What are the practical devices by which suggestibility and mobility are increased in a community or in an individual?
Are there pathological conditions in communities corresponding to hysteria in individuals? If so, how are they produced and how controlled?
To what extent is fashion an indication of mobility?
What is the difference in the manner in which fashions and customs are transmitted?
What is social unrest, and what are the conditions under which it manifests itself?
What are the characteristics of a progressive, what the characteristics of a static, community in respect to its resistance to novel suggestions?
What mental characteristics of the gypsy, of the hobo, and of the nomad generally can be traced to these nomadic habits?
The stock exchanges and the mob.—The exchanges, upon which we may watch the fluctuation of prices in response to the news of economic conditions in different parts of the world, are typical. Similar readjustments are taking place in every department of social life, where, however, the devices for making these readjustments are not so complete and perfect. For example, the professional and trade papers, which keep the professions and the trades informed in regard to new methods, experiences, and devices, serve to keep the members of these trades and professions abreast of the times, which means that they facilitate readjustments to changing conditions.
There is, however, this important distinction to be made: Competition in the exchanges is more intense; changes are more rapid and, as far as the individuals directly concerned, more momentous. In contrast with such a constellation of forces as we find on the exchanges, where competing dealers meet to buy and sell, so mobile a form of social organization as the crowd and the mob exhibits a relative stability.
It is a commonplace that decisive factors in the movements of crowds, as in the fluctuations of markets, are psychologic. This means that among the individuals who make up the crowd, or who compose the public which participates in the movements reflected in the market, a condition of instability exists which corresponds to what has been defined elsewhere as crisis. It is true of the exchanges, as it is of crowds, that the situation they represent is always critical, that is to say, the tensions are such that a slight cause may precipitate an enormous effect. The current euphemism, “the psychological moment,” defines such a critical condition.