wishes, and the vital problems of the men and women, the youth and the children, living in the community.
The knowledge of these forces in neighborhood life will suggest feasible projects and programs. Too often, howev�r, attempts at social control rise from ignorant good will rather than from the facts of the situation. This is particularly true of the many futile efforts to impose neighborly relationships upon areas which are no longer neighborhoods.
What, then, is our answer to the question, Can neighborhood work have a scientific basis? It can have a scientific foundation if it will base its activities upon a study of social forces. But the social forces of city life seem, from our studies, to be destroying the city neighborhood. Is the neighborhood center to engage in a losing fight against the underlying tendencies of modern urban society?
This question should be squarely faced: Is neighborhood work pre
pared to base its justification for existence upon facts rather than upon sentiment?
There are those who are convinced that the function of the neighborhood center is passing with the decay of the neighborhood in the city. For myself,
I
am not so certain. Surely the work of the neighborhood center must now be conceived and planned in terms of its relationship to the entire life of the city. The work of neighborhood centers, like that of all other social agencies, must increasingly be placed upon the basis of the scientific study of the social forces with which they have to deal. Especially are studies desired of the actual effect and role of intimate contacts in personal development and social control.
A feasible way for neighborhood centers to place their work upon a scientific basis would be to stress the impulse to research that has always been associated with the settlement movement. Thirty years ago Mr. Robert A. Woods read a paper on "University Settlements as Laboratories in Social Science." The argument for research in its relations to neighborhood work is contained in that article. He
con-THE NEIGHBORHOOD
ISSceived the advantage of research both to social science and .to the settlement. The growing fluidity and complexity of urban life has but increased the force of his argument.
Neighborhood work, by the logic of the situation, if it is to evolve a successful technique, will be compelled more and more to depend upon research into the social forces of modern life.
ERNEST W. BURGESS
CHAPTER IX
THE MIND OF THE HOBO: REFLECTIONS UPON THE RELATION BETWEEN MENTALITY
AND LOCOMOTION
. In the evol
�
tionary hierarchy, as Herbert Spencer has sketched It for us, the .am�
al series occupied a higher position than that of the plants. But m spIte of all the progress represented in the long march from the amoeba to man, it is stilI strue that the human creature is a good deal of�
vegetable:!
his is evident in the invincible attachment of mankmd to 10cahtIes and places' in man's and part' ul , . ' , IC ar y I woman s, mveterate and irrational ambition to have a home-some cave or hut or tenement-in which to live and vegetate' some secure hole or. corner from which to come forth in the mornin
�
and return to at mght.As long as man is thus attached to the earth and to places on the earth, as long as nostalgia and plain homesickness hold hi d
dra h' . 't bl b m an
":
1m mevl a y ack to the haunts and places he knows best, h�
WIll never fully realize that other characteristic ambition of mankmd, namel
�
, to move fr�ely and untrammeled over the surface of�
un�
an�
thmgs, and to live, like pure spirit, in his mind and in his ImagmatlOn alone.I
�
e�
tion�
he�
e things merely to emphasize a single point, name-ly, mmd IS an mCldent of locomotion. The first and most ,". d" " con,mcmg
m lcatlOn of mmd IS not motion merely but as I ha . " ve sal , ocomo-'d I hon. The plants don't locomote, don't move through space' they respond more or less to stimulation even though they h '
nerv b t th d ' ave no
es,
�
ey 0 not move through space, certainly not of their own. m�
tlOn. And when they do move, they have no goal, no destmatlOn, and that is because they have no imagination.156
THE MIND OF THE HOBO
Now it is characteristic of animals that they can and do change their spots. The ability to do this implies that they are able not merely to wag a tail or move a limb, but that they are able to co
ordinate and mobilize the whole organism in the execution of a single act. Mind, as we ordinarily understand it, is an organ of control. It does not so much initiate new movements as co-ordinate impulses, and so mobilize the organism for action; for mind, in its substantive aspect, is just our disposition to act; our instincts and attitudes, in other words.
Mental activity begins on the periphery, with stimuli which are antecedent to, but ultimately discharged in, actions. But mind in the transitive, verbal aspect is a process by which, as we say, we
"make up our minds" or change them; that is to say, it is a process by which we define the direction in which we are going to move, and locate in imagination the goal that we intend to seek.
