CROWDS: Understanding the Dynamics and Power of Collective Behavior (2024)

By STEWART FRANKLIN

Delve into the fascinating world of collective human behavior with "Crowds: A moving-Picture of Democracy." This insightful book explores the dynamics, psychology, and power of crowds, offering a comprehensive understanding of how and why people come together in large groups. Whether you're interested in social psychology, event management, or c

• Language: English
• Publisher: STEWART FRANKLIN
• Release date: Jun 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9783689441715

STEWART FRANKLIN

Stewart Franklin is a renowned sociologist and author, known for his deep insights into human behavior and societal dynamics. With a career spanning over three decades, Franklin has authored several influential books and numerous academic papers on collective behavior and democracy.

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Stewart Franklin

Crowds: A moving-Picture of Democracy (Gerald Stanley Lee)

Copyright © 2024 by Stewart Franklin

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

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Contents

1. Chapter 1

2. Chapter II. The Crowd Scare

3. Chapter III. The Machine Scare

4. Chapter IV. The Strike—An Invention for Making Crowds Think

5. Chapter V.The Crowd-Man—An Invention for Making Crowds See

6. Chapter VI. The Imagination of Crowds

7. Chapter VII. Imagination About the Unseen

8. Chapter VIII. The Crowd’s Imagination About the Future

9. Chapter IX. The Crowd’s Imagination About People

10. Chapter X. A Democratic Theory of Human Nature

11. Chapter XI.Doing as One Would Wish One Had Done in Twenty Years

12. Chapter XII. New Kinds and New Sizes of Men

13. Book Two. Letting the Crowds Be Good

14. Book Three.Letting the Crowd be Beautiful

15. Book Four. Crowds and Heroes

16. Book Five. Good News and Hard Work

17. Epilogue

1

Chapter 1

Book One. Crowds and Machines

Book One. Crowds and Machines

TO CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

"A cracked and broken old man

Abandoned on this wild coast far, far away from home,

Twelve gloomy months, pent by the sea and black rebellious brows… I don’t know the end; everything is in You. I don’t know how big or tiny. Oh, the wide spaces and lands!…

And these things that I just noticed, what do they mean?

As though by some miracle, a heavenly hand had opened my eyes,

Huge, shadowy figures grinned through the sky and air.

And I hear greetings in new tongues as innumerable ships go by on the far-off waves."

Chapter I. Where are We Going?

The view of Ludgate Hill as it runs at the base of Fleet Street is the best representation of my religion that I am aware of. It may appear to many to be a somewhat bizarre half-heathen altar, but it contains the three things that I most adore my Maker with in this world—cathedrals, crowds, and machines—the three things that it would be the breath of religion to me to offer to a God collectively.

I feel oddly happy as I look over the railway bridge, hear all the small silent engines murmuring across the street, see the large, distant, otherworldly church above, and watch the huge black crowd moving up and down. It’s similar to getting a photo of one’s entire universe taken.

I always enjoy taking a quick peek outside of my little spot at Clifford’s Inn and returning to my fireplace. Before starting work, I take a time to sit motionless, gaze into the flames, and reflect. The enormous noise outside the Court collects everything—that vast, limitless, little, summarized world beyond—and throws it softly against my peaceful windows as I sit and reflect.

And when one gives it any thought, the very concept of it makes one return to their task with a mixture of terror and triumph. Send one back to one’s work, O crowd with its scurrying, its flurrying machines, and its god!

I leave again in the afternoon and make my way along the Strand, past the throngs of people, in the direction of Charing Cross.

I can’t get enough of observing the drays, the horses, the streaming taxis, and all these little, shivering, gliding groups of men and women when a small area of the street is left between the cabs and flows quickly, like mercury globules.

Above all, though, is what I enjoy most about looking up at that enormous street’s second story, which comes in over one like waves, like seas—all these curious, happy people on top of ‘buses; these sweet, funny, way-up people on benches; these Americans, world-worshippers, and sight-worshippers—all these little scuttling groups, hundreds of them, rolling past.

Seated on the driver’s elbow in the front seat of a horse-drawn bus, I gaze down over the edge of the chasm that engulfs ears and necks, that far-off, low area where the horses appear so small, so helpless, and so forgotten below.

The roadway is the spirit’s genuine route. The miles of faces, the tottering, toddling, swinging miles of legs and stomachs; the things they wear, the food they eat, the things they pour down their little throats, the things they pray to, curse, worship, and con artists—all of this is there for you to walk through, roll through, or swing on top of a bus through.

