agency of the state for inspection, supervision, and publicity, the most zealous advocate of central control may well hesitate and dread the fearful possibilities of corruption in the present state of partisan politics in the United States, when a single board is armed with such tremendous powers. The evidence in favor of central control which is gathered from European experience comes, in the main, from countries where partisan influences are not decisive in the making of appointments. It is not fair to use this evidence in favor of introducing the same method when the spoils system reigns in selfish tyranny. Reform in the civil service must be at least an essential part of the system, and, perhaps, should come first.

This administrative agency may be a commissioner, whose duties and powers are defined by law, or may be a board of commissioners; or there may be a division of labor between a board and a directing commissioner. Into the details of the method we do not now enter, lest we confuse the issue. The principle which we wish to emphasize is that the control of a state institution is not a suitable function of the legislature, nor of courts, nor directly of a changing chief executive; but of a technically trained, permanent administrative agent.

The advantages of this system have already been developed, and may here be briefly summarized: Central administrative control is the only method by which the people of a commonwealth can be assured of a unified system of equitable execution of penalties; it is the best way of securing a uniform system of purchases of supplies and a uniform and reliable system of records and accounts. Such a central agency could best direct the placing, classification, and transfer of prisoners. As a permanent agency it would accumulate information within the state and be able to learn the lessons of experience throughout the world. Its regulations and orders would, in the highest degree, prevent scandal, oppression, and caprice.

It is fair to say that, taking European practice into account, the most enlightened governments of civilized countries are committed to the principle here advocated, with reasonable diversity in local devices and applications. It may be remem

bered that whenever a gross evil or scandal has arisen, the natural and businesslike procedure to prevent recurrence of the wrong has been to provide suitable regulations to define and enforce the responsibility of local officials.

2. On the second point-the correction of abuses and the improvement of conditions of local prisons-we have reached the following conclusions:

The flagrant, persistent, and notorious physical and moral evils of local prisons are, as a long history proves, incurable under any form of local control, whether by courts, sheriffs, county commissioners, or other county or municipal authority. England, the mother-country, never succeeded in carrying out the reform measures proposed by John Howard in the eighteenth century until it introduced central control of all its local prisons. The conditions in our country are not in essential particulars different.

Mere supervision and publicity, by means of visitors, is not an adequate remedy for the abuses, nor an adequate method of sustained and enlightened administration. Experience demonstrates that locally elected officials will not regard the advice of visitors who have no legal power to make and enforce regulations. Parsimony and ignorance mock at the lessons of the world's best wisdom and the world's highest law of humanity.

So far as county jails provide separate departments for the detention of persons awaiting trial or held as witnesses, they are, of course, instruments of the court and should respect the orders of courts in relation to such subjects. This is provided for in the European national regulations. But when persons are once convicted and sentenced to punishment under the penal law of a state, then the state itself should provide a method of administering its penalties down to the most minute details. Otherwise there will be the crying injustice of having as many systems of penalty as there are jailers and sheriffs in the commonwealth. That which is true of county prisons is also true of city and county workhouses, and the argument need not be repeated.

3. Lastly we recommend that all convicts who are paroled and released on condition of good behavior should be held under the

control of the same central agency of state administration. The sentence of the court is not completely executed until the last hour of the period for which the convict is held answerable to the prison authorities. Wherever, in Europe, convicts are conditionally released they remain in custody of the central ministry of justice, a judicial and administrative agency. Of course, the officers and agents of each prison should always, as now, be the persons charged with the immediate care of each paroled convict; but the final decision should still rest with the central office.

4. Supervision. A few words of interpretation and explanation seem necessary to prevent misunderstanding.

Your committee has made no recommendations in relation to "supervision," because that is of itself a large and important subject. We believe in supervision, both by the state itself and by the regulated, legally authorized agency of citizens and voluntary associations. In a free state and under republican institutions the cordial and sympathetic co-operation of citizens, under suitable regulation, is highly useful and desirable. With increasing wealth, leisure, intelligence, and philanthropy the government can count on a wiser and stronger service from competent and devoted men and women.

