The Behavior of Crowds: A Psychological StudyMartin, Everett Dean
Science
The Behavior of Crowds: A Psychological Study
Martin, Everett Dean
Crowds
religious sect exists only to teach "the one system of doctrine
logically deduced from Scripture."
As an illustration of this sort of reasoning, I give here a few passages
from a propagandist publication in which the crowd-will to dominate
takes the typical American method of striving to force its cult ideas
upon the community as a whole by means of restrictive moralist
legislation--in this case attempt is made to prohibit the exhibition of
motion pictures on Sunday. That the demand for such legislation is for
the most part a pure class-crowd phenomenon, designed to enhance the
self-feeling and economic interests of the "reformers," by keeping the
poor from having a good time, is I think, rather obvious. The reasoning
here is interesting, as the real motive is so thinly disguised by
pietistic platitudes that the two follow each other in alternate
succession:
(1) Sunday Movies are not needed. The people have six days and
six nights each week on which to attend the movies. Is not that
plenty of time for all?
(2) Sunday Movie Theaters commercialize the Christian Sabbath.
While "the Sabbath was made for man," _yet it is God's day_. We
have no right to sell it for business purposes. It is a day for
rest and worship, not a day for greed and gain. Sunday would,
of course, be the best day in the week financially for the
movies. It would also be the best day in the week for the open
saloons and horse-racing, but that is no reason why these should
be allowed on Sunday. _The Sabbath must not be commercialized._
(3) _Sunday Movie Theaters destroy the rest and quiet of many
people, especially those who live in the residential district_
of cities and in the neighborhood where such motion-picture
theaters are located. Great crowds pour along the streets near
such theaters, often breaking the Sunday quiet of that part of
the city by loud and boisterous talk.
Thousands of people every year are moving away from the downtown
noisy districts of the cities out into the quiet residential
districts in order to have quiet Sundays. But when a
motion-picture theater comes and locates next to their homes, or
in their block, as has been done in many cases, and great noisy,
boisterous crowds surge back and forth before their homes all
Sunday afternoon and evening, going to the movies, they are
being robbed of _that for which they paid their money when they
bought a home in that quiet part of the city_....
(4) ... Anything that injures the Christian Sabbath injures the
Christian churches, and certainly Sunday motion-picture
theaters, wherever allowed, do injure the Christian Sabbath....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account