The way hundreds of things start happening to an American all at once is one of the first things that hits him when he leaves New York and finds himself walking along the Strand instead of Broadway nearly before he realizes it.

Of course, in addition to everything that is happening to him—the ‘buses, the taxis, the Wren steeples, the vast streams of unfamiliar sights in the streets, the things that happen to his eyes, ears, feet, hands, and body—he is also experiencing other things. For example, he is leaping through the ground and swimming up in space on top of a ‘bus through this enormous, glorious, yellow mist of people.

Naturally, he races through the metropolis of New York in a tunnel of his own ideas and concerns and continues to his destination; New York, for the most part, does not force things to happen to his head. It takes him five minutes in London before he starts to realize how much of his thinking is done for him. He was driven to contemplate for miles on end—miles of comparing and expecting—by the city’s roadways.

Above the streets he drives and walks on, he discovers in London an other, full set of streets that pique his curiosity: the larger, quieter streets of England, the streets of people’s thoughts. He also reads those enormous roadways and the major publications.

Naturally, an American initially views the English in the third person.

About three days later, he starts, semi-unconsciously, to occasionally transition into what appears to be a loose, ambiguous first person plural.

The first person plural then develops.

Eventually he discovers that his thoughts have become more of a universal, carefree, joyful editorial We. As the people of the world pass by, he exclaims, Where are WE going? as New York, London, Chicago, and Sheffield float together through his mind. He even notices Paris, shimmering faintly over there, and a dim round world.

Thus, a man, a new American, is grasped by London, which is imposing, teeming, and world-suggesting, and it stretches him, strains him.

Naturally, an American initially views the English in the third person.

About three days later, he starts, semi-unconsciously, to sometimes transition into what appears to be a loose, ambiguous first person plural.

The first person plural then develops. Eventually he discovers that his thoughts have become more of a universal, carefree, joyful editorial We. As the people of the globe pass by, he exclaims, Where are WE going? as New York, London, Chicago, and Sheffield float together through his mind. He even notices Paris, shimmering faintly over there, and a dim round world.

Thus, a man, a new American, is grasped by London, which is imposing, teeming, and world-suggesting, and it stretches him, strains him.

The vast, peaceful roundness of the planet was laid down upon his spirit by a vast wave, which helped to calm his soul.

After that broad stretch of water, lying there by itself night after night, nothing is exactly the same. The gently spherical land slopes away from one on all sides, in the middle of space. Then, all of a sudden, almost before one realizes it, that peaceful area that is still around one may find oneself propelled out of the earth into the night into the large, bright noise of Trafalgar Square.

And now there are the unexpectedly large throngs of people, even one’s own fellow humans rushing by. Observing the faces of those rushing by, one may ask, Where are we going? Observing the stars, one asks, "WHERE ARE WE GOING?

I learned in a matter of minutes that the London I was in that night—when I was propelled out of the earth and stood disoriented in the Square—was a city under siege and had been overrun. Within a day, a few men had awoken and said to London, No one is allowed inside. Nobody is allowed to leave."

I had finally arrived in the world’s capital, a large, proud metropolis with troops camped out with her trains and her big, new, confident inventions all about her!

With her lengthy trains for never-ending lines of passengers entering and exiting, as well as her electric lights, air brakes, motor vehicles, and aerial postal service, it felt a bit odd to be informed that her magnificent stations were.

And no one was aware.

The following day, I traversed the city’s quieter streets, the massive, bustling dailies that the entire world passes through, followed by the quieter weeklies, the monthlies, which are more dignified and resemble private parks, and the quarterlies, which are also thoughtful, high-minded, occasionally absent, and a little quieter.

And I discovered that they were all asking the same peculiar questions, such, Where are we going?

And no one was aware.

The same questions that had followed me out of the buildings in New York were being asked again here. New York was in the dark. London was in the dark now.

Upon trying out notebooks and periodicals, books crossed my mind.

As a lone American walking past all these noble, haunted doorways and windows, I could not help but stare around. How could I not? For your idealists or interpreters, your men who bring in the sea upon your streets and the mountains on your roof-tops; who still see the wide, still reaches of men’s souls beyond the faint and tiny roar of London.

I could not help but search for your poets and men of imagination—those who, by molding their minds, create visions and mold the fates of countries.

It pains me to say that. How would an American approach you?

