ABSTRACT
In the mass society, the concept of civility has found its most complete realization. The moral consensus of mass society is far from complete; the mutual assimilation of center and periphery is still much less than total. Mass society has aroused and enhanced individuality. No society can ever achieve a complete cultural consensus: there are natural limitations to the spread of the standards and products of superior culture throughout society. The development of new methods of graphic reproduction in lithography and in both still and moving pictures, new methods of sound recording and the transmission of sound and picture, increased the flow of communication from the center to the periphery. If the arguments of those who attribute to mass society the alleged misery of contemporary culture are not sound, there is no gainsaying the fact that the consumption of superior culture does not rest in a perfectly secure position in the United States.
