, May, 1928.

97 The race problem, viewed as a problem in assimilation, is a problem of secondary group relationships.

In primary

groups assimilation is comparatively easy and almost inevit­ able.

For the Negro, primary group relationships were severed

when he gained his freedom and moved off the plantation upon which he was brought up.

Relationships between Black and

White under slavery were direct and personal.

Upon the lib­

eration of the Negro, the two races began to lose touch. Associations of a secondary nature developed and contacts became indirect and impersonal.

Park directs attention to:

Under conditions of secondary contact, that is to say, conditions of individual liberty and individual competition, characteristic of modern civilization, depressed racial groups tend to assume the form of nationalities. A nationality, in this narrower sense, may be defined as the racial group which has attained self-consciousness, no matter whether it has at the same time gained political independence or n o t . 130 Cultural conflicts take place when people of divergent races and cultures seek to live within the limits of a cos­ mopolitan society and escape the limitations of caste* and class.

This is also the source of much personal conflict.

The man who seeks to rise from a lower to a higher cultural level meets with discrimination and prejudice because he is identified with a race or nationality which is regarded by

Robert E. Park, "Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups," Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society, B:o2,July, 19l¥.

the native peoples as inferior— inferior mainly because different.

The racial antagonism and conflict encountered

by the Negro can be regarded in some sense as a measure of the Negro’s progress. In an article written by Park in 1913a called "Negro Home Life and Standards of Living," he describes the living conditions of the Negro as he sees them.

The first ambition

of the Negro, according to Park, is to build himself a com­ fortable home.

The Negro feels, to greater or lesser degree,

the obligation to share his home with any member of his race who comes well recommended.

This obligation is assumed

because of the difficulty encountered by a Negro in procur­ ing lodgings at a hotel.

Park states that more visible

signs of the Negro’s recent progress are to be seen in the well kept home of the educated Negro than elsewhere.

The

home reveals the advance of the Negro more clearly than any other gauge.

Moreover, it clearly shows to what use the

Negro has put his education.^31 Although race relations may be viewed as a problem of assimilation, Park feels that the immediate goal in an attempt at a solution of the racial problem is racial accom­ modation.

This viewpoint is expressed by Earl Fiske Young

131 Robert E. Park, "Negro Home Life and Standards of Living," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, ^9:163, September, 1913-

in an article inspired by Park. Idealists have succeeded in numerous cases in developing highly tolerant attitudes, but not without serious struggles with their prejudices. It is probably too much to hope that the mass of men can be brought to such a state of mind. Rather we may expect that racial adjustments will be made upon the basis of racial differences. That is for the immediate future, at least, interest in the solution of the social problems created by race preju­ dice can center to best advantage upon schemes for racial accommodation.132

132 Earl Piske Young, "What is Race Prejudice?" Journal of Applied Sociology, 10:140, May-June, 1926.

CHAPTER IV SOCIOLOGICAL CONCEPTS The s o d a l processes.

Social process is the name

for all changes which can he regarded as changes in the life of the group.

Among social processes can be distin­

guished (a) the historical,

(b) the cultural,

(c) the politi­

cal, and (d) the economic .^ Park describes as historical those processes by which cultural accumulation and transmission takes place over a period of time.

The processes by which cultural heritages,

conventions and traditions are transmitted from generation to generation are historical.

History plays the role in the

group that memory plays in the individual.

The historical

processes serve to accumulate and to conserve the common fund of social experience.

They shape and define the social

forms and social patterns which each preceding generation imposes upon its successors. The political process is carried on by public dis­ cussion, legislation, and the adjudication of the courts. It is a process by which a society formulates and enforces its wishes.

The economic processes are those by which an

exchange of values are effected.

1 Robert E_. Park, and Ernest W. Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1921}, p . 51-

101 Park’s conceptual system begins with the social process of interaction.

If there is no interaction there

is no awareness or social life, according to Bogardus.

But,

interaction, being general and all-inclusive, does not hel|> o much in analyzing human behavior. In his book The Social Process.-Cooley signifies: Society is a complex of forms or processes each of which is living and growing by interaction with the others, the whole being so unified that what takes place in one part affects all the rest. It is a vast tissue of reciprocal activity, differen­ tiated into innumerable systems, some of them quite distinct, others not readily traceable, and all interwoven to such a degree that you see different systems according to the point of view you take.3 Communication. typical social process.

Park refers to communication as the 'Communication is the form of inter­

action or process that takes place between two persons. describes

Park

persons as being individuals, conscious of them­

selves and more or less oriented in a moral world. is an- individual with an ego.

The person

Communication is the form of

interaction which takes place between individuals with an ego.^

Park agrees with his friend, John Dewey, that society

2 Emory S. Bogardus, The Development of Social Thought (New York: Longman1s, Green and Company, 194877 p. 5258 Charles H. Cooley, The Social Process (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 191B), p. 2b, cited by Park and Burgess, o j d . cit., p. 421. ^ Robert E. Park, "Reflections on Communication and Culture," The American Journal of Sociology, 44:190, Septem­ ber, 1938.

102 exists in and through communication.

Communication is

identical with the cultural process.

Attitudes, sentiments,

traditions, folkways, and mores, which are the web of understanding called culture, are communicable, and communi­ cation is indispensable to the cultural process. Park directs attention to the fact that communication makes possible the concensus and understanding among the individual components of a social group which eventually gives it and them the character of a cultural unit. communication tradition is transmitted.

Through

It allows for con­

certed action and for united or diversified opinion.

It

operates primarily as an integrating and socializing prine ciple.^ Park conceives of communication as a three-fold process involving a stimulus, an interpretation of an attitude, and a response.

The initiation of the communication process by

word of mouth or a gesture of some kind, involves an inter­ pretation of the attitude or intent of the person whose ges­ ture supplied the stimulus.

Accordingly, as communication

involves expression, interpretation, and response, it is com­ parable to, but not the same as, the stimulus-response.situa­ tion described by the psychologists.

5 Ibid., p. 195.

The communication process

103 is complete only when it results in some sort of understand­ ing.

This implies a knowledge of the attitude of the person

communicating.6

To quote Park:

As communication takes place between persons, it is necessarily involved in all the complexities incident to the transmission of a stimulus from the source £i quo to a terminus ad quern— i.e., from a person of whose mind it is an expression to the person in whose mind it finds a response. The ob­ vious conditions which facilitate or obstruct these processes are mainly physical and in modern times they have been progressively overcome by means of ~ technical devices like the printing-press, radio, etc. Communication is essential in any form of collective behavior. process.

Similarly, it is essential to the acculturation The transfer of meaning between individuals under­

lies all of the social processes and all forms of social organization.

William Albig, a Professor of Sociology at

the University of Illinois, maintains: Communication is the fundamental social process in that the way in which meanings are transmitted must inevitably affect all other social processes and the resultant forms, folkways, mores and insti­ tutions .” Park indicates in his sociological writings the sig­ nificance of the concept of communication.

He emphasizes

the fact that assimilation of the immigrant takes place slowly or rapidly only as we are able to communicate to him 6 Ibid., p. 196. 7

P- 197«

8 William Albig, Public Opinion (New York: McGrawHill Book Company, Inc., 1939)* P • 2 6 .

104 the standards and values of American society.

Furthermore,

the newspaper Is Important as the outstanding vehicle for the compiling and transmitting of news.

The dissemination

of news is an essential factor in the formation of public opinion.

A free flow of news and the discussion which it

entails is vital to the preservation of the democratic processes. Park points out that the interest of sociologists is turning toward communication and its methods in order that group behavior might be better understood.

Sociologists are

interested, for example, in the functions of language and writing in group life and collective behavior.

According

to Park, the expression "different universes of discourse" indicates how communication can separate as well as unite people.

Every group, to greater or lesser degree, has its

own language. ology.

Occupational groups use one kind of termin­

The "vernacular", depends on the particular trade or

vocation.

Age groups among school children, professional

groups, isolated living groups, etc., have their own charac­ teristic language, technical vocabulary, and slang expres­ sions.

The social group may be studied through its language.

Gesture and language are the principle forms of communica­ tion. 9

Communication makes possible among people a unity

9 Park and Burgess, o£. cit., p. 423.

105 and an integration which otherwise would be impossible. Furthermore, its importance lies in the fact that it is basic to the social processes of competition, conflict, assimilation, and accommodation. Competition.

Competition is a universal and funda­

mental form of interaction. without social contact. the form of conflict.

Competition is interaction

When it becomes conscious it takes According to Park and Burgess, com­

petition invariably tends to create an impersonal social order in which each individual contributes through the mutual exchange of services so established to his own wel­ fare.10 Both Park and Cooley acknowledge the fact that in our society the economic order is largely a product of com­ petition.

Competition, in fact, is the very heart of the

economic process.

Competition is emphasized by Park as the ’r

principle of individuation in the life of theiperson and of society.

Under the influence of a competitive situation,

the individual adapts and accommodates himself, not merely to the human habitat but to the occupational organization of the society of which he is a member.

Competition, especial­

ly in the urban environment, is the factor which compells the individual to follow the vocation he is best equipped 10 Park and Burgess, ojd. cit., p. 5 07 .

106 for rather than the activity he would like to engage in, Man's relation to man under conditions of personal competi­ tion is somewhat symbiotic. tion.

Symbiosis is a form of competi­

Competition is not free and limitless.

In any society

restraints are imposed upon the wild and wilful impulses of the individual. is not unlimited.

Where custom and law prevail* competition Competition is thus restrained and sym­

biotic relationships exist in human society as well as in plant and animal communities.

