Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921 edition. Excerpt: ... VI IMMIGRANT INSTITUTIONS There is an obvious resemblance between the behavior of a Russian mir or a South Slav zadruga (see documents 21, 22, 23, p. 31) and that of a pack, flock, or herd of animals. In each case there is some mechanism for securing unanimity--the thing that makes all the sheep follow the leader over the wall. In the animal it is instinctive, predetermined in the nervous system. In the simple community there is, plus the DEGREESgregarious instinct, a process of defining the situation by discussion (and the latter element is of course the basis of the democratic organization of society). Our discussion of the primary group organization (Chapter II) and of the types of demoralization in America--some of the latter even reaching insanity (see document 56, p. 72)-- show that the immigrant does not know how to live except as member of a group. The situation of the new immigrant would be singularly helpless here if he did not find some points of identity with his previous life, and these he does in fact find among those of his own group or nationality who have preceded him. He almost always DEGREEScomes to friends; frequently they have sent him his ship ticket, and he boards with them until he has found employment and "worked back" the ship ticket. And the different immigrant groups have formed spontaneously in America, organizations that reproduce to some extent the home society or replace it with forms more adapted to_the needs of the immigrant here. These organizations are not, in fact, pure heritages, but the products of the immigrants' efforts to adapt their heritages to American conditions. The immigrant, therefore, comes to a society of "his own people, and this society, not * native American society, is the matrix which gives him...
