Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 November 1883 — The Ethics of a Crowd. [ARTICLE]

The Ethics of a Crowd.

There is no room fOr extremists in a crowd. The dude will be ground between the upper and nether millstone. In fact those about him are likely to take a secret pleasure in adding to his dis-„ comfiture. The crowd has a keen eye for sham which fares particularly ill when it takes the shape of personal pretension. There must be a feeling that “you are one of us” to secure good favor. People do not congregate in vast numbers to admire others, but to have a good time themselves. They are generally willing to do the fair thing, but want no “putting on airs.” It requires room to do that with any degree of comfort to the operator. He must be out of ear-shot of the remarks which convey to him the sense of the failure he is making. It is a singular fact that no amount of experience, inherited or personal, is sufficient to disabuse many people of the idea that they can create false impressions as to their own importance on the beholder. For every word of admiration a flashily dressed or visibly consequential persons elicits, he gets a thousand contemptuous recognitions as an ass—a fact he remains perennially impervious to. The striving and projects of the Bwell constantly miscarry and he knows it not—except when he is jostled in a crowd. He goes through the world in a state of perpetual ignorance as to his transparency. The crowd is a great leveler, and the member of it who does not do his own leveling has it done for him in a manner which is not at all pleasant. Large and happy aggregations of people, like civilization itself, are based upon the spirit of mutual concession. The savage who does not know how to yield in. little things wants all out doors to live and have his being in. And what is the arrogant, bumptious person, however civilized his exterior may be, who has no consideration for others, but a relic of barbarism? The kindly feeling which prompts the doing of a small favor, at some slight inconvenience even to self, it is which makes the happy crowd possible. The lubrication of good will, sympathy and small helpfulness is the grand secret which makes the social machinery move well. Each man must allow a little margin to others,'or there can be no general elasticity to prevent things from being broken upon each other. He must round off the sharp corners, or there will be constant punctures and raspings.—St. Louis Globe-Democrat.