Park discloses:

The investigations of plant and animal ecologists have discovered that even where competition is free and unrestricted* as it is in the so-called plant and animal communities* there exists among creatures liv­ ing in the same habitat a kind of natural economy. What characterizes the economy is a division of labor and an unconscious co-operation of competing organisms. Wherever in nature competition or the struggle for existence brings about a stable organization among competing individuals* it is because they have achieved in some form or another a division of labor and some form of conscious or unconscious co-operation. In such case the competing species or individual* each, occupying the particular niche in which it fits* will have created an environment in which all can live to­ gether under conditions where each could not live separately. Their natural economy of plant and animals is called symbiosis.H In a human organization competition is an organizing principle.

It serves to distribute a given population about

the market place or urban center.

Competition in a society

through the open market gives society its more or less

"Reflections on Communication and Culture*” p. 193*

107 ordered ecological base.

Competitive interaction operating

between individuals, cultural groups, and their habitat gives rise to specialization of function in human society. Competition tends to bring about, within the limits of human society, a specialization and a division of labor.

The

moral and political ordern however, according to Park, is a product of conflict, accommodation, and assimilation. In the world of living things competition is universal. It goes on practically unobserved except when it is converted to conflict.

As one of the four great types of interaction

it helps to explain the division of labor and interdependence of individuals and groups.

Competition takes the form of

conflict when it becomes conscious.

A feature of this change

is that competitors identify one another as rivals or enemies. Competition determines the distribution of population territorially and vocationally.

1P

A feature of competition is

that it is most severe between organisms of the same species. Man's greatest competitor is man.

Competition has been re­

stricted by custom, tradition, and law.

The struggle for

existence has assumed the form of struggle for. a livelihood and for status. Conflict.

IP

Park stresses the fact time and time again

Park and Burgess, o£. cit., p. 508 .

108 throughout his sociological writings that man is not born "human".

It is only slowly and laboriously, in fruitful

contact, co-operation, and conflict with his fellows, that the individual becomes socialised and attains the qualities of human nature.^3 Competition, conflict* accommodation, and assimilation have been described by Park as the processes of socialization. They are not merely processes by which the individual is in­ corporated into a society, but processes by which the in­ dividual achieves status in the society and in so doing be­ comes a person. Conflict, and in particular cultural conflict, serves the purpose of bringing into the light of understanding certain impulses and attitudes existing on the part of members of our own and alien cultures.

Inevitably, the understanding,

both of ourselves and of other peoples, is enhanced under such conditions.

Conflict brings to the surface attitudes

existing in the minds of people— attitudes of which we would not be conscious, except for conflict. Conflict, like competition, is universal and inevit­ able.

Competition is a struggle between individuals, or

groups of indivisuals, who are not necessarily in contact

3-3 Park and Burgess, op. cit., p. 76 .

109 and communication; while conflict is a contest in which contact is an indispensable condition.*^

Conflict is always

conscious, whereas competition is unconscious.

Conflict is

intermittent and personal, whereas competition is continuous and impersonal.

Competition resolves into conflict becoming

conscious and personal in the process. Conflict can be viewed as a form of conscious competi­ tion arising out of the contacts of one person with another. Self-consciousness emerges in the contacts of a person with others.

Self-consciousness is reflected in pride and humility,

vanity and self-respect, modesty and arrogance, as well as in race prejudice, chauvinism, class and caste distinctions, and in all devices by which social distances are maintained.^5 Conflicts are an effort to preserve status, to maintain or improve it, or to maintain its prestige. Park points out that variation is an important fact in society as it is in nature generally. If everybody follows the crowd, if everyone wears the same clothes, utters the same trite remarks, rallies to the -same battle cries and is everywhere dominated, even in his most characteristically individual behavior, by an instinctive and passionate desire to con­ form to an external model and to the wishes of the herd, then we have an explanation of everything characteristic of society--except the variants^ the nonconformists, the idealists, and the r e b e l s . ^

lil Ibid., p. 574. x5 Ibid., p. 576. 16 Ibid., p. 32.

110 Under conditions of conflict the personality of the individual is best revealed.

Under the same conditions the

nature of the group to which the individual belongs is also revealed. his own.

In a struggle the individual makes the group cause Conditions of the social order under which individ­

ual and group variation exist are favorable to conflict. Conflict can take any form from a mere difference of opinion to war, which is its most severe form. Park was interested in conflict as a process related to the understanding of racial problems.

According to

Burgess, Park reformulated his conceptual system so as to have significance for the study and understanding of racial problems. field.

Park's experience was wide and varied in this

It included participation in the Americanization

Studies of the Carnegie Corporation, participation in the research program of the Institute of Pacific Relations, and firsthand contact with race relations problems in Hawaii, China, Africa, and Brazil.

Park acknowledged his indebted­

ness to his friend Booker T. Washington as one of his great­ est teachers.^7 Mental conflicts often have their source in cultural conflicts.

Park hints that cultural conflict takes place

Ernest W. Burgess, "The Contribution of Robert E. Park to Sociology,11 Sociology and Social Research, 29:259, March,April, 19^5-

Ill when people living under conditions of modern life attempt to escape the limitations of class and caste.

Open hostility

and racial antagonism is based on the conflict of cultures. Moreover, one race is unwilling to enter into personal com­ petition with a race of different or inferior culture.

In

the long run, the people who have designated themselves as superior, are unwilling to compete on equal terms with those to whom has been assigned an inferior position in the social rank order.

Racial conflict ensues.

under the conditions described. for status.

It is the only course

Racial conflict is a struggle

The nationalistic movement of the immigrant,

in that it is a struggle for recognition and prestige in the family of nations, is a similar struggle. Accommodation. use in sociology.

Accommodation has a wide and varied

It includes those acquired adjustments

which are socially transmitted.

All the social heritages,

traditions, sentiments, culture, and technique are accommoda­ tions.

While adaptation is generally the product of competi­

tion, accommodation is the result of conflict . ^ Park and Burgess describe social organization as es­ sentially an accommodation of differences through conflicts.

IB °Park and Burgess, ojd. c i t ., p. 5 78. l-9Xbid., p. 664.

112 The individual in human society represents an incorporation of the social group.

As the individual emerges to a social

being, that is, as he undergoes the process of socialization, he incorporates the values of the group about him, attains status, and becomes what Park has called a person.

Human

society is organized about tradition, mores, collective representations, in short, consensus. social accommodations.

Consensus represents

The individual in growing up and

attaining socialization adapts readily.

This is not adapta­

tion in the biological sense, however, this is what is called accommodation. Accommodation may be viewed as a cessation of hostili­ ties with the possibilities for conflict ever present.

The

antagonistic elements are regulated to the extent that con­ flict as overt action disappears but remains as a potential force.

Conflict resolves into accommodation.

The antagonism

which produced the conflict remains until accommodation re^ solves into assimilation.

Accommodation can revert at any

time into conflict unless, however, the antagonistic forces which lie dormant disappear. Americanization, the process whereby a foreigner ac­ quires the rights of citizenship and becomes acculturated, pA

is a form of accommodation.

The naturalization process

113 includes accommodation to the folkways, the mores, the con­ ventions, and the social ritual. process is not an easy one.

For the immigrant this

Although he departs from the

land of his birth eager to participate in a new life in America, he is reluctant to discard his mother tongue, his mannerisms, and his habits.

He cannot discard his memories,

his lonesomeness, and his emotional dependence upon familiar situations.

He is confused and bewildered.

tion to the new social milieu is difficult.

Social accommoda­ Assimilation

is even more difficult and requires a considerable length of time.

Often the assimilation process is not completed

in the first generation. Park and Burgess point out that accommodation in the area of personal relations tends to take the form of sub­ ordination and superordination.

This is the form of relation­

ship existing between employer and employee, professor and student, physician and patient, leader and follower, etc. The roles that individuals take under conditions involving subordination or superordination are not necessarily permanent but depend upon the situation.

Slavery and caste, however,

are permanent forms of this accommodation relationship. It is Park's view that the answer to the race problem lies in some form of accommodation, at least for the present. Accommodation is an important step in the assimilation process and the race problem has at times been described by sociol­

114 ogists as a problem in assimilation.21 Assimilation.

The process of socialization may be

said to terminate in assimilation.

Socialization involves

the incorporation of the individual into the existing moral op order as well as the inhibition of competition. The child born into a society goes through the same process of social­ ization as the stranger who is finally adopted into the society.

In the case of the child the process begins with

assimilation and ends with individuation and emancipation. In the case of the immigrant the process ends with assimila­ tion.

Assimilation is by no means a simple process.

Park

imparts: Every new generation has to learn to accommodate itself to an order which Is defined and maintained mainly by the older. Every society imposes some sort of discipline upon its members. Individuals grow up, are incorporated into the life of the com­ munity, and eventually drop out and disappear. But the community, with the moral order which it embodies, lives o n 4 The life of the community therefore in­ volves a kind of metabolism. It is constantly assim­ ilating new Individuals, and just as steadily, by death or otherwise, eliminating older ones. But assimilation is not a simple process, and, above all else, takes time.23

21 Robert E. Park, ftRacial Assimilation in Secondary Groups," Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society, 8 :6 6 , July, 1914. 22 Robert E. Park, "Symbiosis and Socialization," The American Journal of Sociology, 45:25, July, 1939. 23 Robert E. Park, "The Concept of Position in Society," Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society, 20:5, 1925-

115 Accommodation is described by Park and Burgess as the goal of the political process.

Its role is to reduce

conflict, control competition, and to maintain within the social order a basis of security for persons and groups having divergent interests and carrying on divergent activi­ ties. Assimilation is the process of fusion in which persons and groups acquire the memories, sentiments, attitudes, and traditions of other persons and groups, and, by sharing their history and common experiences, are incorporated with them in a common cultural life.

If that assimilation in­

cludes both the sharing of traditions and experiences it is a historical as well as a cultural process.2** Assimilation is not a conscious process.

According

to Park and Burgess, the person being assimilated is incor­ porated into the common life of the group before he is aware and with little conception of the course of events which brought this incorporation about.

Accommodation, on the

other hand, is a conscious process. It is by the process of assimilation that different peoples achieve a corporate character. collective action is possible.

oil

Common participation implies

Park and Burgess, o p . clt.,

25 Ibid.,

p.

