Dr. Charles G. Pease, president of the Non-smokers' Protective League, says:"The use of tobacco is responsible more than any other one factor for race degeneracy. It is the most poisonous plant grown, and its active principle the most poisonous alkaloid, harmfully and deeply affecting the delicate protoplasm of the tissue cells, unfitting the user of it to be a propagator of the human race, robbing his own children of their right to normality."
The noted Dr. Pidduck wrote thus in the London Lancet:"In no instance is the sin of the father more strikingly visited upon his children than in the sin of tobacco-using. The enervation, the hypochondriasis, the hysteria, the insanity, the dwarfish deformities, the consumption, the suffering lives, and the early deaths of children of inveterate smokers bear ample testimony
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to the feebleness and unsoundness of constitution transmitted by this pernicious habit."
Dr. Nathan Allen [M.D., LL.D. [1813-1889], of Lowell, Massachusetts, says:
"Language cannot describe the terrible effects which tobacco produces upon both body and mind. It perverts the taste, impairs mental capacity, corrupts the moral sense, and stimulates the animal nature. But its pernicious effects are not confined to the present generation, nor to this life. Its dreadful evils through the law of inheritance, extend to offspring even to the second, third, and fourth generation."
The New York Journal says of the introduction of tobacco into new territory:"When the Europeans first visited New Zealand, they found the natives the most finely developed and powerful men among the islands of the Pacific. Since the introduction of tobacco, for which these men developed a passionate liking, they have, from this source alone, become decimated in numbers, and so reduced in stature and physical well-being as to be an altogether inferior type of men."
Dr. D. H. Kress, the expert on the effects of tobacco, writes thus:
"From the use of tobacco, most of our young men are physical degenerates. A few years ago England was startled by the announcement that out of 12,000 men that appeared for examination at Manchester, 9,000 had to be rejected as physically unfit for army service.'They come to us with their fingers stained with nicotine,' the examiner said.
A few years later, when the call was made for young physicians to enter the United States Army, 80 per cent were rejected as unfit, owing to what was pronounced tobacco
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heart. These represented the choicest young men these countries could produce. If three fourths of the young men are unfit for army service, they are certainly unfit to assume the responsibilities of propagators of a fit race."
There can be no doubt that the nations of the world are [Ed. Note: in 1915, the first year of World War I] using many degenerates in their vast armies.
In times when many soldiers are required, the unfit are doubtless admitted to the ranks in large numbers. It is positively stated by The Boys' Magazine for February, 1915, that a single New York firm had recently distributed 10,000,000 cigarettes as a gift to the armies of Europe in the field. Other firms and individuals are said to have been giving cigarettes to the soldiers as an act of kindness, even in excess of the demand. European medical experts, like those of other countries, cry out against this harmful practice; but nothing except a long and strenuous campaign of education, such as that which is now bearing fruit in the fight against strong drinks, is likely to suppress the evil.
Dr. Charles E. Slocum [1841-1915] says in his book on Tobacco and its Deleterious Effects:
"The deep defects produced by tobacco on the generative system perniciously affect the germ plasm and germ cells and cannot but show blight, more or less, in the children that may be born of parents addicted to this vice. Tobacco, in some ways, even more than the alcoholic-beverage habit, touches forcibly the nerve centers, the medulla oblongata, the spinal center, the generative center, and the great sympathetic nerve centers, leaving therein its
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trail of debility, defects, and degeneration, all of which affections are in line of transmission to posterity."1
The following statement is also from Dr. D. H. Kress, who has made a special study of tobacco-using:
| "Official statistics show that there is also a marked deterioration in the physique of the German nation. It is authentically stated that nearly one half of the young men in Germany between the ages of 18 and 21 are incapable of bearing arms. The prevalence of heart disease among the young has increased over 300 per cent within the last few decades. Tobacco and beer are considered the cause of this alarming degeneracy.
"A similar condition exists in America. It will be recalled that out of 67 applicants who appeared for examination to enter the medical department of the United States Army in 1902, 43 (nearly two thirds) were rejected, having what the doctors pronounced 'tobacco heart.' This is especially significant when we bear in mind that those who applied were young men who considered themselves in the pink of health.
"That such a condition exists in our most highly civilized countries is certainly sufficient reason for alarm, and should lead to a careful investigation of its causes with a view of correcting them. [Ed. Note: Politicians, due to lingering-Confederate-impact and rampant bribery, will in the following 86 years, show no real interest.]
