Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/871

 A PROGRAMME FOR SOCIAL STUDY 855

second, the material objects which have been provided by the members of the society for the satisfaction of their wants (wealth), and, third, the people themselves (population). Now land, the first element, which in its economic sense has come to mean all natural resources, may be divided into soil, climate, flora, and fauna, and each of these may be studied with reference to its relation to and effect upon wealth and population. Wealth, the second element, may be classified in accordance with the various purposes it serves, as wealth for sustenance and pro- tection (food, clothing, shelter, etc.), for production (all forms of capital), and for the satisfaction of intellectual, aesthetic, and religious desires. Finally, population, the third element may be roughly divided into three great classes, first, those who engage in the various industries, extracting and transforming, such as agriculture, mining, manufacturing and the like, which support the existence of a population ; second, those who are engaged in transporting persons from place to place, or in carrying commod- ities from the place where they are produced to the place where they are consumed, such for instance as railway employes and all other persons engaged in what we call the carrying trade, and third, those who "coordinate and render efficient the activities" of the former classes and "discipline and develop the psychical powers of individuals in society," as, for instance, the press, the school, the church, the government, etc. These three classes cannot, of course, be studied apart from their physical environ- ment. With that environment they have been appropriately denominated the sustaining, transporting, and regulating systems. and each of them may be found more or less highly developed in any social group. Each system is composed of a number of smaller systems or groups which the sociologist describes as organs. Take, for instance, the sustaining system. It is com- posed of as many groups, or organs, as there are extracting and transforming industries. Organs, again, may be divided into families, since the personal factor of each organ is made up of family representatives, and families are separable into individ- uals, the ultimate social units. We have thus completed our