736.

Under this condition

p.

735.

116 a common definition of the situation.

If Americanization

is defined as the participation of the immigrant in the life of the community in which he lives, then participation is both the medium and the goal of assimilation.

Park and

Burgess state that the immigrant1s life in America must be related to the life he already knows. opportunity for participation.

The immigrant needs

Assimilation is achieved not

by the suppression of old memories, but by their incorpora­ tion into the new life. eradicated.

The memories of the past cannot be

Assimilation can be promoted indirectly by

supplying conditions favorable for the immigrant’s partici­ pation. There is no process but life itself that can effectually wipe out the immigrant’s memory of his past. The inclusion of the immigrant in our common life may perhaps be best reached, therefore, in co­ operation that looks not so much to the past as to the future. The second generation of the Immigrant may share fully in our memories, but practically all that we can ask of the foreign-born is participation 27 in our ideals, our wishes, and our common experiences.

26 Ibid., p. 739. 2? Ibid.. p. 7^0.

CHAPTER V SOCIOLOGICAL CONCEPTS, CONTINUED

The ecological processes.

Human ecology is an at­

tempt to apply to the interrelationships of human beings a type of analysis previously applied to the interrelation­ ships of plants and animals.

Park and his capable student,

R.D. McKenzie, were the first to give the name ’’human

ecology” to the analysis of urban and rural community living, according to Charles Johnson.^

House points out that it was

an easy and logical step to utilize the ecological approach in the study of human life after the method had been worked out successfully in the study of plant and animal communi­ ties.

He writes:

Indeed, Ratzel, Vidal de la Blache, and Brunher had already been asserting that what they were study­ ing was really human ecology, some time before Park, McKenzie, and Mukerjee began to advertise the possi­ bilities of human ecology to the sociologists in the United States.2 In An Outline of the Principles of Sociology, edited by Park, A.B. Hollingshead has defined ecology.

According

to Hollingshead, ecology is:

**• Charles S. Johnson, ’’Robert E. Park: In Memorium, ” Sociology and Social Research, 28:357* May-June, 1 9 ^ . 2 Floyd N. House, The Range of Social Theory (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1929), p. 65.

118 The study of living things, not as individuals, but as members of a complex network of interconnected organisms as these organisms function in multiform environments. The environments include the realm of physical nature, other plant and animal species, and other organisms of the same species.3 Park informs his reader that human society, unlike plant and animal society, is organized on two levels. are the biotic and the cultural.

These

The sumbiotic society is

based on competition, while the cultural society is based on communication, tradition, and consensus. does not go unrestrained in human society. custom and culture.

Competition It is limited by

The cultural structure imposes itself

upon the biotic substructure.

Human society exhibits,

finally, an ecological, as well as an economic, a political, and a moral order.

The social sciences include not merely

human geography and ecology, but economics, political science, and cultural anthropology. According to Park, the Individual units of the organic system (plant, animal, or human) to which the ecologists have given the term "community11 are involved in a process of com­ petitive co-operation, which has given to their interrela­ tions the character of a natural economy.

The plant and

animal communities have three essential characteristics. These are: (l) They contain a population territorially organ­ ized,

(2 ) more or less completely rooted in the soil it

3 Robert E. Park, editor, An Outline of the Principles of Sociology (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1939)* p. 6 5 .

119 occupies and,

(3 ) Its individual units live in a relationship

of mutual interdependence that is symbiotic rather than societal, in the sense in which the term "societal” applies to human beings.^ Park indicates that competition operates to bring about and restore the equilibrium of a community when that equilibrium has been disturbed.

A crisis in the life of a

society initiates a period of rapid change during which com­ petition is intensified.

Out of this competition a stable

equilibrium arises, accompanied by a new division of labor. In this manner competition brings about a condition in which competition is superseded by co-operation.5

According to

Park, one might say that among the functions of society is the one of restricting, and in some measure controlling, competition.

Under conditions of restricted competition ef­

fective co-operation is possible.

Park calls society a con­

trol organization in that it serves to organize, integrate, and direct the energies of the Individuals of which society is composed. Human ecology attempts to investigate the processes by which the biotic balance and the social equilibrium are maintained.

It is concerned with the processes by which a

^ Robert E. Park, "Human Ecology," The American Journal of Sociology, 42:4, July, 1936. 5 Ibid., p. 14.

120 transition is made from one stable.order to another once the social equilibrium has been disturbed.

The problems

of human ecology are fundamentally problems of population. In this respect human ecology Is similar to plant and animal ecology.

Park directs attention to:

Human ecology in so far as it is concerned with a social order that is based on competition rather than consensus, is identical* in principle at least* with plant and animal ecology. The problems with which plant and animal ecology have been traditionally concerned are fundamentally population problems. Society* as ecologists have conceived it* is a popula­ tion settled and limited to its habitat. The ties that unite its individual units are those of a free and natural economy* based on a natural division of labor. Such a society is territorially organized and the ties which hold it together are physical and vital rather than customary and m o r a l . 6 Position.

In the article "The Concept of Position

in Sociology*" Parks speaks of ecology. Human ecology* as sociologists conceive it* seeks to emphasize not so much geography as space. In society we not only live together* but at the same time we live apart* and human relations can always be reckoned* with more or less accuracy, in terms of distance. In so far as social structure can be de­ fined in terms of position* social changes may be described in terms of movement; and society exhibits in one of its aspects* characters that can be measured and described in mathematical f o r m u l a s . 7 The individual always has status of some sort or other* and is located in one or several social groups which determine

6 I b i d . . p. 14.

7 Robert E. Park* "The Concept of Position in Society," Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society* 20 :2 * 1925.

121 his self consciousness or hi,s conception of himself. Ecologists, however,

concern themselves with location in

space and spatial distances.

Social relations are inevit­

ably correlated with spatial relations.

Furthermore,

statis­

tics have value for sociology only because physical distances frequently are the indexes of social distances.

It is only

because social facts can be correlated with or reduced to spatial facts that statistical measurements can be applied to them.

ft

Physical distance,

on the other hand, is signifi­

cant for social relations only when it is possible to inter­ pret it in terms of social distance. According to Park, all forms of association among human beings rest finally upon locality and local association. Modern means of communication such as the newspaper, radio,

the telephone, and the telegraph,

the

are merely means of

preserving this permanence of location.

At the same time

they provide 4 for mobility and freedom.

In order to insure



the maintenance of communication the individuals who compose society must be located.

Only through communication is the

moving equilibrium called society maintained.

Furthermore,

location is important in order that there may be permanence and progress in society. It is P a r k ’s belief that the growth of the city

8 I b i d . , p. 14.

122 involves the incidental changes and movements that are associated with the efforts of the individual to become located both socially and territorially in the city.

He

reports: The growth of new regions, the multiplication of professions and occupations, the incidental in­ crease in land values which urban expansion brings-all are involved in the processes of^city growth, and can be measured in terms of changes of position of individuals with reference to other individuals, and to the community as a whole.9 Isolation.

According to Park and Burgess, the essen­

tial characteristic of isolation is found in exclusion from communication. separation.

In geography, isolation denotes spatial

This form of isolation is sociologically sig­

nificant in that it prevents communication.

Modern means of

transmitting news, methods of transportation, and the radio, etc., have transcended most barriers to communication.

So­

cial distances *are based, however, not on geographic, but on more subtle forms of isolation. Variations in language, folkways, mores, conventions, and ideals separate individuals and peoples from each other as widely as oceans and deserts.

Isolation is a factor in

9 Ibid., p. if. Robert E. Park, and Ernest W. Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, I92I), p. 228.

123 the preservation of individuality and unity.

The solidarity

of the group, like the integrity of the individual, implies a certain measure of isolation from other groups and persons as a necessary condition of its existence*

Membership in a

particular group makes possible increased participation on the part of the individual with other members of the group, and less contact with individuals not belonging to the same group.

The memories and sentiments of the members of a p a r ­

ticular group have their source in common experience.

Those

not holding membership-character in the group are isolated. Isolation in its pure form is rarely found. city isolation takes the form of segregation. there is much overlapping.

In the

Here again,

It is difficult to tell where

one natural area begins and another ends unless, of course, the area is bounded by a river, a main thoroughfare, or a natural obstruction.

The structure of the city is a product

of competitive interaction between people.

Its structure

is contingent upon the operation of the ecological processes. Competition determines not only the occupational group of the individual, but where he shall live.

In the city indi­

viduals live in more or less segregated areas, where the inhabitants have more or less similar competitive ability. Burgess suggests five zones of the city. is a specialized,

Each zone

segregated area characterized by the

124 specific function that it perforins for the city, its social distinctiveness, its unique population elements, and its particularized institutions.

Burgess has named the zones

in order, according to their nearness to the city’s center. Hiss classification is as follows: The Headquarters Area or Retail Business District. Here exist the centers for transportation, finance, wholesaling, mercantile offices, administrative of­ fices for industry, hotels, theatres, municipal build­ ings, newspapers, specialty shops, and department stores. It is the integrative area for the city’s life and function. The 11Interstitial” Area. This area is characterized by high land values, but the buildings are old deterior­ ated relics of the days, before the center’s functions began to invade the area. Here are the headquarters of vice, crime, and the homeless men and women who fre­ quent cities. The Area of Workingmen1s Homes. This is the second place of residence for immigrants who have been success­ ful. Grocery stores, bakeries, drug stores, shoe re­ pair shops, notion stores, and taverns are the prin­ cipal businesses. The High Class Apartment and Residential Z o n e . This zone lies between the workingmen's and commuter1s homes. Along the central traffic arteries the apartment houses are strung out like high fences on either side of a road. Behind them, on the quieter.streets, are the large private homes of the upper middle class. The Suburban Z o n e . This is composed of many special­ ized districts. Frequently on one side of the central city are found manufacturing satellite cities; on another, railroad yards; on a third, specialized resi­ dential suburbs; and completing the circle, there may be intensified truck f a r m s . H 11 Ernest W. Burgess, ”The Growth of the City: An In­ troduction to a Research Project,” in Park and Burgess, The City, oo. 47-62, cited by A.B. Hollingshead in An Outline of the Principles of Sociology, edited by Robert E. Park, p. 105.