"To ascertain the real injury to the race from such a habit, we must necessarily go to the third or fourth generation. We have reached that time, and the results of the tobacco habit are now manifest.
"As Sir Benjamin Brodie [1783-1862] says [alluding to Ex. 20:4],
'No evils are so manifestly visited upon the third and fourth generations as the evils [birth defects] which spring from the use of |
____________
1Published by permission from The Slocum Publishing Company.
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|
tobacco.'
"Owing to the rapid decline of the race [Ed. Note: as per records/data going back to the 1660's], special attention has of recent years been called, by leading medical men, scientists, religious teachers, and commissions appointed by various nations for the purpose of investigating the causes of the almost universal physical, intellectual, and moral degeneracy, to the fact that tobacco is responsible for what has, in the past, been attributed to other causes." |
It is admitted readily enough that we are dealing with opinions mainly. But these opinions are from the highest authorities and are based on long observation and study. The man who passes over such evidence lightly, encourages young men and boys in forming the tobacco habit, and sets the example in their presence, is taking large responsibility.
Unfortunately, few men, whether young or old, care enough about the good of the [Ed. Note: human] race to cause them to break with a habit known to be questionable and believed by an increasing number to be among the worst to which men become addicted, both for the individual and for his progeny.
We must be content, in the main, to influence those who have not become enslaved by tobacco. The study of tobacco inheritance, with other features of the tobacco evil, will meantime go on.
The increasing evidence of the baneful effects of tobacco will aid in the campaign of education until right will finally triumph. The human race will one day throw off its yoke of bondage and finally recover from the degeneracy produced by tobacco.
Ed. Note: Not so; as the degeneracy continued and worsened, the awareness of this type data deteriorated to become almost non-existent. The pro-health anti-tobacco movement essentially ceased to exist within two decades after Prof. Fink wrote, when it came to be almost totally taken over by the tobacco pushers.
The pro-health anti-tobacco movement deteriorated to the extent of refusing to even acknowledge the full range of the hazard, the long-time knowledge of the hazard, and even of some of the extant laws on the subject. Material such as Dr. Fink cites, was denied to have ever had validity! indeed, treated as though it had never existed!
This attitude was expressed by the anti-tobacco movement! professedly hostile to tobacco! (2-24-2001.) |
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6. THE ATTITUDE OF BUSINESS TOWARD TOBACCO
While some business men have pronounced views against the employment of those who use tobacco in any form, the great objection thus far is to those who use cigarettes. It may surprise some persons to know that many of the large number of business corporations that bar cigarettes refuse to employ the man who uses them as well as the boy, if one may judge by the language of those quoted. What is reproduced below is the average of the statements found, and about half bar both the men and the boys who use cigarettes.
While our quotations are mainly opinions based on observations of business men, the scientific results based on measurements of blood pressure and fatigue accord with them to the extent of showing that one is weakened temporarily every time he smokes tobacco in any form. No one can be more surprised than the writer in finding so much objection to the use of tobacco, on the part of business concerns; but he must accept the value of their views, based on long observation, and present them impartially.
Greater was the surprise on finding records of deleterious effects that can be measured as a result of each separate indulgence in tobacco. Let us consider first statements which apply to physical labor. Dr. F. C. Walsh, in giving the results of measurements of
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fatigue when smoking and when not smoking in experiments with the ergograph, says:
"The test was decisive, and it proved this: that no man doing physical labor, and who smokes while on the job, is as efficient and as able to put forth his full energies as he could if he were not smoking."
This shows the results from a new angle, and demonstrates that one should discriminate against him who works pipe in mouth, however menial the labor.
The late Dr. Jay W. Seaver writes thus of nicotine and muscular work:
"The muscle cells are apparently only slightly affected by it, but the nerve supply to the muscles being affected, the practical motor ability is greatly impaired. This has been thoroughly demonstrated by experiments carried out by Dr. W. P. Lombard, of the University of Michigan, who has shown that the administration of even moderate amounts of tobacco in the form of smoke lowers the working power of the human muscle by a high percentage, aind there seemed to be no compensation for lowered temporary ability in increased duration of it. His experiments were made with Moss's ergograph, and his results may be crudely summarized as follows: In from five to ten minutes after beginning to smoke an ordinary cigar, muscular power began to diminish, and in an hour, when the cigar was burnt, it had fallen to about 25 per cent of its initial value. The total work of the time of depression, compared with a similar normal period, was as 24.2 to 44.8 per cent."
