Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/60

 46 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

upon conversation. Before the era of the press the subjects of conversation were connected with the life of the village or the parish. Different communities talked about different matters, but the same subjects were discussed for indefinitely long periods of time. The press has unified conversation in space and diversi- fied it in time. All the land over the people are conversing about the same matters this morning, but tomorrow they will be talk- ing about a totally different set of topics. This increasing identity of conversation over wider and wider areas is of the utmost importance in developing the power of public opinion. Undoubtedly the spread of democratic ideas is partially due to the increase in the number and complexity of public opinions. But the former has in its turn reacted upon public opinion, and topics which one hunded and fifty years ago were reserved for the conversation of court circles are now discussed with interest and more or less intelligence by all classes. The advantages of conversation as an organ of public opinion are apparent. No special equipment is required ; no pecuniary expense is involved ; it is not necessary to interest or assemble large numbers of people, and yet all classes and conditions of men can with equal advantage participate in this mode of public-opinion-making. In one's home, or at the club, in the leisure hour after dinner in the society of friends, under the soothing influence of a good cigar, conversation, so far from taxing our energies, is a pleasure which satisfies one of the most fundamental demands of our nature, the gratification of our social instinct. In conversation everything is laid bare; nothing is covered up for the sake of appearances. Men talk about a great many things which they would never write about. Its limitations are likewise obvious. Without the assistance of the press conversation can only busy itself with the gossip of the village ; where it is concerned with the affairs of the nation it is so diffuse that it requires itself organs to become definitely articulate. In the multiplicity of voices the words that are uttered are lost; other agencies must be employed to gather and sift the responses of the oracle.

Correspondence has been a most useful organ of public opinion. It is conversation carried on at a distance, and both