125 Dominance.

R.D. McKenzie,

in an article called,

"The Scope of Human Ecology,11 describes in detail the ecological processes operative in the growth of the city. According to McKenzie,

these processes are:

Concentration--The massing of human beings and human utilities in areas where nature or man has made conditions favorable to the satisfaction of sustenance needs. Centralization--The integration of human beings and facilities around pivotal points at which social, economic, and cultural interaction occurs most fre ­ quently. Segregation--The sifting of like social and p o p ­ ulation types, as well as commercial and industrial facilities, into specific districts where each unit tends to have the same economic function and com­ petitive strength. Invasion--The penetration of a segregated area by an institutional function or population group dif­ ferent from the one already there. Succession--The end product of an invasion cycle. Decentralization— The term used to characterize the tendency for human beings and institutional agencies to move away from the center of the city and locate on the. outskirts where land values are low and spaces are available.12 Dominance is the integration of diverse activities into a co-ordinated unit through competition.

The natural

or functional areas of the urban community--for example,

I2 R.D. McKenzie, "The Scope of Human Ecology," in E.W. Burgess, The Urban Community (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1926), pp. 172-177, cited by A.B. Hollingshead in An Outline of the Principles of Sociology, p. 103.

126 the slum, the rooming-house area, the central shopping center, and the hanking center— owe their existence directly to the factor of dominance, and indirectly to competition. ***3 Park holds the viewpoint that the ecological principles of dominance and succession are dependent upon competition. He describes the area of dominance in a community as the area of highest land values.

The location of business enter­

prises and social institutions is determined by these land values. Park points out that the struggle of industries and commercial institutions for a strategic location would determine in the long run the main outlines of the urban community.

The distribution of population, as well as the

location and limits of the residential areas which they oc­ cupy, are determined by similar forces.

Expansion of the

city is likely to occur along the main highways and lines of transportation. accessibility.

Land values are determined in part by their Park has indicated that as the metropolitan

community expands the demand for space at the center in­ creases.

Business men, professional men, or financiers, in

short, all who are destined either by choice or by reason of their qualifications to serve the city in one way or

***3 "Human Ecology,” p. 8 .

127 another, continually apply pressure in an effort to gain space at the city’s center. Park declares that the principle of dominance, operating within the limits of the community imposed by the terrain and other natural features of its location, tends to determine the general ecological pattern, and the functional relation of each area to all others.

He indicates

furthermore, that dominance, in so far as it tends to stabil­ ize either the biotic of the cultural community, is respons­ ible for the phenomenon of succession. Locomotion.

From the point of view of human ecology*

according to McKenzie, relative stability is the result of an adjustment of numbers of people to the physical environ­ ment, to each other, and to the culture in which they live. As a population in an isolated area becomes relatively stabil­ ized, life becomes ordered by custom and tradition. ment between numbers and resources follows.

An adjust­

The natural

balance between numbers and resources is called "biotic equil­ ibrium. "^5

L o c . cit. •*■5 R.D. McKenzie, Readings in Human Ecology (Ann Arbor, N.D.), part III-VI-9, cited by A.B. Hollingshead in An Out­ line of the Principles of Sociology, p. 131*

128 Under conditions other than that of relative stabil­ ity or biotic equilibrium migration takes place.

Migration

is defined as the movements of people, individuals, or groups from one location to another.

In migration the breakdown

of the social order is initiated by the impact of an invad­ ing population and completed by the contact and the fusion *1

f.

of native with alien peoples. ^

The effect of mobility and

migration, according to the viewpoint expressed bjr Park, is to secularize relations which were formerly sacred.

The

process tends toward the secularization of the society and the individuation of the person. Migration involves change of residence and the break­ ing of what Park has called home ties.

It involves changes

In the individual to the extent that he invariably becomes in a certain sense a cosmopolitan.

The tendency exists for

him to look upon his place of birth and former place of residence with the detachment of a stranger.

Mobility is im­

portant as a sociological concept only so far as it insures new social contact for the individual.

By the same token,

physical distance is significant for social relations only when it is possible to interpret it in terms of social

^ Robert E. Park, ’’Human Migration and the Marginal Man,” The American Journal of Sociology, 33*886, May, 1928.

129 distance.

Park, in describing the relation of mobility to

the person specified: The social organism--and that is one of the most fundamental and disconcerting things about it--is made up of units capable of locomotion. The fact that every individual is capable of movement in space insures him an experience that is private and pecu­ liar to himself, and this experience, which the in­ dividual acquires in the course of his adventures in space, affords him, in so far as it is unique, a point of view for independent and individual action. It is the individual's possession and consciousness of a unique experience, and his disposition to think and act in terms of it, that constitutes him finally a person.17 It is Park's belief that migration as a social phe­ nomenon can best be studied as it is manifested in the changed type of personality which it produces.

Under con­

ditions in which one culture collides with another, tradi­ tional organization breaks down and the effect is to emanci­ pate the individual man.

The individual under such condi­

tions releases energies that were formerly controlled by custom and tradition.

He is free for new adventure, but

is more or less without direction and control.

This is the

case of the marginal person, who is caught between two worlds but can identify and participate fully with neither. Mobility is important as a sociological concept in

17 Robert E. Park, "The Urban Community as a Spatial Pattern and as a Moral Order," in Bogardus, History of Social Thought (Los A n g l e s : Press of Jesse Ray Miller, 192FJ, p.

632 .

130 so far as it insures new social contact.

Furthermore,

mobility is important as an index of social change and social disorganization.

The social organism is made up

of individuals capable of Independent locomotion.

Changes

in the life of society, therefore, can best be understood in terms of changes in the indivisuals of which society is composed.

Park shows that the social element is not the

individual but the attitude.

Attitudes, and not individuals,

interact to maintain social organization and to produce ■{Q social changes. u Succession.

The term "succession" is used by ecolo­

gists to describe and to designate the orderly sequence of changes through which a biotic community passes in the course of its development from a primary and relatively unstable to a relatively permanent adult stage.

Similarly, the human

community, in the course of its development, moves through a series of more or less clearly defined stages. suggests these recurrent changes.

Succession

Park has included under

the term "succession" every possible form of ordinary change so far as it affects the interrelations of individuals in a community or the structure of the society of which these individuals are a part.^9 lb "The Concept of Position in Society," p. 11. 19 "Human Ecology," p. 9.

131 Park views succession, not merely as a study of the life cycle of institutions and societies, but also as a study of the processes by which new types of institutions and societies emerge.

His interest in succession, as an

ecological concept, is related to his interest in social change.

He enlightens with the following:

Studies of succession, however, seek less to predict the course of change than to make change intelligible, so that it can eventually be controlled by technical devices or political measures. For this reason studies of succession are concerned not only with the form which change takes but even more with the circumstances and events which precede, ac­ company, and follow change--in short, with its natural history.20 Succession is viewed by human ecologists as a form of cultural change associated with the development of the community.

Changed evolved as a successive developmental

series are related to each other, and studied by ecologists in terras of their interdependence.

Hollingshead mentions

that accordingly as this procedure is followed, well-defined characteristic patterns will become apparent to the researcher. The form and rapidity of change depends upon the biotic and cultural factors active in the developmental succession of a community.

For example, immigrants ordinarily settle first

Robert E. Park, “Succession: An Ecological Concept,” The American Sociological Review, 1:178, April, 1936.

132 in the center of the city, moving by stages progressively outward.

The time that they leave the first area of settle-

ment--an a r e a •in transition— will depend on many factors, including, the ease and rapidity with which they have ad­ justed to the biotic and cultural environment, whether or not they have achieved a favorable competitive position, and whether or not the area has been invaded by the succeeding immigrant group.

Hollinghead indicates three types of changes

occurring in succession which tend to transform the affected area.

These are:

1. Alterations take place in the spatial dis­ tribution of population units and institutional services. 2. Many times a new socio-cultural order is formed, with fundamental changes occurring in many aspects of the pre-existent order. 3. There is formation of a new population type which, with a characteristic composition, normally accompanies each succession. Succession generally develops along one or all of the following lines: classes, occupations, age, sex, race, or ethnic groups.21

A.B. Hollingshead, ’’Human Ecology and the Social Sciences,11 in An Outline of the Principles of Sociology, p. 167.

CHAPTER VI ADDITIONAL CONCEPTS The Individual and the person.

Park explains that

the processes of socialization--competition, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation--are not merely the pro­ cesses by which the individual is incorporated into a society, but are the processes by which the individual be­ comes a person. status.

The person is one who has achieved social

He is a human being conscious of rights and duties,

and more or less concerned about the welfare of the group to which he belongs.

It is status in the group, or more

specifically, recognition by the community that confers upon the individual the character of the person.^ Status means position in society.

In a given group

the status of every member is determined by his relation to every other member of the group.

The individuals conception

of himself is based on the status he holds in the group of which he is a member.

This is the core of personality.

It

is determined by the attitudes of other individuals and by the standards which the group upholds.

Status turns out

1 Robert E. Park, "Personality and Culture Conflict," Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society, 25:97, 1930.

finally to be a matter of social distance.

2

Park stresses the fact that the individual is not born "human” .

Arriving at the character described as

"human" is a personal achievement.

The individual in b e ­

coming socialized invariably incorporates in his own person­ ality the purposes, and aims of the group which nurtures him.

His self-consciousness becomes the most important con­

stituent of his personality.

