Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/25

 ONE ASPECT OF VICE II

of furthering the process of life. In the nineteenth ward of Chicago there is a large Italian colony, 57 per cent, of whose producing members are not employed regularly, and the average term of idleness among them is seven months out of every twelve. It is difficult to imagine how this community could keep the peace without the occupation which various small games of chance afford. The non-intellectual, non-inventive oriental is devoted to gaming and to opium. Is not the pre- supposition great that with him national vices have consumed much of that energy which with us, through invention, has become national gain ? And the same division is true of our- selves in a less striking degree. Activity is indeed an omnipres- ent law, but not advancement.

The theater is of use here also ; but its character is slightly changed. The bill-boards are more glaring ; the plot is more frankly avowed; the hero, more heroic ; the villain, more blackly villainous ; the actors, all more exuberant. The situations por- trayed here are unreservedly emotional. Anyone who has been on the Bowery or on Halsted street when the theaters are clos- ing cannot have failed to note that the crowds which they pour into the street are both larger and more enthusiastic than those with which he may be familiar elsewhere. If he is of a reflective turn of mind, he will find food for meditation in this difference. The play which makes no attempt to be subtle, and the tendency to bright and daring colors in dress, may seem to him to have a common basis. They belong to a condition in which the machin- ery of attention and discrimination is not highly developed. They are followed because they, of themselves, take hold.

And devotion to books is not wanted here. Has not the patronage of just such sections of our cities rendered the busi- ness of writing "detective tales" the most profitable form of labor which a " literary man " can pursue ? And the shop-girl who is able to ride to her work is seldom without a book gen- erally of a pitiable kind.

But the favorite form of artificial stimulus is not to be found in gambling, nor in the theater, nor in books. It is found in the saloon. Men drink for many reasons, chief among which is this: