The Economic Functions of Vice | Page 3

deceitful men shall not live out half their days," but police records
will show that David materially overrates the average. "One quarter
their days" would approach much nearer exactness.
RETURNING to the major premise that the "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