The sociological concept of

personality was derived from the observations of Thomas and Znaniecki, who regarded personality as the subjective aspect of culture.3 A direct relationship exists between the character of the social group and the type of individual it produces. Park illustrates: Every social group tends to create, from the individuals that compose it, its own type of char­ acter, and the characters thus formed become com­ ponent parts of the social structure in which they are incorporated. All the problems of social life are thus problems of the individual; and all problems of the individual are at the same time problems of the group.4 Society everywhere exhibits two fundamental forms of

2 Robert E. Park, "The Concept of Position in Society, Papers end Proceedings of the American Sociological Society, 20:14, 1925. 3 "Personality and Culture Conflict,” p. 9 6 . 4 Robert E. Park, and Ernest ¥. Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology (Chicago: The University of Chi­ cago Press, I92TT, p. 5 7 .

135 organization.

These forms are the familial and the communal.

The source of familial society was in the urges and interests of individuals to perpetuate themselves as a race.

The

soxarce of communal society was in the desire of individuals to survive as individuals.

What is commonly called human

nature is a product of group life.

Park accepts Cooley’s in­

terpretation and credits him with having written the most adequate sociological statement on this s u b j e c t . 5 In a social and moral order such as ours there is a constant struggle for status.

The individual finds himself

exerting effort to preserve his prestige, his point of view, and his self-respect.

The conception which an individual

has of himself is limited by the conception which every other individual has of himself.

It is the social environment to*

which the person, as distinguished from the individual, responds.

The responses of the person to his environment

eventually define his personality. The social environment to which human beings are born and in which they live is made up largely of experiences, memories, and habits of preceding generations.

According to

Park, these experiences and memories--crystalized in tradition,

5 Ibid., p. 6 7 , citing Charles Horton Cooley, Social Organization (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909)* P*28.

136 custom., and folkways--constitute the social, as distin­ guished from the biological environment.

Park feels that

by nature man is ill-equipped to cope with the social en­ vironment to which he is born.

Yet, man is not merely an

individual with certain innate biological traits, but is at the same time a person with manners, sentiments, attitudes, and ambitions.

Park mentions:

The social environment in which mankind has ac­ quired nearly if not all the traits that we regard as characteristically human is what we call society, society in the large; what Gomte called "humanity. ® Socialization is not an easy process.

The individual

in emerging to a position of status in society experiences much the same stresses and strains as the immigrant in under­ going the process of assimilation.

Park states that only as

the individual succeeds in accommodating himself to the life of the group does he find himself quite at home in the com­ munity.

This means that in undergoing socialization the in­

dividual incorporates into the specific purposes and ambitions of his own life the larger purposes of the social order of which he is a p art .T The family plays a major role in the socialization

^ Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess, and Others, The City (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1925), p. 100.

^ Ibid., p . 105.

137 process.

The family is the most intimate environment

to which the individual responds, with the exception of his own person.

According to Park, most of the traits

described as human originally developed within the family setting.

He indicates that that situation may not be the

same today as it has been in the past.

ft

The natural condition of the individual in society, according to Park, is one of conflict.

Conflict of one

person with another (one ego with another) is of common occurrence.

The conflict Park is concerned about, however,

is that of the individual conflicting with the conventions and regulations of the social order.

Through its institu­

tions the community is able to supplement the activity of the family directed toward controlling the individual.

Al­

though the role of the family in the socialization of the person is not to be minimized,

it is in the larger organiza-

tion--the community where he will be accorded status,

and

the final recognition which will confer upon him the charac­ ter of a person. Social distance.

The concept of social distance has

come into use in an attempt to reduce to measurable terms

Ibid. , p. 104.

138 the grades and degrees of understanding which characterize personal and social relationships.

Social distance is

measured by the degree of intimacy which individuals or social groups have achieved.

Park maintains that Individuals

involved in interpersonal relationships are clearly aware of the degree of intimacy existing.

This closeness or degree

of intimacy measures the influence individuals have over Q other individuals. Social distance, as viewed by Park, is not a phenom­ enon existing between individuals alone.

Individuals have

a sense of distance toward other classes and races.

Park

explains that the terms "race consciousness11 and "class consciousness" describe a state of mind in which people be­ come, often suddenly and unexpectedly, conscious of the dis­ tances that separate them from the races and classes they do not understand.

Prejudice is a more or less natural and

spontaneous disposition to maintain social distances.1^ Prejudice, in this broad conception of the term, seems to be an indident of group consciousness.

Reserve, on the

other hand, is probably an incident of self-consciousness.

9 Robert E..Park, "Concept of Social Distance," Journal of Applied Sociology, 8:339.» July-August, 1924.

10 Ibid., p. 343.

139 Park points out that although race prejudice is not to be identified by social distance, the individual,

it arises when, to

it seems that his personal and racial re­

serves are invaded.

Prejudice arises when social status

is menaced or threatened.

According to P a r k ’s explanation,

prejudice is not an aggressive but a conservative force.

It

is a sort of spontaneous conservation which tends to preserve the social order and the social distances upon which that order r e s t s . ^ According to Dr. Emory S. Bogardus,

an authority on

social distance and social distance measurement techniques, invasion is a key to a great deal of the social distance that exists between the native-born and immigrants in cities. The article "Social Distance in the City" by Bogardus seems to bear out the fact that when new social distance attitudes arise they are related not alone to the spatial relationships of people brought about by territorial invasion, but to.the fact that invasion is a threat to social status.

Bogardus

concludes: As long as races stay in ghettoes or Little I t a l y ’s, they are "all rightf but as their members "invade* the "American" neighborhoods new soeialdistance reactions are at once generated against them. The speed at which this invasion is under­ taken bears a direct relation to the rise, of social-

11 Ibid., p. 344.

140 distance feelings. Likewise, the difference be­ tween the culture form of the "invaders11 and of the natives is an index to the probable rise of social'distance attitudes. To the extent that the native feels that his status has been lowered by the invasion of his neighborhood of his occupa­ tion by immigrant people, to that extent his social-distcmce attitudes are inflamed. The distances which separate people are not only physical, but also moral and social.

Members of the various

races look at each other without quite understanding what lies beyond the mask which each person wears.

Distances

make people lonely and somewhat suspicious in one another’s presence.

Social distances maintain themselves for a long

period of time, but eventually they give way.

Park indi­

cates that the rapid increase in literacy the world over among the masses of people has had effect in decreasing so­ cial distances.^3

park further points out that in some cases

measures to preserve social distance are only partially suc­ cessful.

Park mentions:

. . .sexual interest, which is still one of the most powerful motives in human conduct, operates independ­ ently and often counter to the interests represented by the organization of society. Romantic love, which is proverbially interested in the exotic and unfamiliar, not infrequently crosses racial barriers, and is never completely inhibited by class and caste taboos.1^ 12 Emory S. Bogardus, "Social Distance in the City," Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society; 20:45, 1925. •*■3 Robert E. Park, Race and Culture (Glencoe, 111.: The Free Press, 1950), p. 146. 14 W.I. Thomas, Sex and Society (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1907), pp. I96-I97, cited by Park in Race and Culture, p. 379*

141 Park calls social distance a phenomenon of a society that is based on primary relationships.

In such a society

every individual tends to have location at a specific social distance in relation to every other individual.

This,, accord­

ing to Park’s interpretation* means that at a given time and place* every individual occupies a definite position* defined in terms of his psychical distance or intimacy with respect to all others of the society.

Factors influencing a person’s

particular position are his personality and his function in the society.

It depends in no small part on the number of

people in the community and the known relations of each to all o t h e r s . ^ Park and Burgess suggest rather vaguely* a fourfold classification of attitudes as “behavior patterns.”

An atti­

tude is the tendency of a person to react positively or neg­ atively to a total situation.

The four fundamental attitudes

are: (l) the tendency to approach* draw*

(2 ) the tendency to with­

(3 ) the tendency to dominate* and (4) the tendency to

submit.

According to House* this scheme has not been used

as a basis for a definite research project as of 1929* but in a general way was used as the foundation of the Pacific Coast Survey.1^ Race and Culture* p. 183. 16 Park and Burgess* Introduction to the Science of Sociology* p. 440* cited by Floyd N. House* The Range of Social Theory (New York: Henry Holt and Company* 1929)* p.

19F:

142 The attitudes defined as the tendency to approach and the tendency to withdraw have significance in the con­ sideration of social distance.

Park and Burgess indicate

that the two tendencies are not to be thought of as u n ­ related, but are to be thought of as conflicting response© to the same situation.

The phenomenon of social distance

exists when the tendency to approach is modified and compli­ cated by the tendency to withdraw. Park and Burgess state that in social distance there is an accommodation between the conflicting tendencies.

This

accommodation is not confined to race relations, but is in­ volved in all the subordinations, exclusions, privacies, and reserves which people everywhere seek to maintain and defend by ritual and taboo.

In the most fundamental types of be­

havior rival and conflicting tendencies are called forth. The resulting attitude is likely to be an accommodation.1*^ Movements of withdrawal or of recoil from other per­ sons are characteristic of embarrassment and fear.

A height­

ening of self-consciousness is peculiar to a situation of this type, characterized by a meeting of members of two racial groups.

Park and Burgess point out that the tendency to

identify o n e ’s self with other selves is essentially a move­ ment toward contact, whereas the inclination to differentiate

1^ Introduction to the Science of Sociology, p. 440.

143 o n e ’s self from other selves is essentially a movement toward isolation. By the use of a soeial-distance recording method Bogardus investigated the reactions of 1,723 native born young Americans from different sections of the United States.

These people, both male and female, differed in

religious affiliation, level of educational attainment, and racial descent.

Their reactions to forty different

racial groups, including "Americans" were carefully re­ corded.

Practically all of the northern European races

were rated high, whereas antipathetic attitudes were quite clearly shown toward the Asiatic and African races. Bogardus comments: Practically all the northern European races rate high in the sympathetic attitudes of Americans; for the latter, being largely of northern European ancestry, react in friendly ways toward their own racial connections. In the large, blood relation­ ships after all operate strongly in matters of racial" understanding and good will.19 A morphological survey of group formation in any society discloses the fact that there are lateral as well as vertical divisions in the social structure.