The noted drug expert, Charles B. Towns, says:
"If there were some instrument to determine it, in my
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opinion, there would be seen a difference of 15 per cent in the general efficiency of smokers and non-smokers. The time is already at hand when smokers will be barred out of positions which demand quick thought and action."
This supposition of Mr. Towns's is different from the decrease of efficiency while smoking "on the job";1 but the results of smoking are certainly cumulative as relates to both mental and physical labor, since well-known tests of mental activity and published results relating to efficiency in athletic exercises and studies agree that the smoker is less efficient. Let us now consider statements of some firms that discriminate against boys who use cigarettes, then those that include men also. The mental and athletic tests will be given later.
The J. C. Ayers Company, Lowell, Massachusetts, says: "We do not employ any boy or young man under 21 years of age who smokes cigarettes."
Marshall Field & Co., Chicago, Illinois, stands thus: "We do not employ young men addicted to the use of cigarettes."
John V. Farwell once said: "I would as lief employ a youth who steals sheep as one who smokes cigarettes; one is no more to be trusted than the other."
James A. Houston Company, Boston. Massachusetts, says this of the cigarette and work: "Our reason for not employing juniors who are addicted to the use of cigarettes is that we feel that their habitual use by a young man is demoralizing to his general character."
The Larkins Soap Company, Buffalo, New York, ex-
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1Published by permission from The Century Company.
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presses the matter thus:
"We do not employ boys in the Larkin office who smoke cigarettes. An applicant addicted to the use of cigarettes would not interest us; but if he seemed to possess qualifications that made him desirable, he would have to decide between the cigarette and the job."
John R. Pepper, of the International Lesson Committee, says:
"My observation as a business man has been that boys and young men who indulge in the habit of smoking cigars and cigarettes will very soon become discounted, and their places will very probably be filled by others of more careful habits. There can be no question that the use of cigars and cigarettes is positively detrimental to mind and body."
Superintendent W. L. Bodine, in charge of the Parental School of Chicago, tells of a tobacco dealer who discharged boys because of the cigarette habit and who actually rejected 38 of 42 boys who applied for positions, because they smoked cigarettes. The tobacco dealer said: "The boys of to-day are not what boys of ten years ago were, and it is due largely to the cigarette evil. They come here with their ill manners, stained fingers, and dopey-eyed cigarette face and cigarette breath; and they are saucy and dirty."
This is from a tobacco dealer who would not hire a boy who used what the dealer sold.
The following railroad corporations, large business establishments, and others are said to be refusing to employ young men and boys who use cigarettes: Union Pacific Railroad; Lehigh Valley Railroad; Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad; Georgia Central Rail-
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road; Burlington Railroad; New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad; Pittsburgh & Western Railroad; Wisconsin West Superior Railroad: United States Navy and Naval Schools; United States Weather Bureau: Chicago Post Office; Marshall Field & Co., Chicago; Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co., Chicago; Heath & Milligan, Chicago; Montgomery, Ward & Co., Chicago; Swift & Co., Packing House, Chicago; Morgan & Wright Tire Co., Chicago; Western Union Telegraph Co., Message Service; Cumberland Telephone Co.; Wanamaker's, Philadelphia; Ayers Sarsaparilla Co., Lowell, Massachusetts. This list might be extended to include hundreds and probably thousands of other establishments.
Gurney Heating Co., Boston, says:
"We believe onr company gets better service from non-smokers, and to abstain from tobacco will be of inestimable value to the individual in later years, both from a physical and a mental standpoint."
The principal of the Metropolitan Business College, of Chicago, writes thus of the relationship between cigarettes and business:
"The average employer is very much disinclined to employ a person who is addicted to the habit; in fact, there are several prominent concerns here that will not employ cigarette smokers."
Mr. E. H. Harriman, the railroad president, once said:
"Cigarette users are unsafe. I would just as soon think of getting my employees out of the insane asylum as to employ cigarette users."
Vice-President Parker, of the Chicago & Rock Island Railroad, says:
"In my judgment it is impossible for a
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cigarette smoker to make a good railroad man. As a rule, smokers are dull and half asleep most of the time. These are not the kind of men the Rock Island wants to operate its trains and its great system, which is daily responsible for the lives of thousands of people."