All I can tell is what I witnessed in those initial days of fresh start: John Galsworthy was out taking pictures with his camera, which was beautiful, sad, and foggy; Arnold Bennett was stitching big, curious tapestries of little things religiously for twenty-four hours a day; H.G. Wells was retorting, experimenting, and mixing up his pots and kettles of humanity in a great stew of steam, half-hopeful, half-dismayed, and rolling lustily through the wide, sunny spaces of His Own Mind; Bernard Shaw, the eternal boy, was throwing stones on the eternal curbstone of the world, and the Bishop of Birmingham was delivering a beautiful, helpless sermon.

When a new American arrives in what he had always assumed to be this trim, orderly, grown-up, articulate England after leaving his own large, hurried, formless, speechless country, he finds himself staring at the vast yellow mist of people, that vast bewilderment of faces, of the rich and the poor, coming and going they cannot say where—at first, he naturally assumes it must be because they cannot speak; and when he looks to those who speak for them, to their writers or interpreters, he The most incredible achievement for an artist or man of imagination in the contemporary day is to imagine a society or vision for our current machine-civilized state, a shared expectation for people that will inspire them to live.

If Leonardo were still around today, he most likely would have neglected his bridge-building for the time being, neglected the Mona Lisa, and written a book—an ecstatic novel about regular people. He would emphasize democracy and convey it in a way that only a great and genuine aristocrat, genius, or artist could. It takes a vision or anticipation for a great society to come to pass before men can see it together, strive toward it, and turn it into reality. discovers that they are confused and that they are repeatedly asking the same question, Where are we going? that we in America also ask ourselves.

This will need to be finished in a book first. The contemporary world is gathering its ideas. It endeavors to compose its own bible.

The one truly remarkable achievement of the Hebrew mind is the Hebrew Bible, which the rest of the world had to borrow in order to own one. They did not create a civilization, but they did create a book that the rest of the world could use to create civilizations; for two millennia, all other countries have been moral slaves to the Hebrews thanks to this book. The essence and purpose of this book, which was also what made it so magnificent, was that it was the most sublime, enduring, massive,

If he can avoid it, no guy in a world this fascinating ever publishes a book. This book would never have been written if Mr. Bernard Shaw, Mr. Chesterton, or Mr. Wells had been so kind as to write a book for me in which they answered my query and said, more or less authoritatively, what type of world I want to live in. The book is not presented as an argument, as a nation-machine, as a system, or as an attempt to organize the globe. One thing that everyone can legitimately say about this book is that one

Wanting something is the first, and most sensible, step towards achieving it in this life. It would seem that expressing one’s desires would be the next stage. However, such is seldom the case. Usually, it entails wanting something more and more intensely until one is able to communicate it.

This is especially true when one’s desire is to enter a whole new environment. These are all the other individuals who need to be questioned. And nothing occurs unless someone wants it badly enough to express it, to get it outside of themselves, and maybe even make it catch.

If one had to single out one quality above another as the reason why Bernard Shaw, despite his brilliance, is such an ineffectual leader or literary statesman,

To be honest, I already knew, almost depressingly well, that I did not want practically any of these things, and having John Galsworthy out taking daily pictures of them has not made my situation any better. any I wanted was not to have them harder. And Mr. Wells’s measles and children’s sicknesses, too. I already knew these were not what I wanted. And even if it were a little, wonderful world instead of this real, big one with rain, sunshine, wind, and people in it, Mr. Shaw’s entire, heroic, almost noble collection of things he does not want would not provide me or any other man with furniture to make a world with.

It has thus seemed to me that any man today, even if he is quite unimportant, who would paint the picture of his heart’s desire in a public place like a book or who would project his most urgent and immediate ideals onto a screen where everyone could see them, would be performing a significant service. If a man’s only goal in life was to discover what other men desire, the easiest way to do that would be for him to state clearly what he wanted, so that we could all compare notes.

Speaking for a planet has passed, but if enough of us do stand up for ourselves, perhaps the Earth will respond.

I can only speak for myself, of course. While I acknowledge that occasionally I may sit by a brook in the woods and be content, I also find that most people in the woods are somewhat bizarre and pitiful due to the machinery that are all around me. If, however, as is often the case, I would like to have other people about—people who do not spoil things. Many of them find it impossible to sit by brooks, and when they gaze up at the sky, it appears to them like a large, blue lead roof covering their lives. Maybe I’m being self-centered, but I can’t stand it when I see folks staring up at the sky like this.

Therefore, as I have observed my fellow humans, I have come to realize that what I want most in this world is the inspired employer, also known as the inspired millionaire or organizer; this is the man who can take the machines off of people’s backs and out of their minds, freeing the machines to serve their bodies and souls.

