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 Brief Contents
PREFACE xv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xvii

CHAPTER 1 AN INTRODUCTION TO DEVIANCE 1

CHAPTER 2 EXPLAINING DEVIANT BEHAVIOR 27
CHAPTER 3 CONSTRUCTING DEVIANCE 57
CHAPTER 4 POVERTY AND DISREPUTE 84
CHAPTER 5 CRIME AND CRIMINALIZATION 111
CHAPTER 6 CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR 138
CHAPTER 7 WHITE COLLAR AND CORPORATE CRIME 168
CHAPTER 8 SUBSTANCE ABUSE 195
CHAPTER 9 SEXUAL DEVIANCE 227
CHAPTER 10 UNCONVENTIONAL BELIEFS 253
CHAPTER 11 MENTAL DISORDER 282
CHAPTER 12 DEVIANT PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 313
CHAPTER 13 TRIBAL STIGMA: RACE, RELIGION, AND
ETHNICITY 341
CHAPTER 14 CONCLUDING THOUGHTS 366

REFERENCES 378
AUTHOR INDEX 394
SUBJECT INDEX 401
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 Contents
PREFACE xv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xvii

CHAPTER 1 AN INTRODUCTION TO DEVIANCE 1

Deviance: What Is It? 2
Deviance in Everyday Life 4
Deviance as Non-Pejorative 5
Societal and Situational Deviance 6
The Relativity of Deviance 8
TABLE 1.1: Changes in Public Opinion over Time, United States 11
TABLE 1.2: Cross-National Designations of Deviance 11
The ABCs of Deviance 12
Deviant Attitudes and Beliefs 12
Physical Characteristics 14
Tribal Stigma: Race, Religion, and Ethnicity 15
Deviance: Positivism versus Constructionism 16
What about Deviance and Harm? 18
Summary 19
ACCOUNT: My Life’s Ups and Downs 22

CHAPTER 2 EXPLAINING DEVIANT BEHAVIOR 27

Positivism 29
Deviant Behavior: Why Do They Do It? 32
Biological Theories of Crime and Deviance 33
Free Will, Rational Choice, and Routine Activity Theory 35
Social Disorganization: The Chicago School 37
Anomie and Strain Theory 38
Differential Association and Learning Theory 43
Social Control Theory 45
Self-Control Theory 46
Summary 49
ACCOUNT: A Former Homeless Man Speaks Out 51
x CONTENTS

CHAPTER 3 CONSTRUCTING DEVIANCE 57

Deviance and Social Control 60
Formal and Informal Social Control 62
Perspectives that Focus on Defining Deviance 63
Labeling or Interactionist Theory 64
Conflict Theory 70
Feminism 73
Controlology 75
Summary 78
ACCOUNT: Victimization and Abuse 79

CHAPTER 4 POVERTY AND DISREPUTE 84

Poverty: A Form of Deviance or a Cause? 86
Perspectives on Poverty and Stigma 90
Poverty in the United States 94
Unemployment 98
Welfare 99
The Indignity of Begging 100
Homelessness 101
What about Disease? 103
Race and Poverty 106
Summary 108
ACCOUNT: Being Poor in Appalachia 109

CHAPTER 5 CRIME AND CRIMINALIZATION 111

The Social Construction of Murder 112
Crime and Deviance: A Conceptual Distinction 114
Common Law and Statutory Law 115
Positivism versus Constructionism 117
Mass Incarceration? 119
TABLE 5.1: Inmates in Jails and Prisons, 1940–2013 120
Race and the Criminal Justice System 121
TABLE 5.2: Stop-and-Frisk by Race, New York City, 2002–2015 124
The Arrest–Incarceration Gap 124
Missing Black Men? 125
Banishing the Deviant from Public Life 126
Disparities in Sentencing 130
 CONTENTS xi

Summary 132
ACCOUNT: My Life In and Out of Prison 134

CHAPTER 6 CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR 138

The Uniform Crime Reports 139
TABLE 6.1: The FBI’s Index Crimes (UCR), 1992–2014 142
The National Crime Victimization Survey 142
TABLE 6.2: Crime Victimization Rates, NCVS, 1992, 2002,
and 2013 (per 1,000) for Population Age 12 and Older 144
The End of the Crime Decline? 144
The Criminologist Looks at Murder 145
Forcible Rape 153
Property Crime 158
Shoplifting and Employee Theft 160
Summary 162
ACCOUNT: A Murder Victim’s Brother Speaks 164

CHAPTER 7 WHITE COLLAR AND CORPORATE CRIME 168

Individual versus Structural Deviance 172
The Discovery of White Collar Crime 175
White Collar and Corporate Crime 178
Corporate Crime: Correlative Features 181
Four Examples of Corporate Deviance 185
Environmental Pollution 186
Summary 188
ACCOUNT: Conspiracy to Defraud the IRS 189

CHAPTER 8 SUBSTANCE ABUSE 195

Rates of Use: NSDUH and MTF 196
TABLE 8.1: Drug Use, Driving while Drinking, and Number of
Heroin Users, Persons Age 12 and Older, 2002 and 2014 197
TABLE 8.2: Drug Use, Past 30 Days, 1991, 2001, 2014 200
A Classification of Drugs and Drug Effects 200
Alcohol Consumption: An Introduction 202
Acute Effects of Alcohol 204
Alcohol Abuse and Risky, Deviant Behaviors 205
Alcohol Abuse and Sexual Victimization 208
xii CONTENTS

Accompaniments of Drug Abuse: ADAM and DAWN 210

TABLE 8.3: Arrestees Urine-Testing Positive for Drugs, Percentage,
Median City Figures, 2013, ADAM-II 211
TABLE 8.4: ADAM, Adult Male Arrestees, Median City Figures, 2010 211
TABLE 8.5: Drug-Related ED Visits, DAWN, 2011 212
TABLE 8.6: NSDUH and Drug-Related ED Visits Ratios, United States
Population, Age 12 and Older, 2011 212
Marijuana Use as Deviance and Crime 214
Summary 217
ACCOUNT: An Executive’s Substance Abuse 220

CHAPTER 9 SEXUAL DEVIANCE 227

Positivism versus Constructionism 229
Sex Surveys: An Introduction 231
The Kinsey Reports, 1940s–1950s 232
The Sex in America Survey, 1990s 234
The General Social Surveys, 1972–2012 236
Gay Sex: Departing from Deviance 238
Adultery 244
Gender: The Crucial Ingredient 246
Summary 247
ACCOUNT: Faculty–Student Sex 249

CHAPTER 10 UNCONVENTIONAL BELIEFS 253

The Social Functions of Belief Systems 258
Religious Sects and Cults 261
Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Evolution 264
Conspiracy Theories 269
Paranormal Beliefs as Deviant 272
Summary 275
ACCOUNTS: A Potpourri of Scientifically Deviant Beliefs 277

CHAPTER 11 MENTAL DISORDER 282

What Is Mental Disorder? 283
Essentialism Approaches Mental Disorder 285
Thought versus Mood Disorders 287
Constructionism 288
 CONTENTS xiii

Labeling Theory 290

The Modified Labeling Approach 292
On Being Sane in Insane Places 293
The Epidemiology of Mental Disorder 295
Chemical Treatment of Mental Disorder 299
Deinstitutionalization 301
Mental Disorder as Deviance: An Overview 302
Intellectual Developmental Disorder 303
Autism Spectrum Disorder 305
Summary 307
ACCOUNT: On Being a Paranoid Schizophrenic 309

CHAPTER 12 DEVIANT PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 313

Abominations of the Body 317
Physical Disability 319
Looksism: Violations of Aesthetic Standards 321
Extreme Body Modification 324
Obesity 326
Disability and Tertiary Deviance 332
Summary 333
ACCOUNT: A Tattoo Collector Gets Inked 335

CHAPTER 13 TRIBAL STIGMA: RACE, RELIGION, AND ETHNICITY 341

Racism and Stigma: An Overview 343
Racism and Discrimination 347
TABLE 13.1: Attitudes toward Intermarriage, 1958–2011 352
Islamophobia 352
Anti-Semitism 356
Summary 361
ACCOUNT: Growing Up Colored in the South 362