This can be

taken to mean that in every society groups are arranged in

18 Ibid., p. 440. ^■9 Emory S. Bogardus, "The Measurement of Social Distance," in Theodore M. Newcomb, and Eugene L. Hartley, Read­ ings in Social Psychology (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 191 7 ), p. 505.

144 strata of relative superiority and inferiority. Burgess indicate

Park and

that in a society stratified by social

castes the separation is rigid and quite unalterable, whereas in a society (such as ours) stratified in social classes competition tends to be a feature. is to destroy classes and castes.

The effect of competition Group individuality main­

tains itself in a class society on a class level.

Suspicion,

aversion, reticence, and reserve exist as protection against the invasion of the group individuality and as further PO measures to insure the proper social distance. According to Bogardus, the entire matter of social distance may be summed up in the one word "status."

He

illustrates: The summary of the whole matter may be concentrated in the one word, status. Where a person feels that his status or the status of anything that he values is furthered by race connections, there racial good will is likely to be engendered. But where a person's status or the status of anything:he values is endangered by the members of some race, then race prejudice flares up and burns long after the "invasion" has c e a s e d . 21

20 Park and Burgess,

ojk

cit., ,p. 230.

21 Bogardus, op. cit., p. 507.

CHAPTER VII INDICATIONS OP THE INFLUENCE OP PARK During the course of his oareer in sociology, Robert Park was engaged In developing and guiding the sociological thought of his students, and in charting new fields of study for research.

Park was instrumental as a teacher in trans­

mitting to his students the value of concrete research.

Al­

though Park’s sociological writings represent a distinct contribution to sociology, the importance of the work accom­ plished by a score of Park students Is also of major import­ ance.

Park stimulated and guided the sociological careers

of many, who, since the days when he was a professor at the University of Chicago, have carried on in the Park tradition. This salient fact has led the present writer to conclude that the greatest influence of Park as a sociologist has been as a teacher of sociology. Park had definite ideas on teaching.

Although his

pedagogical techniques were unorthodox, his classes were alive and stimulating.

Park believed that the best teaching

methods are those that the teacher has worked out for him­ self.

He resented the fact that there was always likely to

be too much routine and discipline, and not enough selfexpression and imagination in educational procedures.

Simi­

larly, Park was aware of the limitations imposed in a classr

l46 room situation by the religious use of a textbook.

He

claimed that students as well as teachers are inclined to regard their textbooks as sacred literature.

A text,

according to Park, gives the first word on a subject, and not the last as is so often believed.

Park felt, also,

that the sociology student must do some of the work of discovery, interpretation, and formulation for himself.'1' Park expounds: In my own experience the most effective and the most inspiring teachers have employed the most un­ conventional and the least formal methods. If I am less disposed than I might otherwise have been to accept orthodox methods of teaching it is because I am convinced that the influence which an uninhibited teacher, with insight and understanding, can exercise upon a pupil, though often emphasized has rarely been overestimated. My own case is an illustration. Very few of Park's sociological writings are of an autobiographical nature.

However, while the present study

was in preparation, a collection of Park's sociological writ­ ings was published under the title Race and Culture.3

This

book contains a heretofore unpublished autobiographical note which Park dictated to his secretary shortly before his death.

It reveals the development of Park's interests and

1 Robert and a Verdict,"

E. Park, "Methods of Teaching: Impressions Social Forces, 20:46, October, 1941.

2 Ibid., p. 36. ^ Robert E. Park, Race and Culture (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1950).

147 traces his influences.

From it one learns that Park’s

interest, in going to college had been of a practical nature, not an intellectual one.

He had planned to study engineer­

ing but became a philosophy student instead.

This was be­

cause he became curious about the world and the men who inhabit it. student days.

His interest in news can be traced to his early Park divulges:

I studied philosophy because I hoped to gain insight into the nature and function of the kind of knowledge we call news. Besides I wanted to gain a fundamental point of view from which I could describe the behavior of society, under the influence of news in the precise and universal language of science.4 I can trace my interest in sociology to the read­ ing of Goethe’s Faust. You remember that Faust was tired of books and wanted to see the world--the world of m e n . 5 Park's success as a teacher can be attributed to his ability to transmit to his students this interest and curi­ osity about mankind.

Park’s early training played a part

in his having had a successful teaching career.

As a

student Park learned about methods of teaching from William James.

From George Simmel he received his only formal in­

struction in sociology.

From John Dewey he received the

impetus to investigate the nature and function of the news­ paper.

From Booker T. Washington, whom Park credits as his

^ I b i d ., p. vi. 5 ibid., p. v.

1^8 greatest teacher, he learned much about human nature and society.

Park’s association with such men as James, Simmel,

Dewey, and Washington were an important part of his peda­ gogical training.

Park had good teachers and was a good

teacher himself. In addition to his formal schooling, Park became ac­ quainted with the world through personal experience gained in his search for human interest stories of news value. Park elucidates: I found that the Sunday paper was willing to pub­ lish anything so long as it concerned the local community and was interesting. I wrote about all sorts of things and became in this way intimately acquainted with many different aspects of city life. I expect that I have actually covered more ground, tramping about in cities in different parts of the world, than any other living man. Out of all this I gained, among other things, a conception of the city, the community, and the region, not as a geographical phenomenon merely but as a kind of social organism. The urban community was important for Park as an ob­ ject of investigation.

His. study of-the urban community

began with his work as a journalist.

Park's article ”The

City: Suggestion for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the City Environment” is significant in that it poses many questions for further investigation.7

The Chicago

6 Ibid., p . v iii. 7 Robert E. Park, ”The City: Suggestions for the In­ vestigation of Human Behavior in the City Environment,” The American Journal of Sociology, 20:577-612, March, 1915*

149 Sociological Series, which answers many of the questions posed in Park's article, represents an important and dis­ tinctive contribution to sociology.

The series may be

viewed as an outcome of Park's interest in the urban com­ munity and the influence he had upon his students. He o guided the research and the writing of The Ghetto by Louis Wirth, The Gold Coast and the Slum^ by Harvey Zorbaugh, The Gang~^

by Thrasher, The Taxi-Bance H a l l ^

by Paul Cressey,

and many others. According to House, the book Old World Traits Trans12 planted, which discusses the role of immigrant heritages 13 in the New World, was largely the work of William I. Thomas.

^ Louis Wirth, The Ghetto (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1928). 9 Harvey Zorbaugh, The Gold Coast and the Slum (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1929). 10 Frederic Thrasher, The Gang (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1927).

H Paul G. Cressey, The Taxi-Dance Hall (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1932). 12 Robert E. Park, and Herbert A. Miller, Old World Traits Transplanted (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1921). 13 Floyd N. H 0use, The Development of Sociology York: McGraw-Hill Book Company^ 1936), p. 28TI

(New

150 Nevertheless * Park ana Herbert Miller were anxious to understand the career of the immigrant in America, and to formulate as clear as possible a theory of the immigration process.

Their interest was in the process of adaptation

of the immigrant to American life.

The book represents a

distinct contribution to sociological literature. A study in many ways similar to Old World Traits Transplanted is Pauline Young's The Pilgrims of Russian 14 Town. Dr. Young’s book is both an historical and analytical study of the Moloken sect in Los Angeles.

Pauline Young was

a student of Park and at one time served as his secretary. Her study of the Russian Molokans was carried on under Park's stimulating guidance. ^ At the time of its writing Introduction to the Science of Sociology-*^ was looked upon by Park and Burgess as being prolegomenous to further research and theory.

The book has

^ Pauline V. Young, The Pilgrims of Russian Town (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1932)".

^ Louis Gottschalk, Clyde Kluckhohn, and Robert Angell, The Use of Personal Documents in History, Anthropology, and Sociology TNew York: Social Science Research Council, 19^5), p. 201. 16 Robert E. Park, and Ernest W. Burgess, Introduc­ tion to the Science of Sociology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1921).

151 influenced the sociological thinking of students and reachers since its*publication in 1921.

It is especially-

known for the development of the basic processes of social interaction: competition, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation.

The book by Park and Burgess may be described

as a carefully selected collection of readings in theoretic sociology.

According to House, a former Park student, the

book enjoyed an enviable popularity when it was first issued. It was used extensively in college courses; however, under­ graduate students found it very difficult, owing to the divergence of theories and terminologies involved in the selections from many writers which are incorporated In the book as "materials." House points out that Introduction to the Science of Sociology has been influential in placing before the Ameri­ can sociological public a number of fundamental concepts, such as the processes of interaction, personality, and col­ lective b e h a v i o r . ^

House further indicates that since 1921

when the text first appeared, there has been an increased interest in sociological research and a revived interest in sociological concepts.

The immediate influence in this

development was the publication of Introduction to the Science

^7 House, o p . cit., p. 298 .

152 of Sociology.

Through the use of it as a graduate text,

a generation of sociology students at the University of Chicago were impressed with the idea that the definition of concepts was an important part of the task of sociological research.

18

Park feels that sociology must be empirical and ex­ perimental and that sociological problems can not be solved by dialectics.

The concern of science is the real world

and not the ideal one.

Each one of his elasses was oriented

to research, and as a result of his stimulation the Chicago community was literally turned inside out by students in­ vestigating such phases of urban life as hotels, suicides, slums, divorce, gangs, delinquincy, crime, and so on. Zorbaugh’s study utilizes the social base map--a technique whereby the location of individuals or groups studied is plotted on a map.

This is a convenient method

of indicating geographic location and spatial relationships. Similarly, Thrasher plotted the location of the headquarters of each gang included in his study.

