The psychology of personal, oratorical, and printed persuasion by means of which support is won for particular symbols has yet to be written. William I. Thomas long ago commented on the quasi-sexual approach of the revivalist to the audience. Some orators are of an intimate, sympathetic, pleading type, and resemble the attempts made by some males to overcome the shyness of the female. Other orators fit into the feared yet revered father-pattern; others are clowns who amuse by releasing much repressed material; others address the socially adjusted and disciplined level of the personality. Thus the relationship between the speaker and the audience has its powerful emotional aspects, which are not yet adequately explored. There are some who excel in face-to-face relations, but who make a poor showing out on the platform. The processes of symbolization can be studied with particular ease when widespread and disturbing changes occur in the life-situation of many members of society. Famine, pestilence, unemployment, high living costs, and a catalogue of other disturbances may simultaneously produce adjustment problems for many people. One of the first results is to release affects from their previous objects, and to create a state of susceptibility to proposals. All sorts of symbols are ready, or readily invented, to refix the mobile affects. “Take it to the Lord in prayer,” “Vote socialist,” “Down with the Jews,” “Restore pep with pepsin,” “Try your luck on the horses”--all sorts of alternatives become available. The prescriptions are tied up with diagnoses, and the diagnoses in turn imply prescriptions. “A sinful world,” “Wall Street,” “a collapse in the foreign market”--all sorts of diagnoses float about, steadily defining and redefining the situation for the individuals affected. Political symbols must compete with symbols from every sphere of life, and an interesting inquiry could be made into the relative polarizing power of political and other forms of social symbolism. Certainly the modern world expects to fire the health commissioner rather than burn a witch when the plague breaks out. The competition among symbols to serve as foci of concentration for the aroused emotions of the community leads to the survival of a small number of master-symbols. The mobilization of the community for action demands economy in the terms in which objectives are put. The agitation for the control of the liquor traffic passed through many phases in America until finally legal prohibition became the chief dividing-line. To prohibit or not to prohibit grew into the overmastering dichotomy of public thought.