Chapter 11

"'Mis' Simons, Mis' Simons!' somebody whisper, awful hoarse an' strange-like. An' _w'at_ yer s'pose? W'y, it's jes _Jo_-nah, a-tearin' right 'long up de steps!

"'Lemme go in, Mis' Simons! Please lemme go in!' he keep on whisperin', like he cyan't sea'cely breve. 'Dey's after me, Mis' Simons! Dey's gwine git me! An' yer knows I ain't done a _thing to 'em_, Mis' Simons! Oh, w'at's dey a-chasin' me fer? I--I ain' _done a thing_!'

"Yas'm, dat's jes de way he talk, an' 'mos' look like he's gwine fall right down, too, twell Mis' Simons tuk hole uv 'is arm, kine o' shekkin' 'im, like, an' turn 'roun' ter de do'.

"'Go in, Jonah! Quick!' she say. 'Cuz dey's voices an' folks a-runnin' an' holl'in' right dere in de yard. She seem ter jes push 'im in an' shet de do'; an' den she stan' up, lookin' ser stret 'n' w'ite-like, didn' look r'ally _like_ Mis' Simons.

"''Tain' gwine nobody else git--fru--dat-do',' she say, ser low couldn' nobody sca'cely hyeah it; an' den, oh, 'twuz jes awful! Dey all come a-knockin' up 'ginst de steps, an' a-holl'in' an' a-pushin', an' some uv 'em laffin' an' some uv 'em cursin', an' all uv 'em holl'in' 'bout de nigger, an' tellin' Mis' Simons ter bring out de nigger!

"An' w'at yer s'pose? Mis' Simons she jes stan' dere same's ever, a-lookin' down on 'em wid 'er back ter de do'.

"'Bring 'im out!' dey keep on a-holl'in'. 'Bring 'im out!'

"An' 'er face look all w'ite an' dazzlin' in de light, an' 'er voice come low an' kine o' shekkin' like. 'No,' she say, 'I cert'nly is not gwine--bring 'im out,' she say. Yas'm, dat's jes de 'sponse she make. An' den dey all 'mence holl'in' ag'in 'bout crim'nal 'n'--'n' murd'rer, an' sayin' does she want 'em ter go in _af_-ter 'im, an' buntin' up 'ginst de steps ag'in, an' jostlin' an' pushin', twell Mis' Simons kine o' step forrad a li'l', still a-lookin' down at 'em.

"'Ain't yer 'shame!' she say. '_Oh--ain't--yer--'shame_!' An' I 'clare, ez she stood dere, seem like I ain' nuver seed 'er eyes look ser clare 'n' burnin'-like, ner 'er face ser dazzlin' w'ite.

"'He's jes ez innercent uv any crime--ez I is,' she say. 'I knows it, 'cuz I knows 'im,' she say; 'an'--you knows it! Ef yer doan't--it's 'cuz yer doan't cyare 'nough 'bout it--ter--fine--out.'

"It's one r'al big man where seem ter be kine o' mekkin' all de res' uv 'em do jes like he done, an' fum de ve'y time Mis' Simons 'mence ter speak he jes stood dere a-lookin' at 'er like he cyan't move ner holler.

"'Yer--doan't cyare 'nough 'bout it--ter--fine out!' she say; 'an' den _dis_ yere's de kine o' thing yer do! Oh, it's de kine o' thing we's 'blige answer fer--eve'y day!' An' she stop, kine o' gaspin' like, ter ketch 'er bref.

"Well, de ve'y same time she stop, de big man turn 'roun' awful quick 'n' look off r'al sudden at de road an' den he look at de res' where's cursin' 'n' laffin'----"

"Ezekiel!" interrupted Miss North in a sharp whisper, catching at his arm. Then her hand dropped, and she looked around her.

"Don't you see, Ezekiel?" she went on naturally. "We are almost there. And--wait, Ezekiel; stay right here; don't hurry so. Wait, stay close to me! There seems to be--some trouble."

"It's Arch'bal', Miss No'th!" he began, his voice rising excitedly. "Dey's cotch 'im! I tole yer dey's gwine cotch 'im, Miss No'th! Look, Miss No'th!"