The study of "distribu­

tion" at the University of Chicago was an outgrowth of the study of human ecology and urban sociology. House indicates something of the significance of the role played by the sociology professor in guiding the research

18 I b i d . , p. 382.

153 of students. Professors Robert E. Park and Herbert Blumer of the University of Chicago, Bogardus of the University of Southern California, Eubank of Cincinnati, and the writer may be named as exponents of the idea that concrete social research may be largely futile and even harmful when it is not guided by carefully conceived notions about the things to be studied.19 In discussing the methods utilized in the Race Rela­ tions Survey of the Pacific Coast, Park points out that a survey differs from research in that it seeks to define problems rather than to test hypothesis. a survey is exploration.

In other words,

It inevitably turns out to be a

study of public opinion. The first problem of a race relations survey is one of analysis.

A complicated problem can be investigated

only when it has been reduced to its smaller unit.

The

last problem of a survey, Park indicates, is one of synthesis. This particular question raised at the time of the Pacific Coast Survey was how to bring the wide range of studies, covering so many aspects of life, within the limits of a on single point of view. Like Thomas, who viewed personal life-records as the perfect type of sociological material, Park favors the se­ curing of life histories whenever possible.

He suggests:

19 Ibid., p. 424. 20 Robert E. Park, "Methods of a Race Survey,11 Journal of Applied Sociology, 10:413* May-June, 1926.

154

Life histories, where it is possible to secure them, are almost always interesting, because they nearly always illuminate some aspect of social and moral life which we may have known hitherto only indirectly, through the medium of statistics or formal statements. In the one case we are like a man in the dark looking at the outside of the house and trying to guess what is going on within. In the other, we are like a man who opens the door and walks in, and has visible before him what previously he had merely guessed at. The difficulty is that personal histories are voluminous, and in the interest of economy we must eventually reduce them to more or less formal types.21 Park conceives of a sociologist as a kind of superreporter--one who reports the "Big News."

The "Big News,"

according to Park, is a record of what actually goes on, instead of what merely seems to be going on. learn is what made Park a great teacher.

The desire to

He influenced his

students to become curious about themselves and the world. Moreover, he gave them a perspective in which to see them­ selves and thus satisfy their curiosity.

This perspective

was a system of concepts abstract enough to comprehend all forms of interaction of people with one another.

The publica­

tion of a collection of Park's writings six years after his death is but one indication of his influence.

Park probably

contributed more ideas for the analysis of racial relations 22 and cultural contacts than any other modern social scientist.

Robert E. Park, "Sociology," in Wilson Gee, editor, Research in the Social Sciences (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1929), p~. Zpf7 22 Race and Culture, p. xiii.

155 The concepts which Park and Burgess developed in Intro­ duction to the Science of Sociology have been widely applied. Finally, Park was influential in the development of the ecological concepts.

He has been recognized by sociologists

as the father of human ecology.

Bogardus specifies:

. . .he laid out the patterns, offered the earliest exhibit of ecological concepts, defined the major ecological processes and stimulated more advanced students to cultivate the fields of research in ecology than most other sociologists combined.23

23 Emory S. Bogardus, The Development of Social Thought (New York: Longmanfs, Green and Company, 1948), p.

529.

CHAPTER VIII SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS Summary.

Although Robert Park became a professor

of sociology at the late age of fifty, he was able to make many significant eontrjsfoutions to it. writings of Park are few in number.

The sociological However, the booksr-

he has caused to be written and the research projects he has stimulated and guided have been many. Park views the newspaper as a phenomenon of the urban community.

He has traced the circulation of news from its

point of origin to the consumer, and points out that urban­ ization can be measured by newspaper circulation. foreign-language press also holds his interest.

The This he

regards as a factor to be reckoned with since it plays so important a role in the assimilation of the immigrant. Through fulfilling news assignments Park became in­ timately acquainted with the urban environment.

He came to

regard the city as a suitable object of investigation, and raised many questions concerning urban life which were later answered in the Chicago Sociological Series.

Park regards

the city as the ideal laboratory for the investigation of collective behavior.

He indicates that the city is rooted

in the customs and habits of the people who inhabit it. wrote much on the character of the urban community, its

Park

157 ecological organization, and its growth. Park is concerned with the assimilation process as it is related to immigration.

He has classified the immi­

grants according to their attitudes toward participating in American life.

Participation is viewed by Park as the

goal of the assimilation process, and he feels that the immigrant heritages can be useful agents in this process. Through his association with Booker T. Washington, Park became intimately acquainted with race problems.

He

points out that racial prejudice is a function of visibility, and holds the view that racial differences are associated with differences of degree of self-consciousness felt by members of two racial groups in each other’s presence. Park claims that visible racial distinctions will always be supported by racial prejudice but that for the immediate present some form of accommodation should be the goal. In his sociological writings Park emphasizes the sig­ nificance of the concept of communication.

Communication is

important because it makes possible an integration in society which would otherwise be impossible.

Collective behavior of

any kind is impossible without communication. Competition, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation, according to Park, are the processes of socialization.

Com­

petition is defined as interaction without social contact. When it becomes conscious it takes the form of conflict.

158 Conflict resolves into accommodation,, but the antagonistic forces which produced the conflict remain.

These disappear

when the accommodation resolves into assimilation.

In as­

similation the socialization process terminates. Assimilation is an end product.

It is the process

of fusion in which persons and groups acquire the memories, sentiments, attitudes, and traditions of other persons and groups, and by sharing their history and experiences, are incorporated with them in a common cultural life. Park was influential in the development of the ecologi­ cal concepts.

He pointed out that human ecology attempts to

investigate those processes by which the biotic balance and the social equilibrium are maintained in a community.

He

described such ecological processes as position, isolation, dominance, locomotion, and succession. Park makes a distinction between the individual and the person.

He emphasizes the fact that the individual is

not born "human,” and that arriving at the character called "human" is a slow and laborious process. personal achievement.

In fact It is a

The socialization process by which

the Individual is ^incorporated into society is also the pro­ cess by which the individual becomes a person.

The person

turns out finally to be one who has status in society. Status in society is a measure of social distance, which is measured by the degree of intimacy individuals or

159 groups have achieved.

It is associated with the degree of

self-consciousness one feels in the presence of one or more members of a group other than o n e ’s own. Conclusions.

Robert Park will be remembered as a

great sociologist and a great teacher.

Sociology has pro­

gressed because of his contribution to it.

The spirit of en­

thusiasm which was alive in Park’s classes at the University of Chicago is today being kept alive and transmitted to a third generation of sociology students on campuses the country over.

Today's students are becoming interested in the news­

paper as a social institution, the urban community as the natural habitat of civilized man, the processes of socializ­ ation, and the ecological processes.

Introduction to the

Science of Sociology is today widely read. be accounted for in several ways.

Park’s success can

First, he had an insatiable

curiosity about the world and its inhabitants.

Second, he

recognized the value of actual experiences for the sociolo­ gist.

Third, he recognized the value of concrete research.

Lastly, it may be said that Robert Park recognized that so­ ciology deals with human beings and not blocks of wood. People, for Park, were not statistical entities merely to be studied, but were people like himself with ideals, aspirations, and sensitivities. -Throughout Park’s sociological writings is revealed the great love he felt for humanity.

The memory

of Robert Ezra Park and the work he has accomplished will live for many years.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

BIBLIOGRAPHY A.

BOOKS

Adams, Romanzo, Interracial Marriage In Hawaii. The Macmillan Company, 1937• 353 PP-

New York:

Albig, William, Public Opinion. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 19394b6 pp. Barnes, Harry Elmer, editor, An Introduction to the History of Sociology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1948! 960 p p . Bogardus, Emory S., The Development of Social Thought. York: Longman's, Green and Company, 1948. 59& P P •

New

/?&o

_______ , Essentials of Americanization. Los Angeles: Uni­ versity of Southern California Press, 1919* 303 PP« _______ , A History of Social Thought. Jesse Ray Miller, 192b. 66b pp. , The New Social Research. Miller, 1926 . 2H7~~PP.

Los Angeles: Press of

Los Angeles: Jesse Ray

Burgess, Ernest W . , editor, The Urban Community. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1926. 26o pp. Cooley, Charles L., Social Organization. Scribner's Sons, 1909* 436 pp. _______ , The Social Process. Sons, 1918! W30 pp.

New York: Charles

New York: Charles Scribner's

Cressey, Paul G., The Taxi-Dance Hall. of Chicago Press, 1932. 300 pp.

Chicago: The University

Doyle, Bertram W . ,, The Etiquette of Race Relations in the South. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1937. 249 pp. Drake, St. Clair, and Horace Cayton, Black Metropolis. York: Harcourt, Brace and Company! 194-5! b09 pp.

New

161 Elliot, Mabel A., and Francis E. Merrill, Social Dis­ organization. Revised edition. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1941. IO87 pp. Folsom, Joseph K . , Culture and Social Progress. Longman’s Green and Company” 1926. 558 p p .

New York:

Gee, Wilson, editor, Research in the Social Sciences. York: The Macmillan Company, 1929305 PP-

New

Giddings, Franklin H . , The Concept and Methods of Sociology. St. Louis: Congress of Arts and Science, Universal Exposition, 1904. Gosnell, Harold F . , Negro Politicians. Chicago: The Uni­ versity of Chicago Press, 1935404 pp. Gottschalk, Louis, Clyde Kluckhohn, and Robert Angell, The Use of Personal Documents in History, Anthropology, and Sociology. Bulletin 5 3 . New York: Social Science Research Council, 1945. 243 pp. House, Floyd N., The Development of Sociology. New McGraw-Hill Book Company, I93W. 456 pp. _______ , The Range of Social Theory. and Company, 1929. 567 pp.

York:

New York: Henry Holt

Johnson, Charles S., Shadow of the Plantation. The University of Chicago Press,

Chicago:

Lee, Alfred M . , New Outline of the Principles of Sociology. New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1946. 355 pp. Maclver, Robert M., Social Causation. Company, 1942. 4l4 pp.

