Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1888-11-13
The Danger of Crowds,

From the Boston Home Journal
crowd is an aggregation of individuals; a
mob is a crowd under excitement Both the
crowd and the mob are monsters, the one
couShant the other rampant. The interchange
Of mind and of personality is nowhere SO ap-
parent as in crowd, and the illustrations
which crowds daily afford of this interchange
physicians or psychologists of all man.
kind. crowd does not consist of
many detached personalities, but of one
great personality. The mob will frequently
do things which no one of its members would
perform in his individual capacity The aues-
ton has already arisen in the minds of many,
if men influence each other when brought
almost in actual contact, do they not do SO in a
measure even at distance, mentally as well
as physically? OF course the merest scientific
tyro knows that he himself is literally and act
ually holding the planet Mars in its orbit and
that if it were possible for him to release that
hold, the planet Mars would change its orbit
The crowd is a curious beast. more sensi-
tive, more infammable, more easily thrilled
than the highest organized individual. With
1t thought, purpose and emotion do not flow in
steady stream but burst geyser-like on the
slightest provocation. As a single spark may
kindle fire that may burn city, so may an
incendiary work whispered in a crowd become
battle cry that leads mob to the massacre OF
hundreds.
differ. The mob on the Partisan boulevard is
one thing, that at Trafalgar square another,
that at Aston place still another while the
Chicago mob and the Baltimore mob bear no
more resemblance to any of the foregoing than
they do to each other. The one point they all
have in common is that they are monsters
The crowd is as much a monster as a mob
but it is monster asleep. The mob Of I'M
cOuth, unlettered cowboys that lynch horse
thief, and the crowd of infuriate though
learned religious bigots that vivisect an Hypa-
tia, have one and the same anifnus-the graft.
fication Of the blood-hunger of the composite
beast Of which each individual of them is q
member.
1t is never safe to consider crowd as capable
only of such acts as its individual members are
may put the addition line and sum up as a total
monster at which Satan stands appalled,. In
the crowd at rest, as in the beast at rest selfish
ness and self-preservation predominant. In the
mob when riotous, as with the beast when en-
ragged, these become secondary considerations
1t needs but partisan torchlight parade OF
presidential election bulletin crowd to DEM
onstrate the selfishness of crowds. Men stand
in their tracks as il they were rooted to mother
earth. They yield an inch to no passer-by.
They are husbands, they are fathers, yet they
forget their gallantry to ladies and their kind
ness to the little ones man in a horse-car
will often yield his seat to a lady, but man in
a crowd-a dense election crowd-will not even
allow lady to pass him. Nor is this done in a
way to conceal his intentions. He plants his
feet firmly, intertwines himself with his neigh
Dor, looks unblushingly at the struggling lady
and says as plainly as looks can say, "This little
matter is simply tour de force" Out
side Of a crowd these brutes are gentlemen,
who would cut the acquaintance Of any man
whom they found measuring strength with a
frail woman in such despicable spirit. But
your quiet, gentlemanly, unobtrusive man al
the fireside, or the club man. NAV become the
li>n-paw Of the mob. He acts and knows
mot what he does, he is but the arm welded by
the conglomerate intellect, purpose and pas
sion which dwell in that hydra-headed monster
called a mob. Crowds are danger spots, for
wherever there is a crowd there is the material
for riot. 1t needs but q little excitement, a
petty broil, the news Of some outrage, or the
Introduction of some seditious spirit, TO leaven
that crowd into seething, frothing, annihilat-
ing mob.