Just then a big negro broke in on the scene, and suddenly Archibald was at large again, dashing through the noisy crowd in one direction, while the big negro ran in another. In the confusion that followed, Miss North put her hand out for Ezekiel, to find that he was not there, while Ezekiel, looking distractedly for Miss North, found himself pushed on in the crowd of jostling, swearing men.

"Oh, look out!" he gasped; "yer's pushin' me! Yer--yer's steppin' on me! _Oh, turn me loose!_"

"Get out o' yere!" a coarse voice called in his ear, "You'll get killed, an' good riddance if you do!"

He felt them closing in over him, while he slipped to the ground--tramping on over him, pushing, tramping on, while, a limp, wounded little heap, he tried to raise his head, and felt it knock back again in the dust.

"Mis'--Mis' Simons--wouldn' nuver 'a' let yer--done me--dat-a-way!" he whispered vaguely. He raised his head again, feeling confusedly for it as he sat up, gazing stupidly around. Then he pulled himself to his feet and limped aimlessly around in a circle.

"Where's I gwine?" he mumbled. "_Mis' Simons!_ ... Mis' Simons--wouldn' nuver 'a' let yer--done me--dat-a-way!" He stumbled off across the side-walk into the grass, unheeded by a still confused, noisy crowd. In the grass he still stumbled on.

"Mis' Simons--wouldn' nuver 'a' let yer--'a' let yer--done me--" As he slipped down again into the grass, his eyes closed.

A crowd of angry, excited men seemed to be still before him--but Mrs. Simons stood with her back to the door, looking down at them with a white face. From a step beside her he seemed to be still looking up at her, while her low, vibrating voice seemed to be still echoing--echoing:

"Oh, aren't you ashamed of yourselves! _Aren't--you--ashamed!_"

With their reckless, brutish faces flickering before him again, he thought he was watching only her--watching--while her low voice went vibrating on--till they turned from her, swearing and laughing! And then she was stretching out her white hand, catching at one of the pillars, while she slipped down--down beside him on the step--and her arms fell around him helplessly.

"You'll--take--care of me!" she cried faintly, "won't you--Ezekiel!"

"Yas'm," came a broken whisper from the grass, "I'll tek cyare o' yer, Mis' Simons!"

But there was another low voice which he did not understand, and his eyes opened wide, looking up vacantly at Miss North.

"Ezekiel! Have you--have you--been hurt? Oh, Ezekiel----"

"Yas'm, I reckon I is, Mis' Simons, jes a li'l'," he mumbled, struggling painfully to his feet; "but I'll--tek cyare o' yer--I'll tek cyare o' yer, Mis' Simons!"

* * * * *

The next morning he sat in his seat at school, watching Miss North with large, absent eyes.

"You ought not to have come this morning, Ezekiel," she began gently, as her eyes rested on his thin, wistful little face; "I don't think you ought to stay."

"Yas'm, I oughter stay, Miss No'th," he assured her, with a faint smile. His eyes wandered to the window.

"Did dey ketch 'im?" he questioned suddenly. "Did dey ketch Arch'bal', Miss No'th?"

"No," she answered, a sudden hot color rising up in her cheeks. "Archibald's gone away; they can't find him. But he--he needn't have. They found out it was a mistake; he wasn't the one they wanted."

"Mis' Simons oughter 'a' been yere--ain't she?" he went on dreamily. "She wouldn' nuver 'a' let 'em--done 'im--dat-a-way! Would she, Miss No'th?"

"No!" she answered, her voice startling him out of his dream, while the color deepened painfully in her cheeks. "Remember always, Ezekiel, she _wouldn't_ have let them! And remember"--her voice softened--"she's your friend, because--she's of the best!" Miss North's eyes wandered dreamily now, and she seemed to have forgotten her audience. "Remember, there are always the others, too--the coarse and the brutal, who are only _glad of an excuse_--and they can stamp their whole people--very coarsely. But remember, Ezekiel," her eyes gazed fixedly ahead, "it isn't the fault of the best ones; it's the fault of the worst--who always snatch at an excuse--and who will--just as long as they're allowed."

