tion to generation, always in the direction of greater effectiveness of execution of the tasks addressed by those habits and techniques. This does not imply any mystical doctrine of progress, but merely that the same old tasks of nutrition, housing, begetting offspring, and slaughter are done with more and more finesse. As an anthropologist has remarked:

What happens in an evolution of a culture is an elaboration and enrichment of these complexes, a process which we sometimes speak of as progress.

Also,

One need not be surprised that such a bewildering mass of civilization turns out to be a matter of bulk rather than complexity, for we find in it everywhere the familiar trait-complexes, each fashioned upon the same general lines.1

This relation between science and social change, if it be what it appears, carries the interesting suggestion that agitation and radical doctrines are harmless and impotent to bring change, for men do not change their habits under the spur of words and doctrines. The preaching of radical dogmas may, however, be a growing articulation of changes already taken, and taking, place; but, then, agitation is but the froth on the cup, and the technical advance producing changes are scarcely to be checked by repression of the leaders of these views. What is true of radicals who urge change is, likewise and by the same token, true of conservatives who loudly deplore change. The liberal dogma is so much the pride of the intellectuals that one dare not suggest its kinship with radicals and conservatives, in being another way of rationalizing one's habits and susceptibilities. Legislation, we may venture tentatively to point out, either accelerates or retards social changes, but seldom, if ever, does more than that. For, to pass legislation in a modern representative state, the habits of people must be fairly well changed before something new can gain sufficient support to be enacted, and, when legislation is used to postpone a change, as, for example, the anti-trust or anti-combination laws in the United States, it operates to hasten along the next further change, or stage of evolution, as we see in the development of industrial integration. Aside from scientific

* Clark Wissler, Man and Culture, pp. 78 and 97.

* See the writer's paper on "Significance of Industrial Integration," to appear in Journal of Pol. Econ. Feb. 1925.

or technical advance, then, nothing can long delay or greatly hasten social changes, despite the fears and hopes of those who see portents in every new movement to save mankind from its own folly. Yet it might be possible, by disclosing the direction in which scientific advance is carrying social life, to make the process a little less painful and surprising, and, if someone would discover a technique of habitbreaking, whereby the ancient customs and institutions cherished by the different social classes could be gently, but effectively, replaced by others more nearly alike and more congruous with the machine technique and its twentieth-century concomitants, it is indisputable that we should all feel happier and more neighborly. In other words, if we could invent a technique for more quickly sloughing off the habits of individual activity or of person-to-person relations, which we learned in the days of agricultural, handicraft life, and would readily learn the habits of group activity which the machine process demands, and which we are so hesitant about adopting (as witness the law), then we should perhaps develop a social life. Moreover, the social problems which plague us would disappear, because the conflict of habits and customs which generate them would be abolished. But such disclosures and discoveries would conform to the foregoing intimation that social change is produced by scientific advance, for they would imply the development of that for which we eagerly wait-a social science.

NEWS AND NOTES

Notes of interest to readers of the Journal should be in the hands of the editor of "News and Notes" not later than the tenth of the month preceding publication.

The American Sociological Society.-The registration, while incomplete, showed over four hundred persons to be in attendance at the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Society held in Chicago, December 29–31, 1924. Of these, 301 persons were members of the society. The attendance at the various sessions was the largest in the history of the organization.

There were three outstanding characteristics of this meeting: the dominating influence of the general sessions, the growth of special groups, and the increased interest in social research. From three to four hundred were in attendance at the stimulating sessions on social psychology, biological factors in social evolution, and international relations, while a smaller number of persons were present at an equally significant meeting on statistical sociology. Tuesday night, President Charles A. Ellwood delivered the nineteenth presidential address on the subject "Intolerance" at a joint session where President Louis I. Dublin, of the American Statistical Association, spoke on "The Statistician and the Population Problem," and President Wesley C. Mitchell, of the American Economic Association, on “Quantitative Analysis in Economic Theory."

Two new sections made their first appearance at this meeting of the society. The group on the Sociology of Religion under the leadership of Herbert N. Shenton had an auspicious initial session and laid careful plans for the development of its work. The section on the Family, with Mrs. W. F. Dummer presiding, held a luncheon conference at which Ernest R. Groves, Boston University, read a thought-provoking paper on "Modern Conditions Influencing the Family." The section on Educational Sociology, now in its third year, had two profitable meetings under the leadership of Walter R. Smith, University of Kansas. The section on the Teaching of Social Sciences in the Public Schools, under the chairmanship of Hornell Hart, Bryn Mawr College, held an informal but lively session on freedom and measure of results in teaching social science.