The following, regarding the relation between the tobacco habit and obtaining employment, is taken from W. H. Allen in his book entitled, Civics and Health:
"No young man expects to obtain a favorable hearing if he offers himself for employment while smoking or chewing tobacco. Business men dislike to receive tobacco-scented messengers. Cars and elevators contain signs prohibiting lighted cigars or cigarettes. Insurance companies reject men who show signs of excessive use of tobacco. Why? Because they are apt to die before their time."2
The George W. Alden Company, Ranges and Refrigerators, Brockton, Massachusetts, says:
"We would not employ a man who smoked cigarettes if we knew he smoked them. Our reason is that with the prevailing knowledge as to the injury to the mind, body, and morals of the cigarette habit, a man who will keep on using them has not enough self-will to meet our standards, nor enough regard for personal appearance. Our observation of those who use cigarettes has led us to believe that the use of the same is one of the most degenerating of habits, and does more to weaken one's regard for good morals than any other habit."
An official of a railroad that will not employ more cigarette users says:
"Among the 200 in my service, 32
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2Published by permission from Ginn & Company. [Ed. Note: Full citation: William H. Allen, Ph.D., Civics and Health (Boston: Ginn & Co, 1909).
Dr. Allen had earlier written Fresh Air Work (Philadelphia,
American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1904)]. |
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are cigarette fiends [Ed. Note: modern term: addicts]. Eighty-five per cent of the mistakes occurring in the office are traceable to the 32 smokers. They fall behind with their work, and when transferred to other desks, which men who do not smoke handle easily, they immediately get along just as badly, showing that it is not the amount of work but the inability or indolence of the performer. The smokers average 'two days off' from work a month, while the non-smokers average only one-half of a day in the same time. The natural conclusion is that the 32 young men are holding positions deserved by better men."
O. S. Marden, formerly editor of Success, writes thus of the relation of the cigarette to business:
"Cigarette smoking is no longer simply a moral question. The great business world has taken it up as a deadly enemy of advancement and achievement. Leading business firms all over the country have put the cigarette on the prohibited list. In Detroit alone sixty-one merchants have agreed not to employ the cigarette user. In Chicago, Montgomery, Ward & Company; Hibbard, Spencer & Bartlett, and some of the other large concerns have prohibited cigarette smoking among all employees under eighteen years of age. Marshall Field & Company and the Morgan & Wright Tire Company have this rule: 'No cigarettes can be smoked by our employees.' One of the questions on the application blanks at Wanamaker's reads: 'Do you use tobacco or cigarettes?' "
The following is from the Boys' Companion for February, 1915:
"Not long ago Thomas A. Edison and Henry Ford, auto manufacturer, issued edicts forbid-
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ding any of the thousands of their men to use cigarettes, and henceforth no cigarettist will get a job in their shops because Edison and Ford have found out that the cigarette seriously interferes with the efficiency of the men's work. It is not a question of morals but of pure business with them."
The late Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915] wrote thus regarding employing cigarettists:
| "As a close observer of men and an employer of labor for over 25 years, I give you this: Never advance the pay of cigarette smoker—never promote him—never depend upon him to carry a roll to Garcia unless you do not care for Garcia and are willing to lose the roll. I say do not promote the cigarette smoker, for the time will surely come when you will rue the day you ever placed him in a position where he can plague you by doing those things which he ought not, and by leaving undone those things he should have done. If you have cigarettists on your payroll who are doing good work, do not discharge them. Simply keep them as long as they are a profit to you, and when you find they become a care gently lay them off, and say you will send for them when you need them. And then never send for them." |
We have considered the general effects of tobacco and the cigarette in particular in previous pages and have tried to give here the business relation of the habit faithfully and candidly, as the facts seem to require. The main object is to help in saving some of those who are not addicted to tobacco. Let none of us be so sanguine as to think that we can accomplish much more than this for the present.
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7. THE MONEY SPENT FOR TOBACCO
The amount of money spent in the purchase of tobacco by men addicted to its use is enormous, and the sum involved in the cultivation of the tobacco plant and its transformation into marketable products is vastly greater. Families are frequently deprived of homes of their own and of the comforts of life, not because of the high cost of living, but because the fathers spend, for smoking and chewing a weed that does no one any good, that to which the families have a right.
One five-cent cigar per day amounts, with interest on the money, to about $250 in ten years, and five such cigars daily for the same time amounts to approximately $1,200. Many men smoke from six to ten such cigars daily, spending from $100 to $175 per year.
