in the original bill (see American Journal of Sociology, XIII [1907], p. 252). Another act for the preservation and return of all ballots which may have been soiled, spoiled, mismarked, mutilated, or rejected for any cause is regarded as an important check on election officers and a preventive of fraud and ballot-box stuffing. The practice of changing polling places arbitrarily for factional political reasons, which has obtained in the past, is ended by the third measure, which requires a petition signed by a majority of the electors in a division before a polling place can be changed. In reporting on progress in Philadelphia mention must be made of certain of its organizations which have been devoting themselves with ability and public spirit to the city's problems. Easily chief among these is the Bureau of Municipal Research, to which reference has already been made. It concerns itself primarily with problems of administration and in the technique or mechanics of government rather than in "reform" or political activities to secure good men in office and to expose and punish corruption. Bureaus of municipal research are dedicated to the idea that citizens are ultimately responsible for their governments regardless of who is in office, and they therefore seek solutions for problems with as little emphasis as possible on personal or partisan considerations. The Philadelphia bureau has had a long record of accomplishment, and is regarded as having met with commendable success in spite of peculiarly difficult traditions. Like most of the other bureaus it started out with specific studies of governmental departments, with constructive recommendations as to their improvements. In the beginning it met with hostile suspicion on the part of most of the officials, but it gradually established working relations with a great many of the more important officers, and for the first six or seven years it submitted a number of carefully prepared reports which have led to concrete improvements in Philadelphia's local government. Among the permanent results that stand out prominently in this earlier work of the bureau are the following: The Board of Education reorganized its bureau of compulsory education and made it an effective and serviceable part of the educational system instead of a haven for broken-down henchmen. The greater part of the early activities of the bureau were in the field of accounting and finance. Prior to 1909 the accounts of all city departments (including the controller's office) were in effect merely memoranda of cash transactions. The bureau co-operated with the controller for several years in installing modern fund and expense accounts in his office and the work was extended to a number of other bureaus and departments. This was accomplished through the assistance of Will B. Hadley, then in the bureau, but subsequently made deputy controller and finally controller. The bureau also co-operated in the preparation of the controller's manual of accounting, which was hailed the country over as a great step forward in municipal accounting. Budget work has occupied its attention for nearly every year since its organization, and it is interesting to note that the very word "budget" was not even used in connection with municipal finances prior to the bureau's appearance on the scene. Great advance has been made in budget procedure, although the progress seems imperceptibly slow at times, the last signal advance having been made in connection with the financial provisions of the new city charter. A piece of work done in the Bureau of Health resulted in great benefit. It was the compilation of a digest of all the laws and ordinances pertaining to the public health. These were formerly scattered through numerous volumes and the health authorities and their employees were in frequent difficulty for the lack of a comprehensive guide. Because of the fact that the health officials' time was already fully taken up with their usual duties, they found it impossible to give the amount of time, as well as energy, needed for such a job as making a digest, and the proffer of help from the bureau was heartily welcomed. The work proved so satisfactory that the department printed the digest-a 250-page octavo volume. For seventeen years there had been no revision of the manual carried by each patrolman for his guidance. A new manual, up to date in every respect, and containing in compact form the vast amount of information needed by every policeman, was drawn up and a copy given to every member of the force. Some of the work on this manual, as well as most of the installation of the other plans for improving methods in the department of public safety, was done by Captain Martin H. Ray (formerly in the United States Army), who was detailed to serve as special aide to Director George D. Porter, but who remained on the bureau staff and pay-roll. The bureau had an opportunity for rendering service in a type of governmental unit in which few bureaus of municipal research and civic bodies have as a rule done little. In February, 1915, the municipal court, which had begun operations only about a year previously, found that its domestic-relations division was having difficulty in taking care of its records and social statistics. President Judge Charles L. Brown realized the difficulty, and invited the bureau to survey the division with a view