CHAPTER 14 CONCLUDING THOUGHTS 366

ACCOUNT: Reflections on Studying BDSM 375

REFERENCES 378
AUTHOR INDEX 394
SUBJECT INDEX 401
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 Preface
A NEW ERA?
Racial polarization. Growing economic inequality.
Deeply entrenched poverty. New methods of com-
mitting corporate malfeasances. New and unique
cutting-edge drugs that get the user higher faster.
More homeless former mental patients roaming the
streets. Internet sites that promise all manner of
sexual services and thrills. A rise in the crime rate,
previously down to record-low levels. Conspiracy
theories about where an African American presi-
dent was born.
Where is this society going? What are we doing?
Are we entering a new age of deviance and crime?
Does the study of deviance demand a broader
scope, a more far-reaching vision?
NEW TO THIS EDITION
I’ve enjoyed revising Deviant Behavior for Rout-
ledge, the book’s new publisher, because many
ongoing events have virtually cried out for an
update. In addition to updating this edition with
contemporary facts and figures and discussions of
recent publications and developments, here are a
few of the changes I’ve made and new issues I’ve
raised.
Several readers suggested that I devote more
discussion to the subject of race and the criminal
justice system, and so I have. These discussions
include sections on mass incarceration, stop and
frisk, disparities in sentencing, the black versus
white arrest–incarceration ratio disparity, and the
question of missing black men—which itself raises
disturbing implications for the African American
family. I’ve expanded my discussions of crime and
criminalization into two chapters; among other
crucial issues, I’ve made the distinction between
the criminalization of behavior and specific forms
of criminal behavior, what criminologists have
referred to as “criminal behavior systems.” I’ve
captured the distinction between criminalization
and crime by discussing, in Chapter 5, how murder
is conceptualized, and, in Chapter 6, how the crim-
inologist draws empirical conclusions about mur-
der. Is environmental pollution a form of deviance?
Is it a crime? Does it belong in a deviance textbook?
The issue in turn connects with the newly emerging
field of “green criminology.”
Conceptually and theoretically, I’ve also distin-
guished more clearly labeling theory and construc-
tionism—two approaches that some observers
have confused. All too often critics have inter-
preted constructionism to imply that a particular
real-world problem, such as murder, is “only” a
construction, which is completely false; murder is
both, as I’ve emphasized. To illustrate that truth,
I have included in Chapter 6 the account, “A
Murder Victim’s Brother Speaks.” Moreover, along
these lines, I’ve added a section on whether and
to what extent deviance should be defined by the
harm that some actions inflict upon others, whose
advocates use this position as a critique—in my
view, naïve and misguided—of the social construc-
tion of reality. Appropriately, I’ve added a section
on deviance and harm. Further, I’ve expanded the
argument that believing in certain kinds of
conspiracy theory represents a form of cognitive
deviance.
Some readers felt that in the previous edition I
devoted too much space to substance abuse, so I’ve
trimmed the material in the previous edition’s
Chapters 7 and 8, merging them into the new
Chapter 8 of this edition. Both researchers and
informed observers have suggested new approaches
to several of our topics—for instance, on schizo-
phrenia, on race, and on racism, and I have accom-
modated their ideas in this edition. More than half
of the personal accounts following the chapters
are new. A few include “Faculty–Student Sex,”
“A Formerly Homeless Man Speaks out,” “Victim-
ization and Abuse,” “A Tattoo Collector Gets
Inked,” “An Executive’s Substance Abuse,” and
xvi PREFACE
“Reflections on Studying BDSM,” the last of these,
an essay written by a sociologist studying sado-
masochistic sex. In the discussion on tribal stigma,
or the deviance of race, ethnicity, and religion, I’ve
added a section on genocide. I’ve deleted several
sections throughout that were probably redundant
and excessive.
New to this edition is an extensive, author-
created instructor’s manual offering lesson plans,
teaching tips, student activities, film suggestions,
web links, study questions, and more. Instruc-
tors may access this by clicking the “Instructor
Resources” tab on the book’s Routledge page at:
https://www.routledge.com/products/9781138
191907.
ONGOING POSITIONS
The sociology of deviance demands empathy. Soci-
ologists should live inside the skin of their subjects,
informants, audiences, and interviewees, so that
they can see the world through their eyes and
emotionally experience life the way they live it.
This is difficult and gut-wrenching, involving, as it
does, taking the role of the other with a diversity
of actors whose perspectives often contradict one
another, as well as, quite often, clashing with one’s
own point of view. How can we possibly empathize
with people who inflict serious harm on human-
kind? The task is daunting. Rule-violators are not
always offbeat, good-guy rebels, and mavericks;
sometimes, they are abusers, exploiters, murderers,
and true villains—whether corporate, govern-
mental, or individual. But empathy can help us
understand them, what they do, and perhaps the
harm they inflict, if they do. Usually they don’t,
though empathy helps either way. At the same
time, I try to avoid the eerily detached attitude of
superiority that some social scientists adopt; these
sociological observers shall remain nameless.
It almost goes without saying that what I pre-
sent here is a sociological perspective on deviance.
I am not a psychologist, I am not a neurologist,
and what happens in the brain is a domain that
stretches continents away from my geography of
competence. Other disciplines define the term I
use in entirely different ways and marshal different
mechanisms to explain how the human organism
engages in activities that fall under their definition.
Theirs may be more fundamental, more primal,
but my domain is more out in the open; it’s there,
it’s what I study and write about, and it’s what I
know.
 Acknowledgments
For earlier editions of this text, I discharged debts
of gratitude to multiple friends, relatives, col-
leagues, students, collaborators on various projects,
interviewees and respondents, and critics. I’d also
like to reiterate my gratitude to two Prentice-
Hall editors, one, Ed Stanford, who got the orig-
inal book project rolling, and the second, Nancy
Roberts, who kept it going. Naturally, I wish to
express my enormous thanks to the brave folks who
contributed the accounts that appear after each
chapter, some from past editions, others for this
one. These human-interest stories impart a veri-
similitude to the book that perhaps the expository
paragraphs and statistics lack. I am humbled by
the honesty of these authors and interviewees. In
previous editions, most of these account-givers
were pleased to read their narratives in print, but a
small handful recoiled when they encountered their
supposed sins and drawbacks self-chronicled and
concentrated into a few pages. I apologize to the
latter category, but this is what this book is about
—deeds, beliefs, and conditions that some of us
regard as wrongful. There’s no getting around that
fact, except to be truthful and sagacious about such
matters; context and perspective are crucial here.
To Nachman Ben-Yehuda, whose companion-
ship and fruitful association, collaboration, and
sage advice I have long treasured; to the memory
of my dad, William J. Goode, who died too soon—
Si, I thought you’d live to celebrate your 100th
birthday! To Dean Birkenkamp, sociology editor at
Routledge, whose persistence, patience, and faith
in me and in this project kept me at my computer.
And to Amanda Yee, Dean’s assistant, I likewise
express gratitude. I’ve mentioned numerous others
in the acknowledgments of the previous editions of
this book and so I stop, because a complete list
would become far too long and cumbersome far too
quickly.
My wife, Barbara. I’m grateful to her. My tower,
my flywheel. My love. She’s the main influence in
my life.
I have borrowed several phrases, sentences,
paragraphs, and even pages from a couple of my
published articles, principally those that discuss the
fanciful “death of deviance” notion. I gratefully
acknowledge my use of this material.
Erich Goode
Greenwich Village, New York
This page intentionally left bank
 C H A P T E R

1
An Introduction to Deviance

Source: © Tim Gerard Barker/Getty Images

E LIVE, it would appear, in troubled—and
W troubling—times. Lots of people around the
world engage in behavior that doesn’t seem right.
In as many cities across the United States, police
gun down a dozen unarmed African American
suspects on the street in blatant violation of accept-
able tactical protocol. In Baltimore, four teenagers
crouch in an alleyway, suck on and then pass
around a glass pipe and stare dreamily into space.
Mental hospitals everywhere release disordered
patients onto the street, unsupervised, unmedicated,
and unhoused, where they sleep, or beg from,
jabber to, or scream at passers-by. The collapse of
the subprime housing market vaporizes billions