This amounts with interest from 25 to 65 years of age to about $60,000 or from 25 to 80 years to approximately $100,000. Many men, once the habit has been formed, will continue even when their families are dependent on charity for food and fuel. A vastly larger number smoke away good homes, and a still larger number deprive their loved ones of good clothing, furniture, books, music, and other things that go to make life enjoyable.
One writer says that our tobacco users spend $950,000,000 annually for their tobacco, a sum $250,000,000
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more than all the people, at the same time, use for bread. We are said to give as a nation five times as much to tobacco as to religion, and it is said that some communities waste more on tobacco than they use for churches and schools. To our shame, these statements are probably not far from the truth.
Dr. C. E. Slocum says, in his book, Tobacco and Its Deleterious Effects:
"Twenty per cent more money is expended for tobacco in America than for bread; and this comparison represents but a small part of the real cost of the use of tobacco."1
Dr. D. H. Kress gives the following regarding the cost of tobacco: "Our annual tobacco bill amounts to $940,000,000. Should three of our large cities be wiped out by fire each year it would be considered a mmense loss, and yet the amount of tobacco annually consumed equals in value nearly the combined taxable property of Detroit, Cincinnati, and Buffalo."
Dr. Kress also says:"The United States is one of the greatest educational countries in the world, but for every dollar spent on education, over two dollars is spent for tobacco."
Another writer says that, if we include the cost of production, manufacture, and sales, our tobacco costs $7,000,000,000 annually. Who wonders that tobacco often pauperizes the working man and robs his wife and children?
Jenkin Lloyd Jones [1843-1918] recently said in a sermon delivered before his great Chicago congregation:
"According to the government report, 1,012,800 acres were devoted in 1911 to the production of the abominable
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1Published by permission from The Slocum Publishing Company.
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weed which first, last, and all the time is a nuisance as well as a poison. And more than the prostituted acres and the exhaustion of human muscle in the production thereof is the blunting of the ethical sense, the narcotizing of the intellectual and social ambitions of the victim, who through the stultifying effects of the cigar loses something of the power of a high zeal for moral ideals and a divine hunger for the spiritual life."
F. H. King [1848-1911] says, in Farmers of Forty Centuries, or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan [Madison, Wis.: 1911)]:
"What might be done in the United States with a fund of $57,000,000 annually, the market price of the raw tobacco leaf, and the land, the labor, and the capital expended in getting the product to the men who puff, breathe, and perspire the noxious product into the air everyone must breathe, and who bespatter the streets, the sidewalks, the floors of every public place and conveyance, and befoul the million spittoons, smoking rooms, and smoking cars?"2
Henry W. Farnam, in Our Tobacco Bill published in 1914, gives the following facts and figures regarding the cost of a worse than useless habit:
| "The importance of tobacco in our national budget is shown by the latest census figures, according to which it ranks eleventh among the industries of the country, with respect to the value of the product. Our manufactured tobacco was worth at the factory in 1909, $416,695,000. It thus outranked bread and other bakery products, women's clothing, copper, malt liquors, automobiles, petroleum, and distilled liquors. It was but about a third less important than manufactures of cotton. Its |
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2Published by permission from Mrs. F. H. King.
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| value was more than twice as great as that of distilled liquors.
"A careful statistician, Professor William B. Bailey, of Yale, published, nearly two years ago, some figures showing that the people of the United States spent at that time in a single year about $1,100,000,000 on tobacco. As the receipts from the internal revenue tax on tobacco have increased by about fourteen per cent in the last two years, it seems fair to assume that the general consumption has increased by this amount. It seems, therefore, conservative to state that at the present time the people are spending at least $1,200,000,000 for the pleasure of smoking and chewing.
"The significance of these figures can best be appreciated if we compare them with other items in our national budget. To put the matter concretely, tobacco takers spend in a single year twice the amount spent by the entire country on railroad travel and about three times the amount which it spends on its common school system; they pay out annually about three times the entire cost of the Panama Canal; they destroy directly about three times as much property as was destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake. Their smokes and chews cost them just twice what it costs to maintain the government of the United States, including the interest on the public debt. Our smokers could in a year and a half pay off the entire bonded debt of our states, cities and counties, as it was in 1912, and in an additional nine months the entire interest-bearing debt of the United States if they were willing to exer- |
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| cise the self-denial which was exercised a few years ago by the Persian people.
