rm a body of public opinion for
social guidance. There is often an open-mindedness among the common
people that is not vitiated by the grip of vested interests upon their
unwarped judgments, and the people can be trusted in the long run to
make good. Democracy is based upon the reliability of public opinion.

The second kind of unorganized group is one that is on the way to
becoming a permanent group sanctioned by society. A group of this type
is the boy's gang. By most persons the spontaneous association of a
dozen boys who live near together and range over a certain district
has been condemned as a social evil; recently it has become recognized
as a normal group, forming naturally at a certain period of boy life
and falling to pieces of its own accord a few years later. The
tendency of boy leaders is not only to give it recognition as
legitimate, but to use the gang instinct to promote definite
organizations of greater value to their members and to the community.
Another group of the same type is a so-called "movement," composed of
a few individuals who associate themselves in a loose way to further a
definite purpose, like the promotion of temperance, hold
mass-meetings, and create public opinion, but do not at once proceed
to a permanent organization. Eventually, when the movement has
gathered sufficient headway or has shown that it is permanently
valuable, a fixed organization may be accomplished.

The third kind of unorganized group is an abnormality in the midst of
civilization, a relic of the primitive days when impulse rather than
reason swayed the mind of a group. Such is the crowd that gathers in a
moment of excitement and yields to a momentary passion to lynch a
prisoner, or a revolutionary mob that loots and burns out of a sheer
desire for destruction. Such a group has not even the value of a
safety-valve, for its passion gathers momentum as it goes, and, like a
conflagration, it cannot be stopped until it has burned itself out or
met a solid wall of military authority.

27. =The Popular Crowd vs. the Organized Group.=--In the routine life
of a disciplined society there is always to be found at least one of
these types. Even the abnormal type of the passionate crowd is not
unusual in its milder form. Any unusual event like a fire or a circus
will draw scores and hundreds together, and the crowd is always liable
to fall into disorder unless officers of the law are in attendance.
This is so well understood