Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/773

 THE GAMING INSTINCT 7 $9

are unwilling to quit business when there is, from an economic standpoint, no longer any necessity of remaining in it, and where there is every reason to quit it on grounds of health ; and this is particularly true in this country, where in such connections as land, railroads, mining, manufacture, and trade, stupendous operations have been undertaken by daring and shrewd minds, or, to speak in sporting parlance, where the stake has been exceptionally high.

Similarly the so-called learned professions are preferred, partly because they involve sagacity, rapidly shifting attention, responsibility, serious problems, and sometimes great rewards. It must be acknowledged also that at present something of caste feeling enters into the choice of these professions, because they have historically become associated with leisure, influence, and social position, and are consequently in greater favor than some industrial occupations which present problems equally fasci- nating, and often more consonant with the powers of the youth who has chosen the more aristocratic profession. Politics is another illustration of the tendency of human nature to seek the more vicissitudinous pursuits, for political life involves little drudgery, and is, in fact, a series of problems, with rapid and violent emotional changes.

In the case of the dry-goods clerk or bookkeeper, however, as in all cases where the responsibility rests on someone else, the interest in the activity is slight, and is really not an interest in the activity as such, but in the activity as a means of getting along in the world, or of reaching a relation to the world where the activities are more spontaneous, and where, as persons of this class sometimes express it, you are your own master. The desire to get rich means, in fact, from this standpoint, that wealth is felt to be the surest means of freeing one's self from routine and of freeing the activities entirely from external restraint.

Another, somewhat nondescript, class may be made to include men whose natural opportunities or intelligence might have made them laborers in various industries hewers of wood and drawers of water but who, instead, have drifted into various occupa- tions where there are possibilities of excitement, or where, at