"The consumer is the ultimate director of national production. If he elects to drink whisky, instead of buying bread for his children, this means that the country produces more whisky and less bread. If rich men elect to take large tracts of arable land for game preserves, they prevent that land from being used to raise food for the people. Likewise, if smokers elect to spend a certain part of their income upon tobacco, they determine that a certain area of land shall be devoted to the cultivation of this plant, which would otherwise be devoted to the cultivation of vegetables or to dairying, or to raising whatever commodities their money would otherwise have been spent for.
"The amount of land thus pre-empted for the preserves of tobacco users in the United States is very large. It amounted in 1912 to no less than 1,225,800 acres, or over one sixth of the area devoted to raising vegetables. The value of the tobacco product was $104,302,856, or one quarter of the value of all vegetables, including potatoes. This must play no small part in maintaining the high cost of living in the United States.
"Tobacco culture, moreover, tends, as is well known, to exhaust the soil and thus to rob future generations, unless fertility is artificially maintained at great expense.
"Many people who are familiar with the significance of our drink bill do not realize that the amount annually spent on tobacco is about three quarters of the amount spent on intoxicating beverages of all kinds. |
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| The national war budget is always the subject of much criticism, and yet the appropriations for our army and navy are less than one fourth what we annually spend on tobacco. For years the power of the government has been used to keep down the railroad rates, until it is claimed that the roads cannot pay the wages demanded by the men and give the public the service which it expects without an increase in charges. And yet an addition of but 25 per cent to passenger fares would mean but about one eighth of what the tobacco users spend without a thought, and would afford the railroads a welcome relief."3 |
The father who spends one fifteenth, one tenth or more of his income on tobacco often has no money for useful benevolences, to say nothing of the enjoyments of life for his family. Yet he should not charge the difficulty to other causes than his own habits. If religion could have the sum wasted on tobacco, there would need be no other calls. If the money were used for bread, no one would need to go hungry. If it were used for public schools and for higher education, we would, according to statistics, have twice as much as we now use, and this without any taxes or any begging for these purposes. If used for three years to pay debts, all city, state, and national debts would be wiped out. If spent on military affairs, we would have four times as much as is now spent on our army and navy.
In short, a large majority of men of this generation use a drug which injures them physically, mentally, and morally, deprives their families of many comforts
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3Published by permission from Henry Holt & Company.
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and luxuries, aids in causing degeneracy, and is so enormously expensive as to seriously interfere with general prosperity.
We are too near to this evil to see it, but it will have to go. The present conditions cannot go on any more than the opium evil could go on forever in China.
[Ed. Note: See Ed. Note, p 44, infra].
The great expense is bad enough, but other features are a thousand times worse.
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8. THE RELATION OF TOBACCO
TO OTHER DRUG HABITS
Under this heading we shall consider mainly how tobacco-using may lead to one or more other drug habits, but we may also notice briefly the necessity for fighting all drug habits instead of giving attention to one only. Our purpose is to give the most expert opinion and data that can be found regarding the danger of the tobacco habit; but this particular drug is only one of those which should be fought. Not very many of those who are fighting the liquor evil give any attention to tobacco, the use of which almost always precedes drinking, according to the experts. It is a popular thing to fight the drink habit, but it is now and will be for a longer or shorter time exactly the opposite with the tobacco evil.
Yet some persons should bring out the relationship of these two and other drug habits. Those who are fighting tobacco are deeply interested in the temperance campaign, wish it the most speedy and complete success possible, and will aid in every possible way to this end. The data to follow prove that the campaign against tobacco is also a campaign against strong drink, since tobacco usually serves as an approach to the drink habit
Herbert Corey, in the Cincinnati Times-Star, quotes a leading western distiller as follows:
"Prohibition will be a national issue within ten years. Every intelli-
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gent man in my business realizes that. The decent ones are guarding against it by trying to wipe out the dives. Already Western States have enacted anti-liquor legislation which would have been unthinkable ten years ago. The campaign against habit-forming drugs is gathering strength everywhere."
A New York City magistrate says:
"Tobacco is the boy's easiest and most direct road to whisky. When opium is added, the young man's chance of resisting the combined forces and escaping physical, mental, and moral harm is slim indeed."
Dr. [R. D.] Mussey [1780-1866], an eminent physician, expresses his view thus:"In the practice of smoking there is no small danger. It produces a huskiness of the mouth which calls for some liquid. Water is too insipid, as the nerves of taste are in a half-palsied state from the influence of tobacco smoke; hence, in order to be tasted, an article of a pungent or stimulating character is resorted to, and thus the kindred habits of smoking and drinking."