Her eyes fell on Ezekiel again, who was looking at her in wide perplexity.

"What is it, Ezekiel?" she smiled. "Oh, yes, I was just saying--about Mrs. Simons--she was always _very_ good to you, wasn't she, Ezekiel?"

"Yas'm, Mis' Simons cert'nly wuz good ter me." Again it was Ezekiel's eyes that dreamed with languid, velvety moistness.

"Remember--that she's--one of the best, Ezekiel!"

"Yas'm," came the gentle response; "couldn' be nobuddy no better'n--Mis' Simons!"

PROHIBITION AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

BY HUGO MÜNSTERBERG

If a German stands up to talk about prohibition, he might just as well sit down at once, for every one in America, of course, knows beforehand what he is going to say. Worse, every one knows also exactly why he is so anxious to say it: how can he help being on the wrong side of this question? And especially if he has been a student in Germany, he will have brought the drinking habit along with him from the Fatherland, together with his cigar smoking and card playing and duelling. If a poor man relies on his five quarts of heavy Munich beer a day, how can he ever feel happy if he is threatened with no license in his town and with no beer in his stein? Yet my case seems slightly different. I never in my life played cards, I never fought a duel, and when the other day in a large women's college, after an address and a reception, the lady president wanted to comfort me and suggested that I go into the next room and smoke a cigar, I told her frankly that I could do it if it were the rule in her college, but that it would be my first cigar. With beer it is different: Last winter in traveling I was for some days the guest of an Episcopal clergyman, who, anticipating the visit of a German, had set up a bottle of excellent beer as a welcome, and we drank together the larger part of the bottle--but I think that is my only case in late years. When I had to attend a Students' "Commers," I was always protected by the thick mug through which no one could discover that the contents never became less during the evening. I live most comfortably in a pleasant temperance town which will, I hope, vote no-license year by year as long as freshmen stroll over the old Harvard Yard. And although I have become pretty much Americanized, I have never drunk a cocktail.

The problem of prohibition, thus, does not affect my thirst, but it greatly interests my scientific conscience; not as a German, but as a psychologist I feel impelled to add a word to the discussion which is suddenly reverberating over the whole country. But is it really a discussion which we hear? Is it not rather a one-sided denunciation of alcohol, repeated a million times with louder and louder voice, an outcry ever swelling in its vehemence? On the other side there may be the protests of the distillers and brewers and wine-growers and bottle-makers and saloon-keepers, and perhaps some timid declarations of thirsty societies--but such protests do not count, since they have all the earmarks of selfishness; they are ruled out, and no one listens, just as no one would consult the thieves if a new statute against pickpockets were planned. So far as the really disinterested public is concerned, the discussion is essentially one-sided. If serious men like Cardinal Gibbons raise their voices in a warning against prohibition, they are denounced and overborne, and no one cares to imitate them.

_The Fundamental Evil of American Public Opinion_

It has been seldom indeed that the fundamental evil of American public opinion has come out so clearly; namely, that no one dares to be on the unpopular side; just as in fashion and social life, every one wants to be "in it." No problem has in America a fair hearing as soon as one side has become the fashion of mind. Only the cranks come out with an unbalanced, exaggerated opposition and thus really help the cause they want to fight against. The well-balanced thinkers keep quiet and simply look on while the movement rushes forward, waiting quietly for the reaction which sets in from the inner absurdity of every social extreme. The result is too often an hysterical zig-zag movement, where fearlessness might have found a middle way of steady progress. There must be indeed a possible middle way between the evil of the present saloon and the not lesser evil of a future national prohibition; yet if this one-sidedness of discussion goes on, it is not difficult to foresee, after the legislative experiences of the last year, that the hysterical movement will not stop until prohibition is proclaimed from every state-house between the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Exaggerated denunciation of the prohibition movement is, of course, ineffective. Whoever simply takes sides with the saloon-keeper and his clientèle--yes, whoever is blind to the colossal harm which alcohol has brought and is now bringing to the whole country--is unfit to be heard by those who have the healthy and sound development of the nation at heart. The evils which are connected with the drinking habit are gigantic; thousands of lives and many more thousands of households are the victims every year; disease and poverty and crime grow up where alcohol drenches the soil. To deny it means to ignore the teachings of medicine and economics and criminology.

