Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/90

 76 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

CHAPTER XIV. THE THREEFOLD PROBLEM OF EACH INSTITUTION.

With the foregoing brief survey of the more important social institutions, we are now able to return to our elementary discus- sion of coercion, and persuasion and to verify the distinctions there made. By an institution is meant an enduring social relation based upon one of the elementary psychic capacities of the indi- vidual. Being a social relation, its essential qualities are found in the kind of dealings with one another which the members of the institution carry on. The motive which responds to the persuasive sanction is that elementary psychic suceptibility which is the basis of the institution, while the motive responding to the coercive sanction is the fear of pain or material privation. We have, then, in each institution a threefold problem, corresponding to the threefold division of the material basis, the psychic basis and coercion. First, a technical problem, based on knowledge and skill ; second, a persuasive problem based on tact and eloquence; third, an ethical or political problem, based on the power to choose the end to which these services shall be directed. We shall consider each problem separately in the several institutions.

A rough survey of all the activities of all the people living in a society shows that by far the greater part are engaged directly in the industrial institution, in working up the material of nature for the satisfaction of human wants. They are manu- facturing, transporting, and delivering goods, or fitting up machin- ery, buildings, and highways for these purposes. The work is planned by architects and engineers, whether mechanical, electrical, or civil, who are more or less equipped in the technology of their particular callings, and in the sciences of mathematics, physics, and chemistry. The work is executed by foremen, arti- sans, and laborers, who have varied skill in handling the materials to be worked up. This is the technical problem of the industrial institution. It deals with the material of nature. As far as this problem is concerned, there is no difference whether the work is