IV

We are bound to the wheel, say the sociological fatalists. All our efforts

are of no avail; the Wheel revolves as it was destined. Not so. Our

strivings for purity in investments, puny as may be their results in the

individual instance, may compose a sum that is imposing in its

effectiveness. How their influence may be exerted will best appear from an

analogy.

It is a settled conviction among Americans of Puritan antecedents, and

among all other Americans, native born or alien, that have come under

Puritan influence, that the dispensing of alcoholic beverages is a

degrading function. This conviction has not, to be sure, notably impaired

the performance of the function. But it has none the less produced a

striking effect. It has set apart for the function in question those

elements in the population that place the lowest valuation upon the esteem

of the public, and that are, on the whole, least worthy of it. In

consequence the American saloon is, by common consent, the very worst

institution of its kind in the world. Such is the immediate result of good

intentions working by the method of excommunication of a trade.

This degradation of the personnel and the institution proceeds at an

accelerated rate as public opinion grows more bitter. In the end the evil

becomes so serious, so intimately associated with all other evils, social

and political, that you hear men over their very cups rise to proclaim,

with husky voices, "The saloon must go!" At this point the community is

ripe for prohibition: accordingly, it would seem that the initial stages

in the process, unpleasant as were their consequences, were not

ill-advised, after all. But prohibition does not come without a political

struggle, in which the enemy, selected for brazenness and schooled in

corruption, employs methods that leave lasting scars upon the body

politic. And even when vanquished, the enemy retreats into the morasses of

"unenforcible laws," to conduct a guerilla warfare that knows no rules.

Let us grant that the ultimate gain is worth all it costs: are we sure

that we have taken the best possible means to achieve our ends?

In the poorer quarters of most great American cities, there is much

property that it is difficult for a man to hold without losing the respect

of the enlightened. Old battered tenements, dingy and ill lighted

tumbledown shacks, the despair of the city reformer. Let us say that the

proximity of gas tanks or noisy railways or smoky factories consign such

quarters to the habitation of the very poor. Quite possibly, then, the

replacement of the existing buildings by better ones would represent a

heavy financial loss. The increasing social disapprobation of property

vested in such wretched forms leads to the gradual substitution of owners

who hold the social approval in contempt, for those who manifest a certain

degree of sensitiveness. The tenants certainly gain nothing from the

change. What is more likely to happen, is a screwing up of rents, an

increasing promptness of evictions. Public opinion will in the end be

roused against the landlords; the more timid among them will sell their

holdings to others not less ruthless, but bolder and more astute. Attempts

at public regulation will be fought with infinitely greater

resourcefulness than could possibly have been displayed by respectable

owners. Perhaps the final outcome will be that more drastic regulations

are adopted than would have been the case had the shifting in ownership

not taken place. There would still remain the possibility of the evasion

of the law, and it is not at all improbable that the progress in the

technique of evasion would outstrip the progress in regulation, thus

leaving the tenant with a balance of disadvantage from the process as a

whole.

The most illuminating instance of a business interest subjected first to

excommunication--literally--and then to outlawry, is that of the usurer,

or, in modern parlance, the loan shark. To the mediæval mind there was

something distinctly immoral in an income from property devoted to the

furnishing of personal loans. We need not stop to defend the mediæval

position or to attack it; all that concerns us here is that an opportunity

for profit--that is, a potential property interest--was outlawed. In

consequence it became impossible for reputable citizens to engage in the

business. Usury therefore came to be monopolized by aliens, exempt from

the current ethical formulation, who were "protected," for a

consideration, by the prince, just as dubious modern property interests

may be protected by the political boss.

Let us summarize the results of eight hundred years of experience in this

method of dealing with the usurer's trade. The business shifted from the

control of citizens to that of aliens; from the hands of those who were

aliens merely in a narrow, national sense, to the hands of those who are

alien to our common humanity. Such lawless, tricky, extortionate loan

sharks as now infest our cities were probably not to be found at all in

mediæval or early modern times. They are a product of a secular process of

selection. Their ability to evade the laws directed against them is

consummate. It is true that from time to time we do succeed in catching

one and fining him, or even imprisoning him. For which risk the small

borrower is forced to pay, at a usurer's rate.

Social improvement through the excommunication of property interests is

inevitably a disorderly process. Wherever it is in operation we are sure

to find the successive stages indicated in the foregoing examples. First,

a gradual substitution of the conscienceless property holder for the one

responsive to public sentiment. Next, under the threat of hostile popular

action, the timid and resourceless property owner gives way to the

resourceful and the bold. The third stage in the process is a vigorous

political movement towards drastic regulation or abolition, evoking a

desperate attempt on the part of the interests threatened to protect

themselves by political means--that is, by gross corruption; or, if the

menaced interest is a vast one, dominating a defensible territory, by

armed rebellion, as in our own Civil War. If the interest is finally

overwhelmed politically, and placed completely under the ban of the law,

it has been given ample time to develop an unscrupulousness of personnel

and an art of corruption that long enable it to exist illegally, a lasting

reproach to the constituted authorities.

V

Suppression of anti-social interests by the methods in vogue amounts to

little more than their banishment to the underworld. And we can well

imagine the joy with which the denizens of the underworld receive such new

accessions to their numbers and power. For in the nature of the case, it

is inevitable that all varieties of outcasts and outlaws should join

forces. The religious schismatic makes common cause with the pariah; the

political offender with the thief and robber. Such association of elements

vastly increases the difficulty of repressing crime. The band of thieves

and robbers in the cave of Adullam doubtless found their powers of preying

vastly increased through the acquisition of such a leader as David. The

problem of mediæval vagabondage was rendered well-nigh incapable of

solution by the fact that any beggar's rags might conceal a holy but

excommunicated friar.

Let us once more review our experience with the usurer. As an outcast he

offers his support to other outcasts, and is in turn supported by them.

The pawnbroker and the pickpocket are closely allied: without the

pawnshop, pocketpicking would offer but a precarious living; without the

picking of pockets, many pawnshops would find it impossible to meet

expenses. The salary loan shark often works hand in glove with the

professional gambler; each procures victims for the other. The

"hole-in-the-wall" or "blind tiger" provides a rendezvous for all the

outcasts of society. "Boot-legging" is a common subsidiary occupation for

the pander, the thief and the cracksman. Where it flourishes, it serves to

bridge over many a period of slack trade. Franchises whose validity is

subject to political attack, bring to the aid of the underworld some of

the most powerful interests in the community. The police are almost

helpless when confronted by a coalition of persons of wealth and

respectability with professional politicians commanding a motley array of

yeggs and thugs, pimps and card-sharpers.

Let us suppose that the developing social conscience places under the ban

receipt of private income from land and other natural resources, and that

a powerful movement aiming at the confiscation of such resources is under

way. It is superfluous to point out that the vast interests threatened

would offer a desperate resistance. The warfare against an incomparably

lesser interest, the liquor trade, has taxed all the resources of the

modern democratic state--on the whole the most absolute political

organization known. In no instance has the state come out of the struggle

completely victorious; the proscribed interest is yielding ground, if at

all, only very slowly. What, then, would be the outcome of a struggle

against the vastly greater landed interest? Perhaps the state would be

victorious in the end. But for generations the landed interest would

survive, if not by title of common law, at least by title of common

corruption. And in the course of the conflict, we can not doubt that

political disorder would flourish as never before, and that under its

shelter private vice and crime would develop almost unchecked.

We should disabuse ourselves of the notion that the will of a mere

majority is absolute in the state. The law is a reality only when the

outlawed interests represent an insignificant minority. Arbitrarily to

increase the outlawed interests is to undermine the very foundations of

society.