Industrial conditions for the most part are relentless and hard. The
poor man is thrown into competition with his fellows for work. He may
get along when work is easy to get and wages are good, but in dull times
he falls behind, and is in hopeless trouble. His life is a long, hard
struggle to make adjustments to his environment, and it is not strange
that he goes down so often before the heavy task. Failure to make proper
adjustments directly and indirectly often means prison to him.
Again, the ordinary and especially the weak man is hopelessly puzzled by
his environment. It must never be overlooked that man has a lowly
origin. The marks of his humble birth are in his whole structure and
life. His make-up has been the work of the ages. He is a late
development of a life that knew nothing of law, as law is understood
today. His ancestors were hungry and went out after food, they killed
their prey and took their food by main strength whenever they had the
power. They were subject to certain customs which were very strict, but
which were few and did not seriously complicate life. They knew only the
law of force. Their existence was simple and primal, and they were
governed by no "rights," except such simple ones as were made by might
and custom.
Civilization is a constant building-up of limitations around heredity; a
persistent growth of environmental control as it progresses, or at least
moves along. This structure, especially the legal structure, is built by
the more intelligent and always by the strong men. It is always shifting
and moving, and it is impossible for the inferior man to adjust his
emotions and his life rapidly to the changes. Things which are not
condemned by his feelings of right and wrong are condemned by laws that
meet with no response from his emotions and moral ideas. To him at least
these are not different from the things that are done by others with
impunity and without rebuke. Especially is this true of the rapidly
growing class of property laws that have had no counterpart in the early
history of man. This list has grown so fast that it is beyond the power
of a large class of men to find in their feelings any response to many
of these criminal statutes. The ever-growing social restrictions are of
the same modern growth, and it is equally impossible to feel and
understand them. What we call civilization has moved so fast that the
structure and instincts of man have not been able to become adjusted to
it. The structure is too cumbersome, too intense, too hard, and if not
breaking down of its own weight, it is at least destroying thousands who
cannot adjust themselves to its changing demands. Not only are the
effects of this growing body of social and legal restrictions shown
directly by their constant violation, generally by the inferior and the
poor, but indirectly in their strain on the nervous system; by the
irritation and impatience that they generate, and which, under certain
conditions cause acts of violence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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