Inside the modern city, in spite of its nominal political unity,
there are probably more communities, more differing customs,
traditions, aspirations, and forms of government or control, than
existed in an entire continent at an earlier epoch.
Each such group exercises a formative influence on the active
dispositions of its members. A clique, a club, a gang, a Fagin's
household of thieves, the prisoners in a jail, provide educative
environments for those who enter into their collective or
conjoint activities, as truly as a church, a labor union, a
business partnership, or a political party. Each of them is a
mode of associated or community life, quite as much as is a
family, a town, or a state. There are also communities whose
members have little or no direct contact with one another, like
the guild of artists, the republic of letters, the members of the
professional learned class scattered over the face of the earth.
For they have aims in common, and the activity of each member is
directly modified by knowledge of what others are doing.
In the olden times, the diversity of groups was largely a
geographical matter. There were many societies, but each, within
its own territory, was comparatively homogeneous. But with the
development of commerce, transportation, intercommunication, and
emigration, countries like the United States are composed of a
combination of different groups with different traditional
customs.
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