Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/782

766 out the memory of past infamy. The blade of the law playing up and down in its groove with iron precision, is hardly so good an instrument for regulating behavior as the flexible lash of public censure, which can delicately graduate the penalty of the offense. To most of us the law is far away and its chastisements accepted on hearsay, but all of us have some time or other felt the smart of public disapproval, and from experience have learned to shun its heavier stripes.

For most offenses the law must wait till the deed is done. Public opinion, on the other hand, is ever present, ready to interfere at any moment and apply a pressure gradually increasing from zero to infinity. As it is more prompt and preventive than law, it regulates in a great many more ways. It can give a tap to break a watch crystal or a blow to forge an anchor.

Public control is not only more alert than law but it is much cheaper. To keep a man in order merely by letting him know your mind is as much simpler than legal process, as faith-cure is simpler than surgery. On the other hand when public sentiment fails to coerce and public action must be invoked, the waste of energy in securing cooperation and giving feet and hands to the amorphous public is enormous. Too often it is like forging a sledge hammer in order to crush an eggshell. The principle of the division of labor would originate courts and bailiffs if nothing else did.

Law with its ponderous axe hews to the line, careless where the chips may fall, but the public rounds off the edges left by law. The law grants the widow's cow to the creditor, it concedes the right of the railroad company to turn adrift an employe crippled in its service, it confirms the right of a husband to administer moderate castigation to his wife. But the public will tolerate none of these things. It supplements law by taking note of offenses that cannot well be brought within a legal definition. Law fences off this or that area for the individual, but the public builds an inside fence, lest one individual should insolently override the interests of the rest.

The delay so conspicuous in the action of law, is not present