But is this undeniable fact really a proof of the wisdom of prohibition? The railroads of the United States injured last year more than one hundred thousand persons and put out seven thousand hopeful lives; does any sane man argue that we ought to abolish railroads? The stock exchange has brought in the last year economic misery to uncounted homes, but even at the height of the panic no one wanted to destroy the market for industrial stocks. How much crime and disaster and disease and ruin have come into the lives of American youth through women, and yet who doubts that women are the blessing of the whole national life? To say that certain evils come from a certain source suggests only to fools the hasty annihilation of the source before studying whether greater evils might not result from its destruction, and without asking whether the evils might not be reduced, and the good from the same source remain untouched and untampered with. Even if a hollow tooth aches, the modern dentist does not think of pulling it; that would be the remedy of the clumsy village barber. The evils of drink exist, and to neglect their cure would be criminal, but to rush on to the conclusion that every vineyard ought therefore to be devastated is unworthy of the logic of a self-governing nation. The other side has first to show its case.

"_Better England Free Than England Sober?_"

This does not mean that every argument of the other side is valid. In most of the public protestations, especially from the Middle West, far too much is made of the claim that all the Puritanic laws and the whole prohibitionist movement are an interference with personal liberty. It is an old argument, indeed, "Better England free than England sober." For public meetings it is just the kind of protest which resounds well and rolls on nobly. We are at once in the midst of the "most sacred" rights. Who desires that America, the idol of those who seek freedom from the tyranny of the Old World, shall trample on the right of personal liberty? And yet those hundreds of singing-societies which have joined in this outburst of moral indignation have forgotten that every law is a limitation of personal liberty. The demand of the nation must limit the demands of the individual, even if it is not the neighbor, but the actor himself who is directly hurt. No one wants to see the lottery or gambling-houses or the free sale of morphine and cocaine permitted, or slavery, even though a man were to offer himself for sale, or polygamy, even though all wives should consent. To prevent temptation toward ruinous activities is truly the State's best right, and no injury to personal liberty. The German reflects gladly how much more the German State apparently intrudes upon personal freedom: for instance, in its splendid State insurance for old age and accidents.

To be sure, from this German viewpoint it is hard to understand why the right of the State to subordinate personal wishes to national ones should not carry with it a duty to make compensation. To him the actions of some Southern States appear simply as the confiscation of property. When, as has happened, a captain of industry erects, for instance, a most costly brewery, and the State in the following year prohibits the sale of beer, turning the large, new establishment into a huge, useless ruin, without giving the slightest compensation, the foreigner stands aghast, wondering if to-morrow a party which believes in the State ownership of railroads may not prohibit railroading by private companies without any payment to the present owners.

Yet the political aspect does not concern the social psychologist. I abstract from it as from many others. There is, indeed, no limit to the problems which ought to be studied most seriously before such a gigantic revolution is organized. The physician may ask whether and when alcohol is real medicine, and the physiologist may study whether it is a food and whether it is rightly taken as helpful to nutrition; but this is not our problem. The theologians may quarrel as to whether the Bible praises the wine or condemns the drinker, whether Christ really turned water into that which we call wine, and whether Christianity as such stands for abstinence. It is matter for the economist to ask what will become of the hundred thousands of men who are working to-day in the breweries and related industries. A labor union claims that "over half a million men would be thrown out of employment by general prohibition, who, with their families, would make an army of a million human beings robbed of their means of existence." And the economist, again, may consider what it might mean to take out the license taxes from the city budgets and the hundreds of millions of internal revenue from the budget of the whole country. It is claimed that the brewers, maltsters, and distillers pay out for natural and manufactured products, for labor, transportation, etc., seven hundred million dollars annually; that their aggregate investments foot up to more than three thousand millions; and that their taxes contribute three hundred and fifty millions every year to the public treasuries. Can the country afford to ruin an industry of such magnitude? Such weighty problems cannot be solved in the Carrie Nation style: yet they are not ours here.