Dr. T. Griswold Comstock, of Saint Louis, Missouri, states his opinion thus:
| "I believe cigarette-smoking is decidedly injurious to young persons, and I speak from professional experience. If a boy before the age of 14 smokes cigarettes, he will very probably be tempted to resort to alcoholic drinks before the age of 18 and at 21 will likely be addicted to the use of morphine.
"Cases of suicide among subjects under 38 to 40 years of age, the direct results of chronic intoxication from tobacco in the form of cigarettes, are found to happen and not so very infrequently." |
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Harold Hamilton, a reformed cigarette fiend [ Ed. Note: modern term: addict] and a prominent artist, is responsible for this paragraph:
"The tobacco exhaustion needs the whisky exhilaration, and the cigarette victim keeps on alternating between the depression of tobacco and the stimulation of alcohol, which he seems to require. Both are ruinous to body and mind. Without fear of contradiction, I make the statement boldly that it is no more possible for an inveterate, poison-soaked cigarette fiend who has arrived at the third stage to continue his life and smoking without the aid of whisky than it would be without the aid of the tobacco itself. With greatly impaired health, each organ suffering from the poison circulating through it, this second poison is added, and the results of this double dose to the wrecked system can easily be imagined."
As superintendent of the Keeley Institute at Dwight, Illinois, Dr. C. L. Robinson has had large experience with the relation of the cigarette habit to other drug habits. He knows at first hand by direct observation, and his words must therefore have weight. He says:
"It is the irritable condition of the nervous system that causes the restlessness, inability to concentrate thought, tremor, etc., which is so apt to cause the cigarette addict to seek relief sooner or later through the quieting, soothing influence of liquor, morphine, or other drugs. He is almost incapacitated for mental labor through inability to concentrate thought, and finding that one drink of liquor partially at least antidotes the nicotine and quiets and soothes his restlessness and irritability, he is gradually led into the double
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addiction, liquor and cigarettes. Our experience here at Dwight, where many hundreds of cigarette cases have been treated, is that persons applying for treatment for both liquor and cigarettes dread giving up their cigarettes more than their liquor. Moreover, those who return to the use of cigarettes in after life are almost certain to resume the use of liquor to allay the irritability of the nervous system produced by tobacco smoke inhalation."
Probably no other man has made so exhaustive a practical study of drug habits and has attempted the cure of so many drug-fiends [ Ed. Note: modern term: addicts] in various lands as Charles B. Towns. Therefore, the following statement from him regarding the relation of tobacco to other drug habits is evidence of the best kind. He says:
"For years I have been dealing with alcoholism and morphinism, have gone into their every phase and aspect, have kept careful and minute details of between six and seven thousand cases, and I have never seen a case except occasionally with women, which did not have a history of excessive tobacco.
"A boy always starts smoking before he starts drinking. If he is disposed to drink, that disposition will be increased by smoking, because the action of tobacco makes it normal for him to feel the need of stimulation. He is likely to go to alcohol to soothe the muscular unrest, to blunt the irritation he receives from tobacco. From alcohol he goes to [Ed. Note: another post-gateway drug,] morphine for the same reason. The nervous condition due to excessive drinking is allayed by morphine, Just as the nervous condition due to excessive smoking is allayed by alcohol.
"Morphine is the
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legitimate consequence of alcohol, and alcohol is the legitimate consequence of tobacco. Cigarettes,
drink, opium is the logical and regular series."1
Let us now consider the relation of tobacco to the opium habit. Some experts regard the former drug as injurious as the latter, and however that may be, our habit is bad enough, so that loading it on foreign lands is an unpardonable shame.
The following is from the Western Christian Advocate for March 25, 1914:
| Ed. Note: Tobacco pushers soon targeted American women, says Dr. Jesse M. Gehman,
Smoke Over America (E. Aurora: Roycrofters, 1943), p 24. |
The following extract is from F. H. King, in his Farmers of Forty Centuries:"The eradication of the opium scourge must prove a great blessing to China. But with the passing of this most formidable evil, for whose infliction upon China England was largely responsible, it is a great misfortune that, through the pitiless efforts of the British-American Tobacco Company, her people are rapidly becoming addicted to the western tobacco habit, selfish beyond excuse, filthy
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1Published by permission from The Century Company.