1
2 AN INTRODUCTION TO DEVIANCE
of dollars and leaves hundreds of thousands of
families deep in debt and troubled about their
lives and their futures. Chemical company execu-
tives bribe politicians to allow them to dump toxic
waste in rivers, streams, and lakes. Somewhere
in cyberspace there’s a “dark net” where purveyors
sell illicit goods and services to customers seeking
them out—murder for hire, child pornography,
drugs, forged passports, counterfeit drivers’ licen-
ses, stolen credit cards, untraceable and unlicensed
semiautomatic weapons, a forum for dissidents in
authoritarian regimes to voice their political griev-
ances, and even computer viruses (Bartlett, 2014;
Halpern, 2015).
“From there to here, from here to there, funny
things are everywhere,” says Dr. Seuss in the
opening line of One Fish Two Fish Blue Fish Red
Fish—and we can only agree. Except that many of
these things are not very amusing; in fact, they are
tragic.
What I intend to do in this book, insofar as such
a thing is possible, is to put these and similar—and
some very different—events and developments into
focus. How people—and, hence, sociologists—
conceptualize deviance is a recurrent theme that
runs throughout this volume, and we may encounter
some surprises along the way. What we’re inter-
ested in is the what, who, how, where, and when—
that is, the structure and dynamics—of whatever is
likely to elicit condemnation. But what counts in
the deviance equation is not what each individual
observer, including the student—and also including
the individual sociologist—feels is really, truly
right or wrong. It is something altogether different.
DEVIANCE: WHAT IS IT?
Marshall Clinard’s classic textbook defined
deviance as “deviations from social norms which
encounter disapproval” (1957, p. vii)—a standard
and widely adopted definition that seems entirely
sensible, although limited. Still, I’d like to qualify,
shade, and complicate matters a bit. Who defines
or promulgates these social norms? How widely
held are they? How much disapproval do these
deviations elicit? Are they sanctioned by the society
at large—or do different, diverse, and scattered
audiences, different social circles, sanction
different norms? How large do such social circles
or audiences have to be? How many audiences
need to disapprove of normative violations for them
to qualify as deviance? And likewise, how serious
are these deviations or violations? These intriguing
questions raise a host of conceptual, intellectual,
and theoretical issues. All of the behaviors des-
cribed in the introductory paragraph of this chapter
would encounter disapproval from some members
of the society, but not all. Disapproval comes, not
from everyone in a society, but from members of
certain circles of collectivities—groups of people.
Sociologists of deviance call these groups “audi-
ences,” because they constitute collectivities that
decide whether certain acts are wrongful and ex-
press approval, disapproval, or neutrality about the
actors’ moral character.
Here’s a telling example. In October 2015, the
Democratic and Republican candidates for the 2016
election engaged in debates about America’s prob-
lems as well as their solutions. In their one debate,
the Democratic candidates characterized climate
change, police shootings of African Americans,
and a failing criminal justice system as the most
important issues for society that were in need of
repair. The Republicans held two debates; they
featured abortion, illegal immigration, high taxes,
the regulation of business, and free-spending
government social welfare programs as the central
problems of the day, all of which contribute to the
“rotting” of “America’s moral core” (Healy, 2015,
p. A1). In other words, the leaders of the two parties
disagree about what’s wrong with American
society and what constitutes wrongful behavior;
each side defines deviance in very different ways.
All societies on Earth are comprised of social
circles, groups of people, or scattered individuals,
whose members judge and evaluate what they see
and hear about. When they encounter or hear about
behavior, expressed beliefs, and even physical traits
or characteristics that should be considered offen-
sive, improper, unseemly, or inappropriate, there’s
a likelihood that they will punish, denounce, or
humiliate the violator. In a similar fashion, if the
behavior in question is illegal, law enforcement
may step in and make an arrest. But does it always?
In other words, all societies exercise some forms of
social control. If social control is never exercised,
societies almost inevitably collapse into chaos and