to introducing the Hollerith system of compiling information. The invitation was accepted with the proviso that it need not confine itself merely to the problem of tabulation, and it proceeded to make a report on the organization, methods and procedure of the division. It devised a new system for keeping case records and installed a complete system of mechanical tabulation of the social and procedural data of the domestic-relations cases. These are illustrations of the bureau's activities and are selected, primarily, for their diversity, but also to show the permanent and cumulative value of this kind of work. Some of the later activities were made possible when the agency had won a place of greater service in the community, and had established itself as a definite civic force through the patient and persistent efforts of its first years. Reference has already been made to the bureau's interest in civil service matters to which it has made and is making substantial contributions. The Civil Service Reform Association is another organization which has been actively at work along constructive lines co-operating with the various officials and especially with the Civil Service Commission. It and the bureau co-operated in the drafting of the new charter and are now helping Mayor Moore and his colleagues to give it real force and effect. By and large Philadelphia is making progress, the rapidity and extent depending as always on the activity and co-operation of the citizen. A PSYCHOANALYTIC INTERPRETATION OF GROUP FORMATION AND BEHAVIOR THOMAS D. ELIOT I In 1918, Dr. W. F. Ogburn presented to the American Economic Association at Richmond an analysis of the psychological background of the economic interpretation of history. His paper furnishes a starting-point for the statement of some further social implications of the biogenetic psychology which may prove new and useful in the interpretation of events and in the synthesis of political, economic, and psychological theory. As with Dr. Ogburn's paper, no attempt is made to prove the points herein made. For the most part, in fact, they are simply applications of some of the new concepts in psychology to perfectly familiar events, in a way which links two or three fields of learning and makes psychology a helpmeet and illuminator of social science. Briefly, Dr. Ogburn's thesis was that the frequent apparent obscurity of economic causes in history is due to the stigma which civilization, especially Christian civilization, has usually attached to selfishness in politics, and, one might add, the more immediate pressure which politicians are always under of winning support by assurances of common interest in the good of the whole group. The social disapproval and disadvantage imposed upon the free expression of greed or self-interest have led to the camouflage of motives which are basically economic.2 Dr. Ogburn recognizes in these political processes certain common mental tricks or mechanisms which have long been 1 American Economic Review, Supplement, March, 1919. 2 Interesting parallels of this thesis were ingeniously illustrated by Dr. Patten, in his Development of English Thought; cf. pp. 15 ff., 108-9, 112 ff., 131-32, 145 ff., 205-6, 257, 277 ff. classified by the psychoanalysts in work with individuals. By followers of Machiavelli and Treitschke, perhaps, the tricks are consciously employed. Many politicians, however, find it necessary to deceive themselves before they can deceive their public. The subconscious holds in leash the real wish which gets its fulfilment or compensation by justifying itself in the name of social welfare, patriotism, revenge, culture, religion, rescue, necessity, or self-defense. According to Dr. Ogburn, however, all these motives are fundamentally economic in origin or necessarily become economic before they are transmuted, rationalized, or re-evaluated by politicians and historians. It is at this point that further inquiry is suggested; viz., in \the psychoanalysis of the economic motive itself. It is complex, built up of various simplex motives rooting in instinctive needs or mechanisms of behavior for which there is no apparent expression or release at present except through economic channels. Carleton Parker's paper of the year previous partially covered this ground. He stated the well-known economic and psychological causes of industrial unrest and analyzed the process from cause to effect in terms of modern psychiatry-impulse, suppression, psychosis. But he confined his analysis to anti-social groups, especially the I.W.W. of the Northwest. Similar analysis can, it seems to the writer, be applied profitably to group motivation in general. An attempt at such analysis will here be approached through a brief preliminary description of personality in terms of the "new" psychology. II The individual may be roughly symbolized for our purposes (Fig. 1) by a circle inclosing arrows representing impulses, wishes, strivings, "motor sets," as Holt phrases it. At birth we may assume that these impulses are largely inchoate, being temporary "amoebic" expressions of the total prenatal biochemical energy of the individual pushing out to the environment in various instinctive responses, the chief of which are nutritive and "auto-erotic." These impulses do not tend at first to be introspective. Many of them are at mutual odds, but they are not even organized |