Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/701

, etc., the group will suffer from clumsiness, and that in two different ways: first, physically or locally. In order that the group as a whole may take action, it must needs assemble. It is so hard, and it takes so much time, and it is so often impossible to bring the whole group together, that many movements are altogether prevented, and others are so long impeded that they are at last too late. But if this external difficulty of assemblage is overcome, the difficulty of psychical approach arises—the task of bringing a great mass to unanimity. Every farsighted action of a large body must overcome the force of doubts, objections, antagonistic interests, and especially the indifference of individuals. The social organ that exists exclusively for this purpose, and which is composed of relatively few persons, is free from a large proportion of these obstructions. Such organs of the group promote its persistence, therefore, through an increased quickness and precision of social action, in contrast with which the movements of a whole group have an inflexible and dilatory character. These physical and psychological difficulties, so to speak, may dispose a mass to appoint representatives, even in case no technical difficulties of the tasks make it inevitable to do so. Thus an ordinance of the end of the fifteenth century, in the Dürkheim district, speaks of affairs “which would be too difficult for a whole community to manage. Accordingly eight competent persons were chosen from the community. These took oath that they would do all that the community had to perform.” There are innumerable cases of similar representation of a large number to reach this external factor—agreement. A group of smaller number has merely for that reason, and without qualitative superiority, the advantage of easier mobility, of greater rapidity of assemblage, and of more precise determination, as compared with a multitude. The local difficulty appears, moreover, not alone in cases requiring the congregation of the whole group. It emerges in connection with economic exchanges. So long as exchange and purchase take place only when producers and consumers are actually in each other’s presence, the transactions are evidently