If an inspired employer is ever to materialize, it will require the social imagination of the populace to foster a mood of expectation and challenge toward the wealthy among the vast majority of people. I think the world is about to take one final stand in favor of idealism, great individuals, and crowds.

Probably the most obvious type of great man for masses to get familiar with is an everyday great man or business statesman—a guy who embodies the values of all social classes and demonstrates this via his business dealings.

This individual is known to me as the Crowdman.

I can’t say that I’ve met the exact kind of inspired millionaire I had in mind, but I have known a lot of men who have made me think about him and what he will become, and I’m willing to wager that he is, at least in part, all around me in the real world right now. I’m here to state that if it is demonstrated to me that there is no such individual,

Trying to govern a society without dreams—especially an economic one—is the epitome of visionary leadership. The reason that so-called wicked people are so widely permitted to rule our society is because, in this environment, having dreams is preferable to having none at all.

In the end, desire is the one economics component that should be taken seriously.

The next step in economics will be the formulation of a cunning, tainted, and attainable ideal. Only principles have sparked the incorrect passions, and only ideals have the power to stoke the correct ones.

When the time comes, I believe it will need to be more than just a summary of ideas, a critique, or an analysis—rather, it will need to be a moving image.

This literature will have to be released gradually, and from what I’ve been able to gather, the first book, when it does, might be a book that proves nothing, a book that is just a cry, a prayer, or a challenge; it will tell the story of what one man has yearned for, and, with God’s grace, of what he will have, given enough street photos of men and women pouring their weariness and dullness over him.

There is a way in which just praising God has become outdated. Now is the moment for men to pray in this dire situation where the world is heading toward an unknown tragedy or glory.

Although this is how I see things, I would never want somebody to think that I am the one bringing good news. One has a wonderful everyday journey with the world, more like that. There have been moments when it felt like it had to start over each morning. I stroll along Fleet Street towards Ludgate Hill every day.

Every morning, I take another look at that magnificent representation of any faith. I see the dome, which is serene, lofty, and full of hope, together with the small amount of singing or prayer that humanity has raised to heaven. Will the Dome bring the Man to me? Gazing upwards, I see the unfamiliar and enthusiastic machinery hastening over the bridge.

Abruptly, I find myself surrounded by hordes of people, half-consciously standing by a high iron fence in Bermondsey, observing that smooth asphalt playground where, for once, one sees the dead pressed close to the living, pushed to the edges, their gravestones serenely tilted up against the walls. I watch the kids run and shout through the pickets, their little funny faces mockingly dressed, their frowzily happy faces, the stored-up sunshine of a thousand years shining faintly through the dirt, out through the generations in their little faces, Will the Man come to me out of these?

The youngsters rush and yell as the tombstones lean against the wall. With my hopes and concerns mixed together, I watch them with the tombstones slanted against.

I thus have three anxieties, one for each of my three religions.

There is the Machine fear, lest the crowd should be overswept by its machines and become like them; and the Crowd fear, lest the crowd should overlook its mighty innumerable and personal need of great men; and there is also the daily fear for the Church, lest the Church should not understand crowds and machines and grapple with crowds and machines, interpret them and glory in them and appropriate them for her own use and for God’s —lest the Church should turn away from the crowds and the machines and graciously and idly bow down to Herself.

2

Chapter II. The Crowd Scare

There there was a time when a guy was born on this earth in a quite solitary manner. Out of all of eternity, a small group of people prepared to tend to him. His upbringing consisted of hills, stars, and a neighbor or two, until he reached man’s estate. Finally reaching the top of the farthest hill, he stood on the edge of everything, on the line dividing the sky and the earth, which had always felt like the edge of life to him. Gazing out over the freedom of the world, he asked himself, What shall I be in this world I see, and whither shall I go in it? in his heart. And the earth, the sky, the rivers, and the oceans.

The first manufacturing principle is the crowd principle. The market is controlled by the producer who can bring the greatest number of men and dollars together; once in charge, he can bring in the maximum number of men and dollars as well as all of the men and all of the money. Thus, the company engaged in manufacturing.

The first distribution principle is known as the crowd principle. When a guy can get more men to buy something from him, he can purchase the most of it at the lowest possible price, which in turn attracts more men to buy from him. Once he has purchased the item at a lower cost than any other man could, selling it is the next logical step.