_The Lonely Drinker of the Temperance Town_

Nearer to our psychological interest comes the well-known war-cry, "Prohibition does not prohibit." It is too late in the day to need to prove it by statistics: every one knows it. No one has traveled in prohibition States who has not seen the sickening sight of drunkards of the worst order. The drug-stores are turned into very remunerative bars, and through hidden channels whiskey and gin flood the community. The figures of the United States Commissioner of Internal Revenue tell the story publicly. In a license State like Massachusetts, there exists one retail liquor dealer for every 525 of population; in a prohibition State like Kansas, one for every 366. But the secret story is much more alarming. What is the effect? As far as the health of the nation and its mental training in self-control and in regulation of desires are concerned, the result must be dangerous, because, on the whole, it eliminates the mild beverages in favor of the strong drinks and substitutes lonely drinking for drinking in social company. Both are psychologically and physiologically a turn to the worse. It is not the mild beer and light wine which are secretly imported; it is much easier to transport and hide whiskey and rum, with their strong alcoholic power and stronger effect on the nerve-cells of the brain. And of all forms of drinking none is more ruinous than the solitary drink, as soon as the feeling of repugnance has been overcome; there is no limit and no inhibition. If I look back over the last years, in which I often studied the effects of suggestion and hypnotism on habitual drinkers, I do not hesitate to say that it was in most cases an easy thing to cure the social drinker of the large cities, but very hard to break the lonely drinker of the temperance town. Of course, prohibition reduces somewhat the whole quantity of consumption, but it withdraws the stimulant, in most cases, where it would do the least harm and intensifies the harm to the organism where it is most dangerous.

_Our Greatest Danger--Disregard for Law_

But man is not only a nervous system. Prohibition forced by a majority on an unwilling minority will always remain a living source of the spirit of disregard for law. Yet, "unwilling" minority is too weak an epithet; the question is of a minority which considers the arbitrary rule undemocratic, absurd, immoral, and which really believes that it is justified in finding a way around a contemptible law.

Judges know how rapidly the value of the oath sinks in courts where violation of the prohibition laws is a frequent charge, and how habitual perjury becomes tolerated by respected people. The city politicians know still better how closely blackmail and corruption hang together, in the social psychology, with the enforcement of laws that strike against the beliefs and traditions of wider circles. The public service becomes degraded, the public conscience becomes dulled. And can there be any doubt that disregard of law is the most dangerous psychological factor in our present-day American civilization? It is not lynch law which is the worst; the crimes against life are twenty times more frequent than in Europe, and as for the evils of commercial life which have raised the wrath of the whole well-meaning nation in late years, has not disregard of law been their real source? In a popular melodrama the sheriff says solemnly: "I stand here for the law"; and when the other shouts in reply, "I stand for common sense!" night after night the public breaks out into jubilant applause. To foster this immoral negligence of law by fabricating hasty, ill-considered laws in a hysterical mood, laws which almost tempt toward a training in violation of them, is surely a dangerous experiment in social psychology.

_Are We About to Prohibit Meat and Tea?_

Hasty and hysterical that kind of law-making is indeed. Within a few years, during which the situation itself has not been changed, during which no new discoveries have proved the right or necessity, during which no experts have reached common results, the wave has swollen to a devastating flood. Who let it loose? Were the psychologists asked to decide, or the physicians, or the physiologists, or the sociologists, or any one who has studied the problem as a whole with professional knowledge? Certainly not: their commissions have hardly ever proposed total abstinence. Of course, those who rush on mean the best as they see it; they want to make better men; but can a nation ever hope to reach private morality by law and thus to exclude all private lying and greediness and envy and ingratitude and temper and unfairness just as well as intemperance? Such unclear and vague mixing of purposes always characterizes hysterical legislation. A sober contemplator must ask himself: What is it to lead to if well-meaning, short-sighted dilettantes can force legislation on questions which demand the most serious expert study?