As time passed, he began to dissent from many of the dogmas of his immediate social environment. During high-school days he had been assigned to act the devil’s advocate and defend the free-trade side in a tariff debate. The more he read and thought about it, the more convinced he was that the free-trade position was sound. His relatives without exception were high-tariff Republicans, and his arguments were countered with sentimental rather than rational appeals. A’s conversion to free trade led him to come out for the Democratic candidate for the presidency. He remembers that the first time he announced this heresy one of his aunts violently pushed her chair away from the table, exclaiming in vexed, incredulous, and reproachful tones, “And to think that my own sister’s son could say such a thing!” His college course in biology converted him to evolution, and he argued this out at great length with one of his uncles, who was a traditionally minded preacher. A began to develop a feeling that intellectual brilliance meant dissenting from the convictions of middle-class people like his own relatives. So far his nonconformity was strictly confined to a few theories. He was a member of the prayer-meeting group in college, and his fraternity consisted mainly of embryo doctors of theology who scrupulously upheld a rigorous code of personal abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, strong language, and women. One of the young men who had the temerity to enter the house with a lighted cigarette had it gently but firmly removed from his lips. It was in college that A took part in his first law-enforcement drive. The state prohibition law was poorly observed, as A had good reason to know, since he had a collection route which took him to “drug stores” and other equivocal establishments about town. “Tea” was openly ordered at the bar and drunk on the premises. A conceived the idea of leaving posters in these places to advertise the law-enforcement meetings, thus creating something of a stir.