anarchy. But this formulation leaves some issues
unresolved. When members of audiences observe
something of which they disapprove, when and
under what circumstances do they express disap-
proval? Much of the time, people ignore untoward
behavior, the expression of wayward beliefs, and
unconventional physical characteristics. How does
all this behavior, this action and interaction—and
inaction—come about? Even if we see something
we regard as wrong, we sometimes intervene and
sometimes ignore it. Why? What’s the pattern here?
Under what circumstances do we do the one, or the
other? Here, I address these issues; they are central
to the sociology of deviance.
Sociologists define deviance as behavior,
beliefs, and characteristics that violate society’s, or
a collectivity’s, norms, the violation of which tends
to attract negative reactions from audiences. Such
negative reactions include contempt, punishment,
hostility, condemnation, criticism, denigration,
condescension, stigma, pity, and/or scorn. Perhaps
the most common reaction to someone doing or
saying something or looking a certain way is the
withdrawal of sociability—walking away from the
person in question. But how strong does the nega-
tive reaction have to be to allow the sociologist
to view the action, attitude, or trait as “deviant”?
The short answer is: It doesn’t matter; deviance
is a matter of degree. The stronger the negative
reaction and the greater the number of audiences
that react this way—and the more sizable and influ-
ential the audiences are—the more likely it is that
the violator will attract negative reactions or
labeling, and the more certain sociologists feel that
they have an instance of deviance on their hands.
Not all members of a given audience will react in
the same way; usually—even within a specific
society or social circle—reactions to normative
violations vary.
Sociologists don’t necessarily agree with a
given negative assessment, or react in such nega-
tive ways—they don’t always think that the violator
ought to be chastised or punished—but, as sociol-
ogists, it’s their obligation to notice that certain
audiences do react negatively. Sociologists study
such reactions, because these social exchanges
define or constitute deviance. There is no essence
to deviance, no hard, concrete reality that we can
put our hands on that exists independent of such
AN INTRODUCTION TO DEVIANCE 3
condemnatory or scornful reactions, no quality all
deviancies possess—and, hence, no categorical or
generic “cause” of deviance. The defining charac-
teristic of deviance for most sociologists is not
harm, injury, wrong, pathology, sin, or abusiveness;
these qualities or attributes are socially constructed
and attributed, and, however they are defined, what
is considered deviant varies independently of them.
Under certain circumstances, powerful people
can get away with doing things that others—less
powerful people—find offensive. The less powerful
parties may be afraid to react in a way that ex-
presses how they feel, so they may express these
feelings in different contexts, under other circum-
stances. Perhaps they’ll tell a friend, a teacher, or
a relative about it; perhaps they’ll wait for the
appropriate time and place to react. Or perhaps they
simply sublimate their reactions and feel resentful
and lash out at someone else. All sociological
generalizations apply other things being equal;
power, like audiences, qualifies or contextualizes
sociological definitions of deviance.
What’s deviant is a definition, not a theory. It
defines what the sociological conceptualization of
deviance is; it does not formulate a cause-and-
effect explanation for why people behave the way
they do, believe what they do, or are the way they
are—or react the way they do. These are separate
matters. Why people do what they do, and why
members of certain audiences react the way they
do, and what conditions influence them to react one
way rather than another, all demand an explanation.
The same behavior, beliefs, and conditions elicit
diverse reactions, depending on the audience.
But this diversity is not without boundaries. Social
and cultural constraints and conditions place limi-
tations on what’s considered deviant. Nowhere is
an unprovoked killing of the members of one’s
own band, tribe, family, group, kin, or intimate unit
considered acceptable or praiseworthy; certain
physical conditions are considered so hideous
that in no society are they beauty features. In other
words, there are limits to relativity, limits as to
the ways in which cultures or subcultures con-
struct notions of good and bad, beautiful and ugly,
acceptable and unacceptable, righteous and wrong-
ful, moral and immoral. But the limits are broad,
and, for the most, relativity in these judgments
prevails.
4 AN INTRODUCTION TO DEVIANCE
DEVIANCE IN EVERYDAY LIFE
Just about everyone has done something that
someone else frowns upon; just about everyone
believes something that certain others view as
immoral or wrongful, holds attitudes of which
somebody disapproves, or possesses physical or
ethnic characteristics that touch off disdain or
hostility or denigration in this, that, or some other,
social circle, “audience,” or person. Perhaps at least
once, we’ve stolen something, or told a lie, or
gossiped about another person in an especially
unflattering manner. Maybe more than once we’ve
gotten drunk, or high, or driven too fast, or reck-
lessly, or gone through a red light without bothering
to stop. Have we ever worn clothes someone else
thought were out of style, offensive, or ugly? Have
we ever belched at the dinner table, broken wind,
or picked our nose in public? Have we ever cut
class or failed to read an assignment? Do we like
a television program someone else finds stupid and
boring? Didn’t we once date someone our parents
and friends didn’t like? Maybe our religious beliefs
and practices don’t agree with those of the members
of another theological group, organization, sect, or
denomination. Perhaps politically we’re a liberal,
or a conservative, or somewhere in the middle—
someone doesn’t approve of those views. At some
point, didn’t we put on a little too much weight?
All of us make judgments about the behavior,
beliefs, appearance, or characteristics of others. All
of us evaluate others, although in variable ways.
Societies everywhere formulate and enforce rules
or norms governing what we may and may not do,
how we should and shouldn’t think, believe, and
say, even how we should and shouldn’t look. Those
norms are so detailed and complex, and so depen-
dent on the views of different “audiences” or social
circles of evaluators, that certain things that others
do, believe, and are, are looked on negatively by
someone—in all likelihood, by lots of other people.
Believers in God look down on atheists; atheists
think believers in God are misguided and mistaken.
Fundamentalist Christians oppose the beliefs of
fundamentalist Muslims, and vice versa. Liberals
disapprove of and oppose the views of conserva-
tives; to conservatives, the feeling is mutual. Many
college campuses are divided into mutually exclu-
sive ethnic and racial enclaves; in student unions,
often, the whites sit together in their own area,
and African Americans in theirs. Jocks and drug-
gies, brains and preppies, Greeks, geeks, hippies—
the number of ways that what we believe, or do, or
are, is judged negatively by some others is almost
infinite.
There are four necessary ingredients for devi-
ance to take place or exist: one, a rule or norm; two,
someone who violates (or is thought to violate) that
norm; three, an “audience,” a person or collec-
tivity who judges behavior, beliefs, or traits to be
wrongful; and four, the likelihood of a negative
reaction—criticism, condemnation, censure, stigma,
disapproval, punishment, and the like—by the
members of at least one of those audiences. To
qualify as deviance, it isn’t even necessary to vio-
late a norm that’s serious, such as the Ten Com-
mandments. Norms are everywhere, and they vary
in seriousness, and different social circles believe
in and profess different norms. In other words,
“deviance” is a matter of degree, a continuum or a
spectrum, from trivial to extremely serious, and it
is relative as to audience. “I’ve never done anything
seriously wrong,” we might tell ourselves. “There’s
nothing deviant about me!” we add. But “wrong”
according to whose standards? And “deviant” in
what sense? And to what degree? Chances are we
think our political position is reasonable; many of
our fellow citizens will disagree, finding our poli-
tics foolish and wrong-headed. Our friends are
probably in synch with us with respect to lifestyle
and taste in clothing, but, unbeknownst to us,
behind our backs, there are others who make fun
of us because of the way we dress and act. We prob-
ably feel our religious beliefs are sound, even right-
eous, but we might be surprised by how many
others don’t. The point is, nearly everything about
every one of us—both the reader and the author of
this book included—is a potential source of criti-
cism, condemnation, or censure, in some social
circles, from the point of view of some observers.
Deviance is not a simple quality resting with a
given action, belief, or trait inherent in, intrinsic to,
or indwelling within them. Hardly any act, for
example, is regarded as deviant everywhere and at
all times (though some acts are more widely
condemned than others are). What makes a given
act deviant is the way it is seen, regarded, judged,
evaluated, and the way that others—audiences—

