people live and toil. Certain matters are
issues in every community. It is not easy to decide what shall be done
with the poor, the unfortunate, and the weak-willed members of
society. Some problems are peculiar to the country, the city, or the
nation, like the need of rural co-operation, the improvement of
municipal efficiency, or the regulation of immigration. A few are
international, like the scourge of war. Besides such specific problems
there are always general issues demanding the attention of social
thinkers and reformers, such as the adjustment of individual rights to
social duties, and the improvement of moral and religious efficiency.

18. =The Social Groups.=--A broad survey of the current life of
society leads naturally to the questions: How is this social life
organized? and How did it come to be? The answers to these questions
appear in certain social groupings, each of which has a history and
life of its own, but is only a segment of the whole circle of active
association. These groupings include the family, the rural community,
the city, and the nation. In the natural environment of the home
social life finds its apprenticeship. When the child has become in a
measure socialized, he enters into the larger relations of the
neighborhood. Half the people of the United States live in country
communities, but an increasing proportion of the population is found
in the midst of the associations and activities of the larger civic
community. All are citizens or wards of the nation, and have a part
in the social life of America. Consciously or not they have still
wider relations in a world life that is continually growing in social
content. Each of these groups reveals the same fundamental
characteristics, but each has its peculiar forms and its dominant
energies; each has its perplexing problems and each its possibilities
of greater good. Through the environment the forces of the mind are
moulding a life that is gradually becoming more nearly like the social
ideal.

READING REFERENCES

GIDDINGS: _Principles of Sociology_, pages 363-399.

SMALL AND VINCENT: _Introduction to the Study of Society_, pages
237-240.

DEALEY: _Sociology_, pages 58-73.

ROSS: _Social Control_, pages 49-61.

ROSS: _Foundations of Sociology_, pages 182-255.

BLACKMAR AND GILLIN: _Outlines of Sociology_, pages 271-282.

CHAPTER II

UNORGANIZED GROUP LIFE

19. =Temporary Groups.=--A study of the org