Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/224

 212 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

a prohibition law. There are certain very familiar types of persons who persist in treating the situation as though it were an affair of two and only two simple factors, viz., the law on the one side, and its violation on the other. The fact is that both the law and the violation are expressions of highly complex mixtures of interests, and neither the law nor the violation pre- cisely represents the actual balance of interests in the community. On the one hand, the law was derived from a co-operation of at least these six factors, viz.: first, a high, pure, moral interest that was uppermost in certain people ; second, an interest in good social repute, spurred by a state of conscience that condemns the liquor traffic, but without enough moral sympathy with the con- demnation to act accordingly unless lashed to action by the zeal of the first interest ; third, a political interest, in making capital out of a policy which would win certain voters ; fourth, a business interest, in getting the trade of certain people by opposing a traffic that they oppose, or in creating difficulties for a traffic which is indirectly a competitor ; fifth, a personal or family interest, in preventing or punishing a traffic which has inflicted or threatens to inflict injury upon self or relatives ; sixth, an interest in the liquor traffic itself, which calculates that opposition can be fought more adroitly when it is in the shape of positive law, than when it is vague and general. In every particular case these six sorts of interest that create the law will be subdivided according to circumstances, and the relative influence of each will vary indefinitely. We no sooner realize these facts than we are aware that in its substance, its force, its spirit, the law is not the absolute, categorical, unequivocal factor that it is in its form. While it has no uncertain sound as a statutory mandate, expressed in impersonal words, it has a most decidedly quavering quality when traced back to the human wills whose choices give it all its power.

On the other hand, if we analyze the violations of the law, we find that it arises, first, from thoroughly immoral interests greed of gain, contempt for social rights, willingness to profit by the physical and moral ruin of others. Second, the interest in satisfying the drink appetite. This ranges from the strong and