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beyond measure, and unsanitary in its polluting and oxygen-destroying effect upon the air all are compelled to breathe. It has already become a greater and more inexcusable burden upon mankind than opium ever was."2
We have quoted authority to the effect that tobacco is among the worst of drugs. Probably no other practical layman knows about this so well as Charles B. Towns, who uses these words:
| "If anyone thinks that China is the gainer by substituting the one drug habit for the other, I beg leave to differ with him. The opium smoker smokes in private with other smokers, and is hence not offensive to other people. He is not injuring non-smokers, or arousing the curiosity of boys, or polluting the atmosphere, or creating a craving in others.
"In the West the opium habit is generally condemned because the West is able to look with a new and unbiased mind on a drug habit that is not its own. I consider that cigarette smoking is the greatest vice devastating humanity to-day, because it is doing more than any other vice to deteriorate the race. The inhaler of tobacco gets his effect in precisely the same way that the opium smoker gets his—the rapid absorption by the tissues of the bronchial tubes.
"It may be news to the average man to hear that the man who smokes opium moderately suffers no more physical deterioration than the man who inhales tobacco moderately. The excessive smoker of cigarettes experiences the same mental and physical disturbance when deprived of them that the opium smoker experiences |
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2Published by permission from Mrs. F. H. King.
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|
when deprived of opium. The medical treatment which is necessary to bring out a physiological change in order to destroy the craving is the same. The effect of giving up the habit is the same—cessation of similar physical and nervous and mental disturbances, gain in bodily weight and energy, and a desire for physical exercise. A like comparison, item for item, may be made with alcohol, but it is the similarity with opium which we wish to emphasize here."3 |
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3*Published by permission from The Century Company.
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9. TOBACCO IN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
Institutions of higher learning have been leaders in many movements for the improvement of society, and the colleges and universities may yet take a prominent part in solving the tobacco problem. Enough statistics have accumulated to convince a considerable number of men in these institutions that the question needs further attention. Indeed, some of the best work has been done by college and university professors.
However, since many instructors in these institutions have not studied the data carefully and are not likely to do so unless the matter is vigorously agitated, many who are interested would favor such a nation-wide study of the tobacco problem in institutions of higher learning as is now being advocated by certain eminent educators and some other workers.
Whether, college or university administrations and faculties will, as a whole, willingly take part in a movement which will give tobacco its just deserts in these institutions, or whether the investigation must come from the outside remains to be seen. Facts already known, in way of reasonably safe scientific data, to say nothing of valuable expert opinion based on wide observation and experience, indicate that educators are slowly becoming cognizant of the need of proper treatment of this drug; and the larger the part that the
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institutions play in the solution, the more final results will redound to their credit.
In May, 1912, Mr. Spencer Montgomery, then president of the Miami University Y.M.C.A., brought up, in a devotional meeting, the general problem of the use of tobacco by students in our institutions and suggested that the Y.M.C.A. should attempt some sort of investigation of the matter. A committee was appointed, and this committee, after working for one year, published in the college paper the results of studies of the grades of smokers and non-smokers. The relative grades were as follows:
non-smokers, 108.2;
light smokers, 103.3;
medium smokers, 99.7;
and
heavy smokers, 77.7. |
It was the general opinion at the time that the character of men who would allow themselves to became slaves to a drug habit had quite as much to do with the rather surprising decrease in grades in proportion to the amount of tobacco consumed as did the injury caused by the use of the weed. Mr. Weston Walters was chairman of the committee of three seniors, which found results that were at the time thought to be unusual. However, the data presented herein from other colleges and universities and from public schools as well show that the report of this committee demonstrated just what would have been anticipated by persons well informed regarding the relationship between scholarship and the tobacco habit.
Former President Webster Merrifield, of North Dakota University, says:"The use of tobacco in all forms is strictly forbidden at the State University of
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North Dakota, not only out of deference to public opinion in this State, but as the result of long observation of the evil effects of tobacco upon immature students."
| Ed. Note: States such as North Dakota were having anti-tobacco litigation, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The North Dakota Supreme Court had taken note of concern of tobacco adulteration via opium, State v Olson, 26 ND 304; 144 NW 661; LRA 1918B, 975 (29 Nov 1913) app dism 245 US 676; 38 S Ct 13; 62 L Ed 542 (17 Oct 1917). North Dakota won the case against tobacco pusher opposition. |
Dr. Henry Churchill King, president of Oberlin College, says:"I am entirely clear in my own mind that the use of tobacco, at least by men under twenty-five, is to be vigorously opposed, partly in consideration of health, partly on considerations of intellectual development, and partly on moral considerations. Upon all of these points, so far