treat the person who engages in that act. Deviance
is that which is considered wrongful by specific
audiences, within certain social settings, and is
reacted to negatively, in a socially rejecting or crit-
ical fashion. Acts, beliefs, and traits are deviant
to certain persons or audiences or in certain social
circles. What defines deviance is the actual or
potential reaction that actions, beliefs, and traits
generate or are likely to generate in audiences. It
is this negative reaction that defines or constitutes
a given act, belief, or trait as deviant. Without that
reaction, actual or potential, we do not have a case
of deviance on our hands. When that reaction takes
place, or is expressed in an interview or question-
naire, sociologists refer to whatever touches off that
reaction as deviant—to the members of a particular
collectivity who react to it in a negative fashion.
Humans are evaluative creatures: We create and
enforce rules. But some of us also violate some
rules; the tendency to do as we please, against the
norms, is inherently disobedient. There are those
who park in “No Parking” zones; smoke when and
where they aren’t supposed to; shoplift when they
don’t have enough money or don’t feel like waiting
in line; speed to get where they’re going. Some
among us even have sex with the wrong partner.
Not one of us is passive, obeying all rules like a
robot, programmed to follow society’s commands.
The human animal is active, creative, and some-
times irrepressible. All societies generate a multi-
tude of rules—and their violations, likewise, are
multitudinous. In fact, the more numerous and
detailed the rules, the greater the likelihood of
normative violations.
Virtually no one abides by all rules all the time.
This is a literal impossibility, as some of these
rules contradict one another. None of these rules
is considered valid by everyone in any society.
Especially in a large, complex, urban, multicultural,
multiethnic, multinational society such as the
United States, the variation in rules is consider-
able—indeed, immense. This means that almost
any action, belief, or characteristic we could think
of is approved in some social circles and con-
demned in others. Almost inevitably, we deviate
from someone’s rules simply by acting, believing,
or even being a certain way, as it is impossible to
conform to all the rules that prevail.
AN INTRODUCTION TO DEVIANCE 5
DEVIANCE AS NON-PEJORATIVE
When sociologists say that something is deviant
within a certain social circle or society, does that
mean that they agree that it should be condemned?
Of course not! All of us have our own views of
what’s right and wrong, and those views may chime
or clash with those of the audiences whose reac-
tions we are looking at. Does this mean that, when
we use the term “deviant” as a form of sociological
analysis, we seek to denigrate, put down, or humil-
iate anyone to whom the term applies? Absolutely
not! Again, we may agree or disagree with the
judgment, but, if we hear what people say or watch
what they do, that judgment hits us like a pie in the
face. We would be foolish and ignorant to pretend
that it doesn’t exist. When we say that they feel an
act to be wrong, we are taking note of how mem-
bers of particular social collectivities regard or treat
a certain behavior, belief, or characteristic. If we
say that a president’s approval rating is high, or
low, that does not mean that we approve, or dis-
approve, of that president. What it means is that
we take note of public opinion. When we say
that many people in American society look down
upon prostitutes, criminals, drug dealers, alcohol-
ics, this does not mean that we necessarily agree
with that judgment. (Of course, we may.) Negative
reactions, taken as a whole, constitute a social fact,
and we would be foolish to pretend that they don’t
exist. In other words, when sociologists use the
terms “deviance” and “deviant,” they are using
them in an absolutely non-pejorative fashion. This
means that, sociologically, they are descriptive
terms that apply to what certain people think and
how they feel about certain actions and actors. You
may hate a particular movie, but, if it is number one
at the box office, you can still say it is a “popular”
movie—because it is. You could be an atheist and
still say that atheism is deviant to many Americans.
Even if you don’t agree with that judgment, it is
materially real in that it has consequences, and,
as sociologists, we are forced to acknowledge the
existence of those attitudes and their consequences.
Some observers don’t like the sound of the word,
“deviant,” imagining that it has an automatic pejo-
rative tone. But what’s a better term? No one has
come up with one that seems to satisfy everyone.
Every alternative is conceptually inappropriate.
6 AN INTRODUCTION TO DEVIANCE
In short, deviance is an analytic category: It
applies to all spheres and areas of human life; it is
a trans-historical, cross-cultural concept. The
dynamics of deviance have taken place throughout
recorded history and in every known society,
anywhere humans interact with one another. Every-
where, people are evaluated on the basis of what
they do, what they believe, and who they are—and
they are thus reacted to accordingly. Deviance-
defining processes take place everywhere and
anywhere people engage in behavior, hold and
express beliefs, and possess traits that others regard
as unacceptable. Normative violations, and reac-
tions to normative violations, occur everywhere.
They exist and have existed in all societies every-
where and throughout human history. They are a
central and foundational social process. Although
the term has been used derogatively in popular
parlance and in psychiatric evaluations, “deviance”
does not refer to immorality or psychopathology.
Sociologically, it means only one thing: the viola-
tion of social norms that can result in punishment,
condemnation, or ridicule. Thus, it is a descriptive,
not a pejorative term.
SOCIETAL AND SITUATIONAL
DEVIANCE
So far, it seems as if I’ve been arguing that anything
can be deviant. If a collectivity of people—a group,
a social circle, a segment of the population, any
assemblage of people, really—regards something
as offensive, by the sociological definition, it is
deviant. This is technically true, but it’s only half
true. There’s a really big “but” attached to this
generalization. There are two sides to judgments
of deviance. One is its vertical or hierarchical
side, the side that says people with more power (or
the majority of a society) get to say what’s deviant
because they influence the climate of opinion and
exert more influence in the political and legisla-
tive realms. This differential influence is a socio-
logical fact—not a matter of opinion or an expres-
sion of moral bias. The other side to judgments
of deviance is its horizontal or “grass-roots” or
“mosaic” side, the side that says deviance can be
anything that any collectivity says it is, no matter
how small in numbers its members are or how
little power they have. In other words, according
to Kenneth Plummer (1979, pp. 97–99), we must
make a distinction between societal and situational
deviance.
“Societal” deviance is composed of those
actions and conditions that are widely recognized,
in advance and in general, to be deviant. There is
a high degree of consensus on the identification of
certain categories of deviance. In this sense, rape,
robbery, corporate theft, terrorism, and trans-
vestism are deviant because they are regarded as
reprehensible by a great many members of this
society. These are examples of “high consensus”
deviance, in that a substantial proportion of the
population disapproves of them. In most social
circles, if evidence is revealed that someone en-
gaged in one of them, such a revelation would
elicit negative reactions from most members of
these circles. Even though specific individuals
enacting or representing specific instances of these
general categories may not be punished in specific
situations, in general, the members of this society
see them as serious normative violations. Certain
acts, beliefs, and traits are deviant society-wide
because they are condemned, both in practice and
in principle, by the majority, or by the most power-
ful members of the society. “Societal” judgments
of deviance represent the hierarchical side of
deviance.
“Situational” deviance does not possess this
general or society-wide quality; instead, it mani-
fests itself in actual, concrete social gatherings,
circles, or settings. We can locate two different
types of “situational” deviance: one that violates the
norms dictating what one may and may not do
within a certain social or physical setting; and one
that violates the norms within certain social circles
or groups. The type of situational deviance that is
dependent on setting is fairly simple to illustrate.
You may take off your clothes in your bedroom
but not in public; at a nudist camp or a nudist
beach, but not elsewhere. You may shout and cheer
at a basketball game, but not at a Quaker wake.
Boxers punch one another at will, but, outside the
ring, trying to knock someone out is usually illegal,
and could result in your being arrested. Killing the
enemy within the context and rules of warfare is
condoned, encouraged, and legal; under most
other circumstances, civilians who willfully and
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 The clerk brought out the cheque. Darwen took it and, glancing over it,
handed it on to Carstairs. "There you are, old chap. I'm sorry it's the last."

Carstairs took it. "Thanks," he said. "Good-bye," and turning on his heel
he went out for the last time.

Darwen watched him through the window as he walked down the street
with his long swinging stride. "The reason, personified, of why England
owns half the earth," he said, to himself. "And equally the reason that she
doesn't own the whole of it," he added, thoughtfully.

He lay back in his chair and gazed far into the future, mental pictures in
many colours shaped themselves in kaleidoscopic procession across the
white expanse of ceiling. For half an hour he sat thus, then sitting suddenly
upright, and drawing in his outstretched legs, he plunged back into the
present among the papers on his table.

Some six months later, in the dining-room at Chilcombe Vicarage, there

was held a family council of war. The old vicar was there, Commander
Carstairs was there, Phillip and Stanley Carstairs were there, and they all
looked serious. For six months Jack Carstairs had been applying for each
and every one of the multitudinous appointments advertized in the technical
papers, with no results; he had learned through the same medium that
Darwen had been appointed to one of the London stations at £750 per
annum, to start; and that evening he had returned from making personal
application for a very junior appointment at £1 per week in a neighbouring
town. The chief (of German antecedent), the personification of ignorance
and bombast, had catechized and bullied him, cross-examined and
contradicted him, and finally abruptly refused him the billet.

Jack was speaking, and they all listened attentively. "When a German
ex-gasfitter, with a little elementary arithmetic and less electrical catalogue
information, talks to me as though he were a miniature Kaiser and I the last-
joined recruit of his most unsatisfactory regiment, and then refuses me a
switchboard attendant's job on technical grounds, then, I admit, my thoughts
lightly turn to robbery with violence as a recreation and means of
livelihood. He'd have liked me to say 'yes, sir,' and 'no, sir,' and 'please, sir,'
and touch my cap and grovel in the dirt. I'd see him in hell first."
 "I always said, Hugh, you ought to have put that boy in the Service," the
sailor interjected, quite seriously.

The others smiled, a wry, sickly sort of smile.

"Can't we—er—don't we know somebody with some influence on these

councils who would use it on Jack's behalf." It was the artist who spoke.

The young engineer stood up suddenly with unwonted passion. "Damn

it! I'm not a blasted mendicant! I'm a competent engineer! It's no use talking
rot about modesty. I know what I have done and can do again. I say I'm a
competent engineer. I've been getting two hundred and fifty quid a year, and
earning it, saving it for the people who paid me. And I am willing to take a
quid, one blasted quid a week, and I can't get it. I'm not going to beg for my
own cursed rights. In all those hundreds of jobs I've applied for, I must have
been the best man on my paper form alone. If I can't live as an engineer in
my own cursed country, then, by God! I'll steal." He turned on his father
with blazing eyes. "I say, I'll steal, and if any blundering idiot or flabby fool
tries to stop me, I'll kill him dead. The first law of life is to live. What do
you say to that? You preach platitudes from the pulpit every Sunday, what
have you to say to the logic of the engine room?"

The old vicar smiled, somewhat sorrowfully. "I might say that you are
possessed of a devil," he said, with quiet humour. "Your engineering
experience ought to tell you that it's no use ramming your head against a
brick wall."

Jack sat down. "That's so," he said, "there's an obstruction somewhere;

the thing to do is to find it out and remove it."

"I tell you, Hugh! the initial mistake was in not putting that boy into the
Service; though there's a maxim there that promotion comes 80 per cent. by
chance, 18 per cent. by influence, and 2 per cent. by merit."

"That's rot, you know, unless you mean to say that 18 per cent. of the
men in the Service are snivelling cheats."
 The sailor was thoughtful. "There are some cheats in the Navy, but not
many; as a rule it's not the man's own fault that he is promoted by influence.
At the same time you can't afford to get to loo'ard of your skipper, much
depends on one man's word, but that man is usually a——"

"Sportsman," Jack interrupted.

"Well! 'an officer and a gentleman' they call him. The Service would
have suited you."

