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NEWS AND NOTES

THIRTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY

The meeting this year was held at Richmond, Virginia, Friday and Saturday, December 27 and 28, in the Jefferson Hotel. The meetings were very well attended considering the war-time conditions which have prevailed during the past year. The Jefferson Hotel, in the words of President Cooley, was "just the right sort of a place for our purpose." We missed the familiar faces of some of our members, namely Giddings, Ross, Small, Vincent, Howard, Dealey, Blackmar, and Lichtenberger. The meetings were unusually spirited in impromptu discussions.

President Cooley refused re-election for a second term. In his stead Professor F. W. Blackmar, of the University of Kansas, was elected. The other officers for the year 1919 are First Vice-President James Q. Dealey, Brown University; Second Vice-President, Edward C. Hayes, University of Illinois; Secretary-Treasurer, Scott E. W. Bedford, University of Chicago; members of the Executive Committee, Cecil C. North, J. E. Cutler, F. Stuart Chapin, Wm. J. Kerby, E. L. Earp, and Miss Grace Abbott.

President Cooley read a message of greetings from the Institut International Sociologie, René Worms, secretary. The business meeting instructed the President to send the greetings of our society to our sister society in France, and suggested an effort at co-operation between our Society and similar organizations in France, England, Italy, and Belgium.

A Committee was appointed to "inquire into what is and what may be done in teaching sociology in the grades and in the high schools."

The meeting next year will perhaps be held in Lexington, Kentucky.

UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

Among the five extension courses of lectures on problems relating to war and reconstruction arranged by the University are the courses "Race Psychology" offered by Professor Ernest L. Talbert, and "Principles and Methods of Social Service" given by members of the faculty and by local and national social workers.

COLGATE UNIVERSITY

Professor Roy W. Foley has leave of absence for the year and is serving as district educational director for the National War Work Council of the Y.M.C.A. in the camps around Baltimore.

LAFAYETTE COLLEGE

James H. S. Bossard, M.A., Ph.D., has joined the faculty of Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, as professor of sociology and economics. Professor Bossard received his Doctor's degree at the University of Pennsylvania, and during the past year has been engaged as editorial and civic writer on the staff of the Allentown Morning Call. Before that he had been head of the department of history and social science at Muhlenberg College.

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA

Professor E. C. Branson has been invited to go to France as agriculture specialist in rural life for the Army Overseas Educational Commission.

UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO

Professor G. S. Dow, formerly professor of sociology in Oberlin College, is head of the department of sociology and economics. The establishment of the department of sociology in this developing western university is indicative of the growth of interest in sociology in the Southwest.

RICE INSTITUTE

The curriculum has been enlarged by the establishment of a lectureship in civics and philanthropy. Courses for credit and public lectures, designed to train professional and lay workers for social service in the South, are being given this year. If the interest of Houston and environs justifies it, the lectureship will be continued. The present incumbent is Herbert Knight Dennis, Ph.D., Harvard, 1918, formerly assistant in sociology at the University of Illinois and a former undergraduate pupil of Professors Ward and Dealey at Brown University.

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Assistant Professor H. J. McClean has been elected president of the Los Angeles Social Service Commission.

Miss Sarah Bundy, A.M., is offering a new course this quarter entitled "The Sociological Content of Modern Drama."

The Sociology Seminar is giving its attention this year to "Social Problems and the War."

REVIEWS

Instincts in Industry. By ORDWAY TEAD. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1918. Pp. xv+221. $1.40.

This little book is an attempt to popularize certain conclusions of social psychology and to apply them to American industrial conditions. It is a study of working-class psychology with the general thesis that there is reason to believe "that an examination of human behavior in industry will disclose vital relationships between those maladjustments which we call 'labor problems,' and the functioning of that complex of inherent tendencies and acquired characteristics which is human nature." Why working-class psychology? Because industrial unrest is the result of repression, because the mind of the worker is grievously misunderstood, and because the psychology of employers has already been exploited. The main body of the book is given over to a discussion of ten fundamental instincts as they apply to industry, namely the parental and sex instincts; the instinct of workmanship, contrivance, or constructiveness; of possession, ownership, property, or acquisitiveness; of self-assertion, self-display, mastery, domination, emulation, or "give-a-lead"; of submissiveness or self-abasement; of the herd; of pugnacity; of play; of curiosity, trial, and error, or thought. We may quibble about whether these are all general instincts, but remembering that the book is not addressed to scientific psychologists but to business men, it has a useful and stimulating message of social engineering; and, in any event, it carries a very sober and restrained view of instincts. The professional social psychologist will find a great many illustrations from industrial life with which to refresh his categories.

The author shows clearly the relationship of family feeling to strikes, scabs, riots, and "ca'canny." He should have added that one motive for shortening the twelve-hour day is to eliminate that absentee parenthood which was so clearly brought out in the Pittsburgh Survey and other industrial studies. The chapter on sex is largely a summary of the work of Patten, Wallas, Freud, and C. H. Parker. Employers in the great raw industries would do well to heed the facts brought out. On the instinct of workmanship the author follows Wallas, Münsterberg, and Veblen. The loss of fine, skilled workmanship on the one hand and

the opposition to both sabotage and Taylorism on the other are both, so the author thinks, referable to this fundamental instinct. His two suggestions for getting back the sense of art in industry have been often made, namely, giving the workers a sense of the place in the scheme of things which their product occupies and giving them a greater control over the conduct of industry. In the discussion of the instinct of possession (of a job, land, home, etc.) the author emphasizes the desire for prestige, and that is true enough; but it should be completed by pointing out the discipline which property confers.

Mr. Tead is on sound sociological ground when he declares that "Individuals in whom the tendency to submit is strong are more numerous than those in whom the tendency of self-assertion assumes influential proportions." Our present productive system fosters "the nemesis of docility" through its placing in the hands of even a benevolent despot the right to hire, fire, promote, demote, fix hours, wages, and other working conditions, and which, moreover, tends to convince the employer that his employees are really his servants-his things. That we knew only too well. But to this a new point is brought out in the discussion, namely, that a considerable part of economic subjection is really pathological and might be called a definite industrial psychosis in men who are so frequently "jobless, voteless, and womanless." The analysis of the instinct of the herd frankly acknowledges that, so far, the possibility of sublimating it either in general or as it applies to industrial affairs is largely a field for future inquiry. Sublimating the instinct of pugnacity, however, seems more clearly realizable. "It is not only conceivable but likely that the struggle for sound, social, and industrial organization can for some decades to come give substantial satisfaction for the fighting spirit of many men." Another moral equivalent of war? The chapter on the play impulse is perhaps the least suggestive in the book. It might have been enriched by experiences from community centers, factory welfare work, etc. On page 173 there is a faulty citation in the footnote which credits Kirkpatrick instead of Patrick with "The Psychology of Relaxation." The debate between the supporters of instinct and intelligence as the core of social processes will find some rather fresh materials in the chapter on the instinct of curiosity or thought. Two points of special importance to industry are brought out, namely, that leisure is a prerequisite to sound thinking and that fear paralyzes thought.

The general conclusion of this stimulating little book is simply a plea for that individualization and humanizing of industry which will mean

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