Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/753

 THE SOCIAL MARKING SYSTEM 739

effort, we could lift any one vicious person up to the level of the men whose conduct is unobjectionable; that by expending two units of the same kind of effort we could lift any one major misdemeanant to the same standard level; that by expending three units of the same kind of effort, we could lift any one of the minor felons, and by expending four units of the same kind of effort we could lift any one of the major felons, to our standard level. Then, by expending i unitX34-2 unitsX2+3 units X2+4 unitsX2, or 21 units in all, or 1.75 units per capita, for the whole group of twelve persons, we should convert the entire sub-homogeneous group of twelve persons into a group

Fig. 9. — Measurement of Sub-Homogeneity.

perfectly homogeneous in respect of a standardized conduct.

Students of the physical sciences who are accustomed to measure physical phenomena of every description by the number of units of effort, or of energy, necessary to transform them from one state into another, will assent to the proposition that if we could thus actually transform any heterogeneous group of human beings into a homogeneous group, the number of units of effort necessarily expended in the process could be taken as an accurate measure of the total sub-homogeneity of the original group, and that the total number of units of effort so expended, divided by the total number of individuals in the transformed group, could be taken as a measure of the per-capita degree of sub-homogeneity of the original group.

Is it legitimate to conceive of any heterogeneous group as ideally transformable by such a procedure, and then to assume

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