most obvious and
elementary way the processes by which societies are disintegrated into
their constituent elements and the processes by which these elements are
brought together again into new relations to form new organizations and
new societies.

Some years ago John Graham Brooks wrote a popular treatise on the labor
situation in the United States. He called the volume _Social Unrest_.
The term was, even at that time, a familiar one. Since then the word
unrest, in both its substantive and adjective forms, has gained wide
usage. We speak in reference to the notorious disposition of the native
American to move from one part of the country to another, of his
restless blood, as if restlessness was a native American trait
transmitted in the blood. We speak more often of the "restless age," as
if mobility and the desire for novelty and new experience were
peculiarly characteristic of the twentieth century. We use the word to
describe conditions in different regions of social life in such
expressions as "political," "religious," and "labor" unrest, and in
every case the word is used in a sense that indicates change, but change
that menaces the existing order. Finally, we speak of the "restless
woman," as of a peculiar modern type, characteristic of the changed
status of women in general in the modern world. In all these different
uses we may observe the gradual unfolding of the concept which seems to
have been implicit in the word as it was first used. It is the concept
of an activity in response to some urgent organic impulse which the
activity, however, does not satisfy. It is a diagnostic symptom, a
symptom of what Graham Wallas calls "balked disposition." It is a sign
that in the existing situation some one or more of the four
wishes--security, new experience, recognition, and response--has not
been and is not adequately realized. The fact that the symptom is
social, that it is contagious, is an indication that the situations that
provoke it are social, that is to say, general in the community or the
group where the unrest manifests itself. [313] The materials in which
the term unrest is used in the sense indicated are in the popular
discussions of social questions. The term is not defined but it is
frequently used in connection with descriptions of conditions which are
evidently responsible for it. Labor strikes are evidences of social
unrest, and the literature already referred to in the chapter on
"Conflict"[1] shows