The Economic Functions of Vice | Page 3

"survival of the fittest" means the selection and preservation of those individuals who are most nearly in harmony with the conditions of their environment, and that the progress of the race or species involves the destruction of the weaker or the inferior who are not in such harmony, the conclusion follows that any aberration toward vice shows such discordance in the individual with the laws of his environment as marks him as inferior, weak, and obstructive of the race's development.
Vice is not so much a cause as an effect precisely as disease is a symptom. Vice does not make a nature weak or defective: a weak and defective nature expresses its weaknesses and defects in vice, and that expression brings about in one way and another the sovereign remedy of extermination.
IT is said of the devastation of our fairest and brightest by the Drink Demon. This is mainly nonsense. It was more nearly true in former generations, when intemperance was an almost universal vice. As Hamlet says:
"it is a custom More honor'd in the breach than the observance. This heavy-headed revel east and west Makes us traduced and tax'd of other nations: They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase Soil our addition."
Morals has made wonderful progress since then, in all directions, and heavy drinking has been more and more restricted to those who are
"Marked cross from the womb and perverse."
With few exceptions every one who goes to perdition by the alcohol route would reach that destination by some other highway if the alcohol line were not running.
Every man whose sloth or improvidence has brought himself and his family to beggary, every thieving tramp upon the highways, every rascal in the penitentiary, every murderer upon the gallows, hastens to plead "whisky brought me to this!" because he knows that such a plea will bring him a gush of sloppy sympathy unobtainable by other means.
Whisky makes no man lazy, shiftless, dishonest, false, cowardly or brutal. These must be original qualities with him. If he has them he will probably take to whisky though not inevitably which then does the community the splendid service of hurrying him along to destruction, and of abridging his infliction upon the public.
PEOPLE who have done much in the way of reforming drunkards have been astonished to find how little real manhood remained after eliminating whisky from the equation. They had supposed the manhood to be only obscured, and were disheartened to find how frequently it happened to be demonstrated that there never was enough of it to pay for the trouble of "saving the victim of intemperance."
Like the cherubim before the throne of God, the Temperance orators "continually do cry," the burden of their song being that hundreds of thousands are annually slain by the monster Intemperance.
Quite singularly these figures are probably not exaggerated. Myriads of times kindly-hearted physicians write in the death certificate "pneumonia," "heartfailure," "diabetes," etc., when truth demands "beer" or "whisky."
BUT what of this?
Is it not merely Nature sweeping out her overcrowded workshop? Ridding her laboratory of misfits, defectives, and rejects? Into her junk pile alcohol whisks away daily thousands of thieves, gamblers, prostitutes, loafers, "sports," spongers, swindlers, and others of the criminal and quasicriminal classes. Over their moldering clay the daisies bloom in sweet oblivion of
"The sins and crimes Done in their days of nature."
Upon these alcoholism accommodatingly performs the office of judge and executioner, cutting their careers off at an average of five years, which, without this interposition, would possibly be extended to 20 or 30. The certainty and celerity with which it ferrets out and destroys these classes gives it strong advantages over the ordinary processes of destruction.
It was exceedingly unfortunate for the community that the leaders of the James and Younger gangs were temperate men. Had it not been so, their careers, instead of extending over 20 harassing years, would have been cut short inside of five. Uncontrollable predilection for whisky, and the society of strange women brought about the destruction of nearly all of the band who from time to time were slain by each other's hands or those of justice. Temperance and chastity in a rascal of any kind mean an immense amount of mischief to the community. Fortunately they are quite rare.
THE rapid spread of Prohibition is full of suggestion. The grain fields of Kansas and Texas are periodically devastated by the green bug. When the green bugs are at their worst a parasite appears which sweeps them off, and the wheat growers have a respite. Then, having destroyed their provender, the parasites starve, and the green bugs have a chance to grow again until the parasites overtake them in the hour of their triumph and power.
Will the suppression of the alcoholic scavenger allow the criminals and quasi-criminals to multiply like the green bugs?
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DURING