"My dear uncle, I have all respect for the Service, but at the same time I
should not wish to be anything but an engineer, and engineers in the Service
at the present time are somewhat small beer. Anyway, as a money-making
concern, the Service don't pan out anything great. Bounce told me that the
seamen haven't had a rise in pay since Nelson's time."

The sailor laughed. "That's a good old A.B.'s growl," he said. "I gather,
too, that engineering is not panning out so very great as a money-making
concern just now."

"No! you're right. I'm a bit sick when I think of it, too, it's rather
sickening. I've got a model upstairs of an engine that would make any man's
fortune, and I can't get the fools to take it up. I think I shall have to break
away for the States."

They were all silent for some minutes till the old vicar rose. "Shall we
go to bed?" he said, and they proceeded upstairs, solemnly, silently, in
single file.

The weeks passed away and Jack's uncle went back to sea, and his
brothers returned to London, and another brother came and went. The
winter changed to spring, the days lengthened out and grew brighter, and
still Jack Carstairs could get nothing to do, nor get any one to take up his
patent. Then one morning amongst the two or three letters awaiting him was
one with a penny stamp: the ha'penny ones he knew were the stereotyped
replies of the various municipalities to the effect that they "regretted" his
application had not been successful; it was a way they had, they sent these
things with a sort of grim humour about a month after he had seen by the
papers that some one else had been appointed; it wasn't very often they
went to the extravagance of a penny stamp for a refusal, so he opened that
first, glancing casually at the city arms emblazoned on the flap of the
envelope; enclosed was a typewritten letter, he was appointed switchboard
attendant at £1 per week.

Carstairs gazed at it sternly with bitter hatred of all the world in his
heart. "A blasted quid," he said, aloud. "Ye gods! a quid a week! And
Darwen, the cheat, is getting £750." He hadn't fully realized when he was
writing his applications for these small appointments, exactly the extent of
his fall; but now, as he had it in typewritten form before his eyes, and
signed, he looked again, signed by a man who had served his time with him.

Mrs Carstairs was humbly thankful for small mercies, but the old vicar,
whom Jack found alone in his study, looked into his son's eyes and read the
bitterness of soul there. "Do you think it would be wise to refuse and wait
for something better. This is your home you know. You can work on your
patent."

"I thought of all that before I applied," Jack answered. "The patent! The
path of the inventor seems the most difficult and thorny path of all."

The old man's eyes brightened; he liked the stern definiteness of his
youngest son. "It does seem hard," he said. "I don't understand these things,
but I think you are wise to take this appointment."

"Oh, yes! I have no idea of refusing, but when I think that that lying
cheat, Darwen, is getting £750 a year, it makes me feel pretty sick."

"I know, Jack; we see these things in the Church the same as
everywhere else; the cheat seems sometimes to prosper. Why it should be
so, I cannot comprehend; the cheat must inevitably cheat himself as the liar
lies to himself, so that they both live in a sort of fool's paradise; they both
unaccountably get hold of the wrong end of the stick; they imagine that they
are successful if they satisfy others that they have done well, while the only
really profitable results ensue when one satisfies oneself that one has done
well; then and only then, can real intellectual, moral, and physical, progress
follow. It is possible to imagine a being of such a low order of morality that
he could feel a real intellectual pleasure in outwitting his fellow-men by
cheating; such an one, it seems to me, must be very near the monkey stage
of development. As man progresses intellectually he sets his intellect harder
and harder tasks to perform, else he declines. It is possible that the cheat
may occasionally reap very material and worldly advantages by his
cheating. Some few apparently do, though the number must be extremely
small and the intellectual capacity exceedingly great, for they are constantly
pitted, not against one, but against the whole intellect of the world,
including their brother cheats. The rewards and the punishments alike, in
the great scheme of the Universe, are spread out unto the third and the
fourth generation; the progeny of the cheat, in my experience, decline in
intellect and moral force till probably the lowest depths of insanity and
idiocy are reached. This great law of punishment for the sins of the fathers
is beyond my mental grasp, but that it is so I cannot doubt; it is in fact, to
me, the greatest proof that there must be something beyond the grave. You
understand, Jack, I'm not in the pulpit, this is worldly wisdom, but I want to
set these things before you as they appear to me. You must forget Darwen;
you reap no profit from his success or failure, but you expend a large
amount of valuable energy in brooding over it. 'Play up, and play the game,'
Jack. Don't cheat because others are cheating, if you do you are bound to
become less skilful in the real game. Think it over, Jack, 'Keep your eyes in
the boat,' don't think about the other crew or the prize, simply 'play the
game.' Have you told your mother you're going?"

"Yes."

"Did you say you wanted to borrow some of my books?"

"No, thanks. I've got all the books I want. You've seen my two packing
cases full."

"Ah, yes! I'd forgotten. So you're going to-morrow. That's rather soon,
isn't it?"

"I told them that if appointed I'd start at once. I'm going to pack and
then whip round and say good-bye to my friends."

"Ah, of course. I'll see you off in the morning; six o'clock, did you say?"
 "Yes, six ten at the station."

So Jack took his hat and stick and strolled round to his few friends in
the village to tell them he was going. The Bevengtons were furthest away,
and he called there last. Bessie had been away in London and other places,
nearly all the time he had been home, when he called now she was home.
He had heard she was coming.

"I've come to say good-bye, Mrs Bevengton. I've got a job, and I'm
going up north again."

They both looked pleased; Mrs Bevengton really liked Jack. "When are
you going?" she asked.

"To-morrow morning."

Bessie's jaw dropped, she was keenly disappointed, and she looked,
Jack thought, in the pink of condition, more so than usual.

"I hope it's a good appointment, Jack," Mrs Bevengton said; she was
disappointed too.

"A quid a week," he answered, bluntly, looking at her steadily.

 Her jaw dropped also. "Oh, but I suppose it will lead on to better
things."

"Twenty-five bob at the end of six months," he said, with rather a

cynical little smile. Out of the tail of his eye he regarded Bessie, she had
flushed a deep red at the mention of his microscopical salary. She seemed
more matured, her manner impressed him with a sense of responsibility, an
air of definiteness that appealed to him immensely; he saw now that her lips
closed suddenly. She had made up her mind to something.

"Come on out for a walk, Jack," she said. "I haven't had a look round
the old place for nearly a year. We shall be back to tea, mother."

She got her hat and they walked briskly down the pleasant village street
in the glorious spring sunshine; every one they passed greeted them with
civility and respect. Jack regarded them with pleasure; he told Bessie they
were the stiffest, hardest, and most genuinely civil crowd he had ever
encountered. "Perhaps I'm biassed," he said, "but I like men and these chaps
appeal to me more than any others I've met so far."

They turned across the fields and went more slowly. "I've been having a
good time, Jack, while I've been away."

"So I expect," he answered.

"Well, I've been to a lot of dances and parties and theatres, etc. I
suppose I've enjoyed it—in a way."

"Yes, I should think you would—in most ways."

"Jack!" she was walking very slowly. "Two men—three men, asked me
to marry them."

"Ah! I suppose they were not the right ones." He did not quite know
what to say.

"Well, two of them were not—but one of them—it was Mr Darwen."

 "Good Lord!" Jack turned as though he had been shot. "Are you going
to marry him?"

"I don't quite know. I've come home to decide. I don't think I care for
him in quite the right way. Why did he break off his engagement to Miss
Jameson?"

"Ah—er—I—" Carstairs was thinking, thinking, thinking. He wondered

what to do and what to say.

"He told me that he thought he was in love with her till he saw me, then
he knew he wasn't."

"Er—yes."

"He's very nice and very handsome, still I know I don't care for him as
—as I do for some one else."

Carstairs was silent, he was trying to think. The situation was getting
beyond him, he had a fleeting idea of trying to change the subject, of
closing the matter; but he knew that once closed it could never be re-
opened, and he wanted to do the right thing. They were silent for some
minutes.

"Jack?" she asked, and the struggle was painful. "Has my money made
any difference to you?"

"Half a minute!" he said, hastily. "Don't say any more, please. Let me
think"—he paused—"Five years ago I met a girl in Scotland."

