of these
persons and groups led popular writers on social, political, and
economic topics to give them the impersonal designation "social forces."

A student made the following crude and yet illuminating analysis of the
social forces in a small community where he had lived: the community
club, "the Davidson clique," and the "Jones clique" (these two large
family groups are intensely hostile and divide village life); the
community Methodist church; the Presbyterian church group (no church);
the library; two soft-drink parlors where all kinds of beverages are
sold; the daily train; the motion-picture show; the dance hall; a
gambling clique; sex attraction; gossip; the "sporting" impulse; the
impulse to be "decent."

"The result," he states, "is a disgrace to our modern civilization. It
is one of the worst communities I ever saw."

The most significant type of community study has been the social survey,
with a history which antedates its recent developments. Yet the survey
movement from the _Domesday Survey_, initiated in 1085 by William the
Conqueror, to the recent _Study of Methods of Americanization_ by the
Carnegie Corporation, has been based upon an implicit or explicit
recognition of the interrelations of the community and its constituent
groups. The _Domesday Survey_, although undertaken for financial and
political purposes, gives a picture of the English nation as an
organization of isolated local units, which the Norman Conquest first of
all forced into closer unity. The surveys of the Russell Sage Foundation
have laid insistent emphasis upon the study of social problems and of
social institutions in their context within the life of the community.
The central theme of the different divisions of the Carnegie _Study of
Methods of Americanization_ is the nature and the degree of the
participation of the immigrant in our national and cultural life. In
short, the survey, wittingly or unwittingly, has tended to penetrate
beneath surface observations to discover the interrelations of social
groups and institutions and has revealed community life as a
_constellation of social forces_.

2. History of the Concept of Social Forces

The concept of social forces has had a history different from that of
interaction. It was in the writings of the historians rather than of the
sociologists that the term first gained currency. The historians, in
their description and interpretation of persons and events, discerned
definite