New York: Ginn and

Newcomb, Theodore M., and Eugene L. Hartley, editors, Read­ ings in Social Psychology. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1947. 672 pp. Odum, Howard W . , What of American Sociology? Green and Company, 1950550 pp.

Longman's

Park, Robert E., Ernest Burgess, and Others, The C ity. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1925. 239 PP-

162 Park, Robert E . , editor, An Outline of the Principles of .^ Sociology. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1939* 331 pp. _______ , Mass und Publickum: Eine Methodologische und Soziologische Untersuchung. Bern: Buchdruckerei Lack and Granau, 1904. 112 ppT _______ , The Immigrant Press and Its Control. Harpers and Brothers, 1922. 488 pp. _______ , Race and Culture. Press, 1950* 403 PP*

New York:

Glencoe, Illinois: The Free

.

Park, Robert E., and Ernest ¥. Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1921. 1041 pp. Park, Robert E.,and Herbert A. Miller, Old World Traits Transplanted. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1921. 308 pp. Pierson, Donald, Negroes in Brazil. Chicago: The University os Chicago Press, 1942. 392 pp. Ross, Edward A., Principles of Sociology. Century Company, 1920. 708 pp. Steiner, J. F., The Japanese Invasion. Clung and Co., 1917* 231 pp. Stonequist, E. V., The Marginal M a n . Scribner’s Sons, 1 9 3 7 . 228 pp.

New York: The

Chicago: A. C. Mc-

New York: Charles

Thomas, Willian I., and Florian Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. Boston: R. G. Badger, 1918. 5 vol. , Sex and Society. Press, 1907. 325 PP*

Chicago: The University of Chicago

_______ , The Unadjusted Girl. Company, 1 9 2 3 . 261 pp.

Boston: Little, Brown, and

Thorndike, Edward L., The Original Nature of M a n . Teacher’s College, Columbia University, 1913*

New York:

Thrasher, Frederic M., The Gang. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1927. 605 pp.

163 Wirth, Louis, The Ghetto. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 192 8 . 306 pp. Young, Kimball, editor, Social Attitudes. Holt and Company, 1931* 382 pp.

New York: Henry

Young, Pauline V., The Pilgrims of Russian Town. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1932. 296 pp. Zorbaugh, Harvey W . , The Gold Coast and the Slum. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1929. 267 pp. B. ARTICLES Bernard, L. L., "An Interpretation of Sociology in the United States," Publication of the American Sociological Society, 25:^3-54, May, 1931. Bogardus, Emory S., "The Measurement of Social Distance," in Newcomb, Theodore m . , and Eugene L. Hartley, Readings in Social Psychology. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 19W 7 ~ pp. 503-5 07. _______ , "Social Distance in the City," Papers and Proceed­ ings of the American Sociological Society, 20:40-46, X925 . ^ B u r g e s s , Ernest W., "The Contribution of Robert E. Park to Sociology,” Sociology and Social Research, 29:255-261, March-April, 1945* Editorial, "Robert Ezra Park 1864-1944," Sociology and Social Research, 28:308-310, March-April, 1944. Paris, Ellsworth, "Robert E. Park, 1864-1944," American Sociological Reveiw, 9:322-325* June, 1944. Galpin, Charles J., "The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community," Research Bulletin of the Agricultural Experi­ ment Station of the University of Wisconsin, May, 1915* Johnson, Charles S., "Robert E. Park: In Memorium," Sociology and Social Research, 28:354-358, May-June, 194^.

^

164 Park, Robert E., "The Basis of Race Prejudice," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, l4"0:11-2 0 . "Behind Our Masks," Survey Graphic, 9:135-139, May, 1926. , "The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the City Environment," The American Journal of Sociology, 20:577-612, March, 1915* "Community Organization and the Romantic Temper,' Social Forces, 3 :673-677, May, 1925. , "The Concept of Position in Society," Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society, 20: 1-14, 1925. , The Concept of Social Distance," Journal of Applied Sociology, 8:339*34*1, July-August, 1924 . , "Culture and Culture Trends," Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society, 19:24-36, 1925. "Education and the Culture Crisis," The American Journal of Sociology, 47:728-736’,: May, 197T3T , "Education in its Relation to the Conflict and Fusion of Cultures: with Special Reference to the Prob­ lems of the Immigrant, the Negro, and Missions," Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society, 1 3:38-6 3 , 1918. "Experience and Race Relations," Journal of Applied Sociology, 9:18-24, September-October, 1924 "The Foreign Language Press and Social Progress," The National Conference of Social Work, 1920:493*500, 1920. , "Human Ecology," The American Journal of Sociology, "4271-15, July, 1936. "Human Migration and the Marginal Man," The,-Ameri-&/ can Journal of Sociology, 33:881-893, May, I92B" , "Human Nature, Attitudes, and the Mores," in Young, Kimball, editor, Social Attitudes. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1931., PP- 17-45.

iX'

165 ' , ’’Human Nature and Collective Behavior,” The Ameri- t ^ can Journal of Sociology, 32:733-741, March, 1927. , ’’immigrant Heritages,” The National Conference of Social Work, 1921:492-497* 1921.

/.

, Informal Conference: Is It Possible for American Sociologists to Agree Upon a Constructive Program?” Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society, 8:167-16#, 1914T , ’’Magic, Mentality, and City Life,” in Robert E. Park* Ernest W. Burgess, and Others, The City. Chicago: The ^ University of Chicago Press, 1925. _, ”A Memorandum on Rote Learning,” The American Journal of Sociology, 43:23-36, July, 1937* , "The Mentality of Racial Hybrids," The American Journal of Sociology, 36:534-551, January, 1931.

^

, "Methods of a Race Survey," Journal of Applied Sociology, 10:410-415^,' May-June, 1926. , Methods of Teaching: Impressions and a Verdict," Social Forces, 20:36-46, October, 1941. , "Mind and the Rover: Reflections Upon the Relation Between Mentality and Locomotion,” World Tomorrow, 6:1-9* September, 1923, "Missions and the Modern World," The American Jour­ nal of Sociology, 50:177-183, November, 1944. , "Morale and the News," The American Journal of Sociology, 47:360-377* November, 1941. , "Mui*der and the Case-Study Method," The American Journal of Sociology, 36:447-454, November, 1930. , "The Natural History of the Newspaper," The Ameri -l/ can Journal of Sociology, 29*273-289, November, 1923. * "The Nature of Race Relations," in Thompson, Edgar S . , editor, Race Relations and the Race Problem. Burham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1939* PP • 3-^5•

1 *■"'

166 , "Negro Home Life and Standards of Living," Annals °f the American Academy of Political and Social Science, ‘4l2:T¥7-163, September, 1913* "Negro Race Consciousness as Reflected in Race Literature," The American Review, 1:505-517* 1923* , "News as a Form of Knowledge: A Chapter in the ^ Sociology of Knowledge," The American Journal of Sociology, 45*669-686, March, 1940. , "News and the Power of the Press," The American Journal of Sociology, 47:1-11, July, 1941. , and Charles Newcomb, "Newspaper Circulation and Met­ ropolitan Regions," in McKenzie, R.D., The Metropolitan ^ Community. McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1933, pp. 98-110. , "Personality and Culture Conflict," Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society, 25:95110, 1930. , "The Problem of Cultural Differences," in Park, Bobert E . , Race and Culture. Glencoe, 111.: The Free Press, 1950. pp. 3-14. __ , "Race Relations and Certain Frontiers," in Reuter, E.B., Race and Culture Contacts. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1934. pp. 57-8 5 . "A Race Relations Survey," Journal of Applied Sociology, 8:195-205, March-April^ 1924. , "Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups," Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society, 8766-83, July 7 1914. , "Our Racial Frontiers on the Pacific," Survey Graphic, 9:192-196, May, 1926. , "Racial Ideologies," in Ogburn, William F., Ameri­ can Society in Wartime. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1943* PP* I65-I8 3 . "Reflections on Communication and Culture," The American J ournal of Sociology, 44:187-205, September,

, ,-

, The Significance of Social Research in Social Service,” Journal of Applied Sociology, pp. 264-265, May-June, 1924. , The Social Function of War: Observation and Notes, The American Journal of Sociology, 46:551-570, January,

194"1. , “Sociology and the Social Sciences,” The American Journal of Sociology, 26:401-424, January, 1921, 27* 1-21, July, 1921, 27:169-183* September, 1921. , ’’Succession: An Ecological Concept,” The American Sociological Review, 1:171-179* April, 1936"! , ’’Symbiosis and Socialization: A Frame of Reference for the Study of Society,” The American Journal of Sociology, 45:1-25, July, 1939. "The Technique of Social Surveys," Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society, 22:223224, 1927. , "Topical Summaries of Current Literature: The American Newspaper,” The American Journal of Sociology, 32:806-813, March, 1927. , "The Urban Community as a Spatial Pattern and as a Moral Order,” in Bogardus, Emory S., A History of Social Thought. Los Angeles: Press of Jesse Ray Miller pp." 627-634. _______ , "Urbanization as Measured by Newspaper Circulation The American Journal of Sociology, 35*60-79* July, 1929 _______ , "The Yellow Press," Sociology and Social Research, 12:3-11* September-October, 1927. Young, Erie F., "A Sociological Explorer; Robert E. Park,” Sociology and Social Research, 28:436-439* July-August, 1944". _______ ., "What is Race Prejudice?" Journal of Applied Sociology, 10:135-140, May-June, 19 2 6 .

168 C. ENCYCLOPEDIA ARTICLES Obituary, "Robert Ezra Park,” 1945 Britannica Book of the Year, Encyclopedia Brittanica, p. 535* Park, Robert E., "Collective Behavior," Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 3:631-633* ^930* _______ , "Social Assimilation," Encyclopedia of the Social " Sciences, 2:201-283* 1930-

D. NEWSPAPERS The New York Times, February 8 , 1944.

University or Southern California UE>rftr»