"And you love her, Jack?"

"Yes. I thought not at one time, but I know now that I do."

They walked for a long time in silence, then she spoke.

"I'll write to Mr Darwen to-night and tell him that if he likes to wait a
long, long time, I'll marry him," she said.
 Carstairs was silent; the great big English heart of him was torn asunder.

"Why don't you speak, Jack? Mr Darwen's your friend, isn't he? He's
handsome and so kind and attentive, and if he cares for me as—as he says
he does, I think I ought to marry him. I couldn't before, but now—don't you
think I ought?"

"Well, er—it's more a question for the guv'nor. Will you let me explain
the situation to him, and then he'll see you. The guv'nor's very wise, in these
things, and it's his province, you know. I should like you to talk to him."

"Thanks—thanks. I will."

That night Jack Carstairs sat up very late with his father in his study.
And next morning the train whisked him north, to the dim, grey north, and
the engines, and the steam, and the hard, hard men, mostly engineers. Jack
was very sad and silent in his corner of a third-class carriage all the way.

CHAPTER XVIII

For three months Carstairs worked steadily at the beginning of things

electrical; he cleaned the switchboard and regulated the volts; he took
orders from a youth, rather younger and considerably less experienced than
himself. For those three months the world seemed a very dull place to him.

Then, quite by accident, as these things always happen, he met a man, a

casual caller, who wished to see round the works; the shift engineer told
Carstairs off to show him round, because it was "too much fag" to do it
himself.

He was an oldish man with whiskers and heavy, bushy eyebrows, just
turning grey; his questions were few and to the point, and Carstairs seemed
to feel he had met a kindred spirit at once. He listened attentively to
Carstairs' clear and concise explanations, and when it was over he did not
offer him a shilling as sometimes happened, but in the casual, unemotional,
north-country way, he handed him his card and asked if he would like to see
round his works "over yonder."

Carstairs glanced from the card in his hand to the rather shabby
individual, with the "dickey," and slovenly, dirty tie, in front of him.

"Thanks, I'll come to-morrow," he said.

"Will ye? Then ye'll find me there at nine."

"I'll be there at nine, too."

"Then I'll see ye." He held out his hand and gave Carstairs a vigorous
grip. The name on the card was the name of a partner of a very prominent
firm of engine builders.

Carstairs felt a singular sense of satisfaction for the rest of the evening;
his perturbed mind seemed at peace, somehow.

Next morning, punctually at nine, he called at the office and was shown
round the extensive works by the old man in person. He explained and
Carstairs listened and made occasional comments or asked questions. And
ever and anon he felt a pair of keen eyes regarding him in thoughtful,
shrewd glances. When they had finished the circuit of the works, Carstairs
broached the subject of his patent, he felt an extreme friendliness towards
this rough, shrewd man, and he knew that his labours on the patent were at
last going to bear fruit.

The old man listened. "You have a model?" he asked.

"Yes."

"I'll come round and see it." And so he did there and then.

In the dingy little back room of Carstairs' diggings, he examined

critically and minutely the small model.
 "Ye made this yerself?"

"I did."

"Ay!" It was a grunt of distinct approval.

They took it to pieces and spread the parts out on the table, the old man
examining them one by one. He offered no comment, and Carstairs put it
together again and turned it with his hand, showing the beautiful smooth
running of it.

"Yon's well made! Are ye a fitter?"

"Oh, no!"

"Are ye not? I was. Will ye bring it round to the office?"

"Certainly." Carstairs dismantled it and wrapped the various parts up in

paper.

"I'll take those," the old man said, and seizing two of the heavier parts,
he tucked them under his arm. And thus, carrying it between them, they
returned to the big works. There a long consultation was held. The junior
partner (an ex-officer of the Royal Engineers) was called in, and the final
result was that the firm undertook to manufacture the engine and pay
royalties to Carstairs.

"I must see a lawyer and get advice as to the terms of the agreement,"
Carstairs said. "I'm only free in the mornings this week. Will that suit you?"

"What are ye getting yonder?" the old man asked, bluntly.

"A pound a week?"

"Well, ye can start here in the drawing office on Monday at £2. Will that
do ye?"

"Thanks, I'll give notice to-day."

 The next six months passed like six days to Carstairs; he hadn't time to
write to any of his friends and only an occasional scribble to his mother. At
the end of that time the first engine built on his model was finished and had
completed a most satisfactory run. Then he took a holiday, and went home.

He had entirely lost track of all his friends and station acquaintances.

"Bessie is not engaged," his father told him, "but Darwen still pesters
her with his attentions."

Jack was thoughtful. "She's a jolly decent girl, Bessie! If Darwen were
only honest! I shall go up to London, I want to see his mother." So next day
Carstairs went off.

He called at Darwen's office.

"Hullo, old chap! How's the Carstairs' patent high-speed engine going?
Eh?"

It was the same old, handsome, healthy Darwen; bright-eyed, pink-

cheeked, lively.

"Oh, alright. Is your mother in London?"

"Well, I'm blowed!" There was that little flicker of the eyelids that
Carstairs knew so well. "Yes, there you are," he handed him a card with an
address on it.

"Thanks! When will you be out?"

"Ye gods. Ha! Ha! Ha! Good old Carstairs. The northern air is simply
wonderful for the nerves. Ha! Ha! Ha! I tell you what. I'll go out this
evening, just to oblige you. I'll go to the theatre. I haven't seen the new
thing at Daly's yet."

"Thanks!" Carstairs turned and went away. He made his way to the
address in South Kensington that Darwen had given him. It was a boarding-
house; he asked for Mrs Darwen and sent in his card. The German page-
waiter sort of chap showed him up to their private sitting-room.
 She entered almost immediately, looking older and whiter, her eyes
more bleared and her cheeks deeply furrowed. She looked him sadly in the
face.

"I knew you'd quarrel," she said.

"I'm sorry," he answered. "It couldn't be helped; we didn't really quarrel,

I called on him to-day."

"Ah!" There was a gleam of pleasure in her eyes. "Why didn't you call
on me before you left Southville?"

"I couldn't—then, he'd just broken me—chucked me aside like a broken

chisel. I sent you my best respects."

"Yes, so he said: I wondered if he lied. You're—so—I thought you

would have called—about the girl."

"I couldn't, I was broke, that was why."

"You don't usually shirk."

"No, I try not to. It didn't occur to me in that light."

"Ah!" She gave a deep sigh. "You're the best man, I think, I've ever met.
You want to know where she is?"

"Yes."

"Then you have a good appointment?"

"Well, a firm is manufacturing my engine. We think it's bound to go."

"Charlie's got an engine, too." She was watching him very closely.

"Has he?" Carstairs was rather interested.

"The drawings are in his room. I'll go and get them."

 He put out a hand to stop her. "I don't expect he'd like me to see them,"
he said.

"Oh! but I want you to. I can trust you."

"You think I mightn't be tempted to get revenge by cribbing his ideas?"

"No. I know you. Besides yours is finished."

He was very serious. "That's so, but I'm full of ideas for improvements
and other things, and it is most difficult, when one sees a thing that is
appropriate, not to assimilate it consciously or unconsciously into one's own
ideas."

"Still, I'll get them," she answered. She went out and came back in a
minute or two with a drawing board and a roll of tracings.

Carstairs glanced over the drawing, and allowed just a slight smile to
pucker up the corners of his eyes.

"Ah! I knew," she said, "that's your engine."

"Oh, no!" he answered. "It's not my engine."

She looked at him and saw he was speaking the truth. She spread out the
tracing. "That girl from your lodgings in Southville brought that round one
day when he was out; he never gets angry, but I know he was annoyed
because she'd left it."

Carstairs bent down and examined it. "It's done rather well," he said;
"girls are good tracers. I left that for her to copy."

"Oh! I didn't think you—I didn't know you knew. I wanted to warn
you."

"Thanks very much, but it wasn't necessary."

She heaved a very deep sigh of relief. "That's been on my mind like a
ton weight. I was afraid my boy was a thief. Very often I was on the point of
writing to you, but—you hadn't called."