Plants carry on, apparently, all the processes of metabolism which are characteristic of animals-these are, in fact, what we mean by the vegetative processes-but they do not go anywhere. If the plants have minds, as some people assume they do, they must be of that brooding, vegetative sort characteristic of those mystics who, quite forgetful of the active world, are absorbed in the contemplation of their own inner processes. But the characteristic of the animal, and of the higher types of animal-everything above the oyster, in fact-is that they are made for locomotion and for action. Further
more, it is in the processes of locomotion-involving, as they do, change of scene and change of location-that mankind is enabled to develop just those mental aptitudes most characteristic of man, namely, the aptitude and habit of abstract thought.
It is in locomotion, also, that the peculiar type of organization that we call "social" develops. The characteristic of a social organ
ism-if we may call it an organism-is the fact that it is made up of individuals capable of independent locomotion. If society were, as some individuals have sought to conceive it, an organism in the
bio-THE CITY
logical sense-if it were made up of little cells all neatly and safely inclosed in an outer integument, or skin, in which all cells were so controlled and protected that no single cell could by any chance have any adventures or new experience of its own-there would be no need for men in society to have minds, for it is not because men are alike that they are social, but because they are different. They are moved to act by individual purposes, but in doing so they realize a common end. Their impulses are private, but actions are public.
In view of all this we may well ask ourselves what, if anything, is the matter with the hobo's mind. Why is it that with all the variety of his experiences he still has so many dull days? Why, with so much leisure, has he so little philosophy? Why, with so wide an acquaint
ance with regions, with men, and with cities, with life in the open road and in the slums, has he been able to contribute so little to our actual knowledge of life?
We need not even pause for a reply. The trouble with the hobo mind is not lack of experience, but lack of a vocation. The hobo is, to be sure, always on the move, but he has no destination, and naturally he never arrives. Wanderlust, which is the most elemen
tary expression of the romantic temperament and the romantic inter
est in life, has assumed for him, as for so many others, the character of a vice. He has gained his freedom, but he has lost his direction.
Locomotion and change of scene have had for him no ulterior signifi
cance. It is locomotion for its own sake. Restlessness and the impulse to escape from the routine of ordinary life, which in the case of others frequently marks the beginning of some new enterprise, spends itself for him in movements that are expressive merely. The hobo seeks change solely for the sake of change; it is a habit, and, like the drug habit, moves in a vicious circle. The more he wanders ,
the more he must. It is merely putting the matter in an another way to say that the trouble with the hobo, as Nels Anderson has pointed out in his recent volume, The Hobo, is that he is an individualist.
He has sacrificed the human need of association and organization to
THE MIND OF THE HOBO 159
a romantic passion for individual freedom. Society is, to be sure, made up of independent, locomoting individuals. It is this fact of locomotion, as I have said, that defines the very nature of society.
But in order that there may be permanence and progress in society the individuals who compose it must be located; they must be located, for one thing, in order to maintain communication, for it is only through communication that the moving equilibrium which we call society can be maintained.
All forms of association among human beings rest finally upon locality and local association. The extraordinary means of com
munication that characterize modern society-the newspaper, the radio, and the telephone-are merely devices for preserving this permanence of location and of function in the social group, in connec
tion with the greatest possible mobility and freedom of its members.
The hobo, who begins his career by breaking the local ties that bound him to his family and his-neighborhood, has ended by break
ing all other associations. He is not only a "homeless man," but a man without a cause and without a country; and this emphasizes the significance, however, futile of the efforts of men like James Eads How to establish hobo colleges in different parts of the country, places where hobos can meet to exchange experiences, to discuss their problems, and all of the problems of society; places, also, where they can maintain some sort of corporate existence and meet and exchange views with the rest of the world on a basis of something like equality and with some hope of understanding.
The same thing may be said of the Industrial Workers of the World, the only labor organization that has persistently sought and to some extent succeeded in organizing the unorganizable element among laboring men, namely, the seasonal and casual laborers. The tendency of their efforts to organize the hobo in his own interest has been, so far as they have been successful, to give him what he needed most, namely, a group-consciousness, a cause, and a recognized position in society.