A plot of land’s worth is determined by the number of footprints that walk by it in twenty-four hours. A railroad’s worth is determined by how many people are unable to stay still in its vicinity. The railroad operates its trains on their behalf if there are a lot of these persons. Trains won’t be operated for the few, even if they are prophets and heroes like Dantes, Savonarolas, and George Washington. In our day and age, the railroad is the quintessential property and symbol of property. A railroad’s whole worth is contingent upon its ability to manage a crowd, be it one that seeks to be where another crowd is or one that demands a big deal of something.

The similar tendency is seen in theology. Every worldview is prone to numerical measurement; rather than recognizing the few immeasurable truths, people tend to recoil in the face of a plethora of little data. People who are powerless and subjugated by large groups of people are inevitably led to believe in an all-powerful God. Standing amidst the throng of His laws and the structures of His worlds, He is a pale First Cause to the nonreligious and a Great Sentimentality far above in the heavens to the religious, who, in a sort of vast weakness (as the Puritans would say), seems to want everyone to be good and hopes they will, but is unsure of what to do if they are not.

Moving from theology to social science, we get to the most defining outcome of the crowd principle available at the moment. Socialism, the millennium machine, and the Corliss engine of progress are presented to us head-on. It would be pointless to dispute the Socialist’s assertion that there is a significant wrong somewhere, as he is undoubtedly more correct than most of us. However, there is no way to defend him further than to say that he is sincerely working to bring about a wrong that will eventually eclipse all of our current wrongs. In its current form, the word socialism can refer to a variety of things, although.

However, socialism’s primary significance in this regard stems from the fact that it transcends sociology. It has developed into a comprehensive philosophy of life, permeating practically every aspect of our existence with its nuanced mockery of human nature. We have the cash register to train our clerks to be morally upright people, and fare recorders are observed nourishing the souls of conductors mile after mile.

Consciences are bought by corporations by the bulk. Every street car has these draped over the door. One works consciences by tugging a strap. The Australian ballot was created to enable males be sufficiently macho to vote as they saw fit, and liverymen have cycle meters to assist clients in telling the truth.

Manufacturing firms are the driving force behind everything. It is the socialist spirit; the notion that, given enough time and effort, a machine will undoubtedly replace humans—not just their hands and feet, but also all the archaic and clumsy virtues like courage, patience, vision, common sense, and religion itself—if we can only find it.

However, we rely on machines not just to provide us with the goods we desire but also to process our desires and make decisions. A guy forms a club to find out what other men think of him, and he organizes a convention to get absolute certainty. From the Launderers’ League and the National Undertakers’.

Our ideas all run afoul of the constitution. Without a chairperson, we are unable to reason. Our whims have secretaries; our fancies have by-laws. Books are like a club. A society is philosophy. Mass gatherings are our reforms. We live in a summer school culture. Without Carnegie Hall and forty vice presidents, we would be unable to grieve for our great dead. A permanent committee oversees the perpetuity of a genius, and we honor our poets with trustees. Associations are what charity is. A series of resolutions is theology. The goal of religion is to communicate and multiply. We use audiences to astonish the impenitent, boards to convert the world, and delegates to redeem the lost. But how could Jesus of Nazareth have accomplished such greatness if he hadn’t been on a committee?

This indicates that it takes 10,000 men to get the average modern guy to think, not that he doesn’t think at all. His soul and creed are those of the mob. Driven by strong beliefs and inspired by various gatherings, he manages to survive and fills his mind with joy, praise, and good vibes. After the group has warmed up sufficiently, he urges them on, gives orders, moves among the people on their crutches, and then sets his crutch down on the globe, hoping that it would stir up something. There is a new prejudice on the planet that has been added to the bigotry of the guy who knows because he speaks for himself:

It’s true that the habit of being in the crowd has gotten so strong over us and has taken over the atmosphere of the moment that even you and me, dear readers, have occasionally felt a little awkward about being in front of a small group of people. Attending a presentation with a small crowd is an important experience. You’ll witness individuals slyly observing and enumerating one another. You will make comparisons. You will remember the smug atmosphere of the previous sizable gathering you were honored to be a part of, seated in the identical chairs and buzzing confidently among themselves before to the start of the presentation. The silence of disappointment at a small gathering by itself, the embarrassment of both parties involved, the coldness in it,

This is something that belongs to the past and the unavoidable future. The infinite value of the individual, the countless effects of a single great teaching man, permeating every student who knows him, becoming a part of the universe, a part of the fiber of thought and existence to every student who knows him Despite having many excellent institutions, a large number of men teaching and learning there, and a large number of men graduating from them, we are still unable to create enough college presidents to go around. The reality that nearly often, in this