Carstairs was bent low over the drawing examining some fine work
very closely, he was so deeply interested he did not look up as she spoke.
"That's excellent work! Darwen was always an artist, in everything," he
said.

"Yes," she answered, proudly, "he's very clever. I'm so sorry you
quarrelled. I knew that girl would come between you."

He looked up, impassive as usual.

"Yes," she repeated, "but you're the one she really likes, I know." Mrs
Darwen seemed to have grown visibly younger.

Carstairs straightened himself and stood looking down at her with his
calm steady grey eyes. "Ye-es," he said, he was thinking rapidly. "Yes, I
hope that's true. Will you give me her address; has she—er—got a
situation?"

"Oh, no! she's been in London, having her voice trained. She's got a
magnificent voice."

"Where did she get the money from?" he asked, he was quite pale, and
his grey eyes glittered like newly fractured steel.

She looked at him aghast, frightened; she put an imploring hand on his
arm. "The girl's honest. I know she is. I'm sure of it; she was saving. I know
she was saving. Perhaps Lady Cleeve——"

"Perhaps Charlie——"

"No, no! I know she wouldn't take anything from him, because—
because that was why she left."

Carstair's face lightened. "Will you give me her address?" he asked.

"She's gone down to her people again, she came to me yesterday.

They're encamped down at the old place near Southville; it suits her father
down there, he's getting old and Scotland was too cold for him."

The words brought back a luminous vision to Carstairs; his eyes took on
a far-away look. "My word! she was full of pluck," he said, aloud, but really
to himself.

Mrs Darwen smiled with great pleasure. "If—when you've married her,
you'll be friends with Charlie again——?"

He came to earth suddenly and considered. "We shall be friends," he

said, "from now onwards, but I'm afraid we can never again be chums. I'll
call and see him before I go to the station."

"Thank you," she said. "Thank you, I'm so glad."

He shook hands and left her, and half an hour later he called at her son's
office. The office boy showed him in and he held out his hand. Darwen
grasped it with a warm friendly smile.

"In the presence of other people," Carstairs said, as the door closed
behind the office boy, "we are friends, because your mother is one of the
best women on this earth. How she came to have such a whelp as you, Lord
only knows. Do you agree?"

"My dear chap, I am honoured and delighted. It is not often one gets an
opportunity of shaking an honest man by the hand, even though the excuse
for doing so is a lie." He smiled his most charming smile. "You're putting
on weight, Carstairs."

"Yes, but I'm in the pink of condition."

"So am I."

"That's good. Your mother isn't looking so well."

"No, I've noticed it myself." A shade of real anxiety passed across

Darwen's face.
 Carstairs noted it, and his opinion of Darwen went up; he stepped up
close. "Look here," he said, "she was worried because she thought her son
was a damned rogue. I've told her—at least given her to understand, that he
is not, and you'll find her looking a different woman. Do you see?" He
turned and went out.

Darwen sat back in his chair lost in thought. "That man always makes
me think. Wonderful man, wonderful man. Damn him!" He sat up suddenly
and went on with his work.

That night Carstairs reached Southville; he got out and put up at a hotel
for the night. Before going to bed he went out and strolled round the town
in the silence of the late evening. Old memories crowded back on him, and
although they were not always of pleasant happenings, the taste of them
was sweet; he had progressed since then, and he felt, in the bones of him, he
knew, that he was going forward. His steps turned mechanically towards the
electric lighting works, and before he quite realized where he was going, he
found himself facing the old familiar big gates with the little wicket at the
side. He looked at his watch. "Eleven o'clock! Wonder who's on." He
paused a minute, then opened the wicket and went in. "Probably some of
the men who knew me are still here," he thought.

The engine room was just the same. The hum of the alternators and the
steady beat of the engines thrilled his blood. He stood in the doorway for
some minutes in silence. The sight of running machinery was meat and
drink to him. A little square-shouldered man wandered up to ask him what
he wanted. Carstairs held out his hand. "Hullo, Bounce, have you forgotten
me?"

"Well, I never. Mister Carstairs! I ain't forgotten you, sir, but you was in
the dark."

"Any one I know left on the staff? Who's in charge?"

"A new engineer, sir. They be all new since your time."

"All new! Ye gods, how fellows do shift about."

 "They do, sir. I've seen hundreds come and go since I've been here."

So they stood talking for some time. "I suppose you're off at twelve,
Bounce?"

"Yes, sir."

"It's nearly that now. I'll wait. You can come round to my hotel and get a
drink."

"Thank you, sir. I'll go and wash and change. Would you like to see the
engineer?"

"No, thanks, I'll just sit on this box and watch the wheels going round:
same old box, same old wheels. How many hours of the night have I spent
sitting on this box listening to your damn lies, Bounce?"

"God only knows, sir."

Carstairs sat and waited, and all sorts of fresh fancies and ideas
thronged through his brain as the wheels went round and the alternators
hummed and the corliss gear clicked. A distinct and complete idea for a
valuable improvement shaped itself in his mind as he watched and listened.
He stood up and stretched himself with a sigh of great content. "By Jove, if
old Wagner composed music like that, he'd have done a damn sight more
for humanity," he said to himself, with a smile at the sacrilege of the
thought. To Carstairs, Wagner was a drawing-room conjurer, not to be
thought of at the same instant as men who designed engines. Bounce came
down the engine-room towards him with his wide-legged sailor's roll. He
was attired in a blue-serge suit, spotlessly clean and neat. His strong, clean-
cut features and steady, piercing eyes showed to great advantage in the
artificial light and against the dark background of his clothes.

"By Jove, Bounce, I can't understand why it is you're not Prime Minister
of England."

The little man's bright eyes twinkled, but his features never relaxed. "I
can't understand it myself," he said.
 They went off together to the hotel, where Carstairs drank whisky and
Bounce rum. The waiter looked at him somewhat superciliously, till he met
Bounce's eye fair and square, then he seemed impressed.

"Dr Jameson is dead. Mr Jenkins is chairman of the committee now."

"Yes, I know."

They were silent for some minutes.

"Do you know this county well, Bounce?"

"Pretty well, sir."

"Ah—do you remember my telling you about a gipsy girl?"

"Yes, sir."

"I want to find her; she's round here somewhere, near the new water-
works."

"I know, sir."

"Good man. Can you drive—a horse I mean?"

"Yes, sir."

Carstairs stood up. "Now, look here, Bounce, I really cannot understand
—what the devil is there you can't do?"

"I dunno, sir."

"Can you drive a perambulator?"

"Yes—an' nurse the baby."

"Go on. Tot up what you can do. Honest. No lies, mind."
 "Alright. Here goes. I can walk and run and swim; box and wrestle and
fence; shoot a revolver, rifle, or big gun; push a perambulator, hand cart, or
wheel barrow; drive a steam engine, horse, or a motor car; stroke a boiler,
feed a baby, the missus, an' the kids; scrub a floor, table, or furniture; make
and mend and wash my own clothes; light a fire, make tea, coffee, or cocoa;
make the beds and clean the rooms; wash up dishes, lay the table and wait
at same; clean the windows, paint a house, and walk along the roof." Here
he started to digress. "I remember once in Hong Kong——"

"That'll do, I've heard all about Hong Kong. Let's hear about Bounce."

"There ain't much more that I can do," he said.

"Nonsense! you sing."

"Oh, yes! Sing a song, play the mouth organ. Catch fish (when they
bite), dance the waltz, polka, hornpipe, quadrilles, lancers, and schottische."
He paused.

"Go on."

"There ain't no more. Oh, yes! read an' write an' do sums." He scratched
his head. "Sometimes," he added.

"I said no lies."

"Alright, cross out sums."

"What about ropes?"

"Oh, yes! I can splice, reave, whip, knot, bend, an' gen'rally handle
ropes."

"Can you shave yourself and cut your own hair?"

"Yes an' no, but mind, I have 'ad a try at that. I come aboard drunk once
in——"

"Shut up. What else can you do?"