The oldest section in the society, that on Rural Sociology, now in its fifth year, displayed remarkable evidences of its vitality. Over one hundred persons were in attendance at its two luncheon conferences: the

first one on Monday, on "Rural Income and Standard of Living," held in co-operation with the American Farm Economic Association, the other on Tuesday noon, on "Next Steps in Rural Social Research." Its final session Tuesday afternoon was on the subject "Significant Factors in Rural Population Affecting Our Civilization." Its steering committee for next year is composed of Charles E. Lively, Ohio State University, chairman; Bruce L. Melvin, Cornell University; and E. L. Morgan, University of Missouri.

The growing interest of the society in social research was in part indicated by the session Monday morning, W. F. Ogburn, Columbia University, chairman, with its eleven ten-minute reports of research in progress, selected from over two hundred and fifty projects submitted for considertion.

The delegates of the society to the Social Science Research Council, F. S. Chapin, W. F. Ogburn, and Shelby M. Harrison, reported on the present status of the two research projects undertaken by the council: the one by the Committee on Migration, Edith Abbott, chairman, the other on the Communication of News, Herbert A. Miller, chairman. Reports were also given of the present state of work of the Committee on Social Abstracts, F. S. Chapin, chairman, and the Committee on an Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, H. B. Woolston, chairman.

A most inspiriting gathering was the fourth annual dinner, held in honor of Albion W. Small and Franklin H. Giddings. After a tribute to Professor Small by George E. Vincent, of the Rockefeller Foundation, and to Professor Giddings by James P. Lichtenberger, telegrams of appreciation were sent to these two men who of all living sociologists are the most closely identified with the history of sociology in the United States.

The annual business meeting of the society was marked by several important decisions. An amendment to the constitution was passed providing for a joint membership of husband and wife in the society, with annual dues of five dollars, entitling the holder to a single copy of the publications. Provision was made for honorary membership in the society of a limited number of distinguished foreign sociologists. A significant change in the election of officers was authorized by the passage of a resolution that the Committee on Nominations submit the names of at least two persons for each of the offices.

The officers of the society for the year 1925 are: president, Robert E. Park, University of Chicago; first vice-president, John L. Gillin, University of Wisconsin; second vice-president, Walter F. Willcox, Cornell University; secretary-treasurer, Ernest W. Burgess, University of Chicago;

elective members of the Executive Committee, David Snedden, Columbia University, John M. Gillette, University of North Dakota, William F. Ogburn, Columbia University, Howard W. Odum, University of North Carolina, James E. Cutler, Western Reserve University, and Emory S. Bogardus, University of Southern California, the last three of whom are new members of the committee.

American Council of Learned Societies.—An authoritative Dictionary of American Biography which will record the life-history of twenty thousand illustrious Americans, not including any of the living, will be undertaken by the council through a generous gift of $500,000 by the New York Times through the action of its publisher, Adolph F. Ochs.

The plan contemplates twenty volumes of about seven hundred and fifty pages each, the articles to be the fruit of fresh work by the writers most specially qualified in each case, the utmost effort to be made for accuracy, impartiality, and objective treatment. A permanent committee of management has been constituted, consisting of James F. Jameson, chairman, John H. Finley, Frederic L. Paxson, Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, Carl Van Doren, and Charles Warren, editorial work to be done in Washington, where the Library of Congress affords exceptional advantages for such labors. It is expected that the first volume will appear within four years from the present time, the remaining volumes at the rate of three volumes annually thereafter.

The American Council of Learned Societies is a federative body, constituted in 1919, and consisting of two representatives from each of the following twelve national learned societies, here named in the order of their foundation: The American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston, The American Antiquarian Society, The American Oriental Society, The American Philological Association, The Archaeological Institute of America, The Modern Language Association of America, The American Historical Association, The American Economic Association, The American Philosophical Association, The American Political Science Association, The American Sociological Society.

A National Summer School.-Utah Agricultural College, Logan, Utah, has organized a national summer school. Twenty leading educators have been selected for the faculty of the school. The representative for sociology is Charles A. Ellwood, University of Missouri.

Guillaume de Greef.-Revue Internationale de Sociologie reports the death last August of the sociologist De Greef at eighty-two years of age.