Among the most conspicuous and promising methods of organizing and directing this voluntary service of "honor offices" we mention: The unpaid state boards of charities and correction already known in many of our commonwealths; local committees of visitors, authorized by law to inspect and report to the governor or legislature, to instruct and inspire public opinion, and to co-operate with officials in the care of prisoners and their families; prison societies, as in New York, for the study of prison science, for visiting and inspecting establishments of correction, and for directing the humane efforts of the community into the most useful channels.

To this we may add the state conferences of charities and correction, whose committees and representatives may render valuable service in the prisons and in connection with the formation of public opinion and its embodiment in legislation.

MOOT POINTS IN SOCIOLOGY.

IV. THE PROPERTIES OF GROUP-UNITS.

IN his Study of Sociology Mr. Spencer shows that, just as the form of a pile of bricks or cannon balls is conditioned by the form of the bricks or balls themselves, and the form of crystallization is characteristic for each kind of molecule, so the properties of a social aggregate are derived from and determined by the properties of its members. We should therefore expect that, other things being equal, the diversity of any two societies would correspond to the diversity in character of the peoples composing them.

In his Principles of Sociology Mr. Spencer is more cautious. After stating that the primary factors in social phenomena are the characters of the units and the nature of the physical environment (for all minor groupings within a population this factor, being common to all, may be ignored), he goes on to enumerate certain derived factors, one of these being the reciprocal influence of the society and its units:

As soon as a combination of men acquires permanence, there begin actions and reactions between the community and each member of it, such that either affects the other in nature; the control exercised by the aggregate over its units tends ever to mould their activities and sentiments and ideas into congruity with social requirements; and these activities, sentiments, and ideas, in so far as they are changed by changing circumstances, tend to remould the society into congruity with themselves.

The principle that seemed so self-evident to Mr. Spencer has not passed without challenge. De Greef protests against the proposition that the character of an aggregate is determined by the essential characters of its constituent units, on the ground that it gives up the existence of a distinct social science. Says he:

If the social aggregates are only the larger and more complex image of the units that compose them, if social science is concerned only with the morphological or functional relations between the series of units and the

resulting aggregates, it evidently follows that, although there are social phenomena, these are not markedly distinct from biological or psychological phenomena.

Gumplowicz, unlike Spencer, begins with groups, not with individuals. Human aggregates are the true social elements, and they are sufficiently simple and uniform in their behavior to allow social laws to be formulated. In its interaction with other groups each group is a perfect unit. It acts solely in its own interest and knows no standard of conduct but success. However the individual may blunder, the collectivity never errs in seizing and applying the right means to gain its end.

The individual is to be understood through his social group, instead of the group through its component individuals. The great error of individualistic psychology is the assumption that man thinks. The truth is, it is not the man that thinks, but the community. The source of his thoughts is the social medium in which he lives, the social atmosphere which he has breathed from childhood. The individual unconsciously derives his qualities from his group, and the qualities of his group are determined by the nature of its dominant interests, its special lifeconditions, and its situation with respect to other groups.

It is clear that this theory of the relation between the aggregate and its units is not intended to apply to voluntary or ephemeral associations, but only to those great permanent groupshorde, tribe, community, social class-into which we are born and from which we rarely escape.

In his monograph on Social Differentiation Simmel gives reasons why the character of a group-unit does not correspond either intellectually or morally to that of its average member, but, as social development proceeds, falls more and more below it. He points out that the differentiation and specialization that take place as the social mass increases make difficult the recovery of a common plane of thinking and feeling when some occasion arises for joint action. This plane, if it does actually get established, is sure to be low, because those who are mentally beneath this plane cannot possibly rise to it, whereas those who are above it in intelligence or ideals can stoop and re-enter it. In a differ