Le Bon describes the organization thus effected in a chance-met collection of individuals as a "collective mind," and refers to the group, transitory and ephemeral though it be, as a "single being."
The positive factors in determining the organization of the crowd are then:
(1) A condition of rapport among the members of the group with a certain amount of contagious excitement and heightened suggestibility incident to it.
(2) A certain degree of mental isolation of the group following as a consequence of the rapport and sympathetic responsiveness of members of the group.
(3) Focus of attention; and finally the consequent.
(4) Collective representation.
C. TYPES OF MASS MOVEMENTS
1. Crowd Excitements and Mass Movements: The Klondike Rush[308]
It was near the middle of July when the steamer Excelsior arrived in San Francisco from St. Michael's, on the west coast of Alaska, with forty miners, having among them seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars' worth of gold, brought down from the Klondike. When the bags and cans and jars containing it had been emptied and the gold piled on the counters of the establishment to which it was brought, no such sight had been seen in San Francisco since the famous year of 1849.