Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/830

 8l6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

as do countries that practice the aristocratic type of assimilation, though here the marked distinction between city and country life still maintains. Bryce says of the United States : "The nation is not an aggregate of classes. They exist within it, but they do not make it up. You are not struck by their political significance as you would be in any European country. The people is one people, although it occupies a wider territory than any other nation, and is composed of elements from many quarters." 1 Generally speaking, the greater the extent and identity of the social environment for all the members of any group, the more rapid will be the assimilation. In societies where the aristocratic type of assimilation prevails, isolation, both class and group, is the condition of the social environment. In the period of nation- forming the all-important thing is to build up a social unity of heterogeneous elements. While the type is "setting," it is essential that there shall be no disturbance from the outside. Hence the practice of early governments in discouraging foreign intercourse and adopting a policy of strict isolation. Isolation of group from group is accompanied by isolation of class from class, only the minimum of group-unity just enough to hold it together being desired. In the society practicing the demo- cratic type of assimilation, on the contrary, free intercourse is the condition of the social environment. Easy means of communi- cation and expression make it possible to infect a great mass of people with the same ideas. Thus public opinion vibrates from end to end of the land, and touches even the most ignorant. This is true in the United States, where "the organs through which opinion finds expression" are "more adequate as well as more abundant .... than they are in any other country." 3

1 The American Commonwealth, Vol. II, p. 296.

a "In the United States public opinion is the opinion of the whole nation, with

little distinction of social classes Nor is there any one class or set of men, or

any one ' social layer,' which more than another originates ideas and builds up political doctrine for the mass. The opinion of the nation is the resultant of the views, not of a number of classes, but of a multitude of individuals, diverse no doubt from one another, but for the purposes of politics far less diverse than if they were members of groups defined by social rank or by property." (BRYCE, The American Commonwealth, Vol. II, p. 260 ; also ibid., p. 272.)