"Tobacco Helps Win Battles."
This was the heading of a newspaper article exploiting the work of an organization whose purpose was the furnishing of tobacco to the Allied armies during the Great War. More than $1,000,000 was raised for this object, representing millions of packages of tobacco and cigarettes. This organization actually supplied to the soldiers more than 150,000,000 cigarettes and 300 tons of tobacco. As an adjunct to the Tobacco Trust it proved highly effective.
Does tobacco help win battles? We can easily see how a tobacco-poisoned system would be ill at ease without its accustomed drug; but no poison helps win battles, and nicotine is a deadly poison.
Tobacco loses battles. It has lost many a battle in the warfare of life, and it does its full share in the loss of every battle where strength of heart, keenness of eye, clearness of brain, and bodily endurance are factors.
That newspaper heading was all wrong.
"the Health Pipe."
I saw it in the window of a tobacco store the other day, and I decided at once that it is a good thing. Since it is a good thing, I want to "push it along." I didn't stop to inquire of what material it is made, or what wonderful compound is to be smoked in it, or by what marvelous means it gets the poison out of the weed so that it can be sucked with safety into the human system. There are some things that are better off without an investigation, and probably the health pipe is one of them. At any rate, I shall take its claim for granted, and give it a puff. I am speaking metaphorically.
Doubtless the health pipe is so arranged as to make no smoke, because if it did, however good it might be for the health of the smoker, it could not be called a health pipe, because it would be bad for the health of everyone else. I, for instance, have never yet been able to remain for ten minutes in a tobacco-laden atmosphere without becoming sick, my head giddy and aching, my eyes smarting, the most distressing nausea. I know of many others,—men, and, of course, women, poor things!—that are troubled the same way.
Possibly the health pipe does emit smoke, but possesses some subtle influence over its owner, making him unselfish, and sending him off into some desert place to smoke by himself, and forcing him to air his clothes before he enters decent society again; but that is almost too much to imagine.
One would expect from the health pipe, as you will at once agree, results precisely the opposite of those that attend the use of the ordinary pipe-the unhealthy pipe. The skin of the fortunate smoker will not become pale and sallow, but more brilliant. The head will cease to ache, and the brain power will be increased. The eyes will no longer be bloodshot, and the vision will actually be improved. The heart will not beat with less regularity, but will have a better tone. Indeed, the entire system, instead of being poisoned, will be fed and rejuvenated—by the health pipe.
Let us give it as presents to our mothers and sisters, our sweethearts and our wives. Let us introduce it into theological seminaries and kindergartens. Let us throw open all passenger cars to its use. Let us give the inventor a permanent patent, and call upon the pipe to canonize him.
Let's see; what would be a good name for the new saint?
"St. Humbugus "?
a Costly Pleasure.
Dufferin Terrace, Quebec's famous board-walk overlooking the St. Lawrence River, was a mass of black ruins, and so were some of the cottages on the cliff above the thoroughfare. It was an obstinate fire, and it took the fire department three hours to bring it under control. It was believed that the cause of the fire was a lighted cigar dropped under the terrace, setting fire to the wooden supports.
This was one more added to the enormous number of expensive fires started by cigars, pipes, and cigarettes. Many millions of dollars are lost to the world in this way every year, to say nothing of the increased cost of insurance caused by this hazard. Add the deaths of scores of persons and the total is a staggering charge against this costly pleasure.
Let us say nothing about the ruin of health. Let us concede the doubtful privilege of ruining one's own physical apparatus. Let us admit that a man may with impunity befoul his own home atmosphere. Yet all considerations of public policy combine to urge the prohibition of smoking off one's own property.
I cannot, during the dry season, even burn a pile of dry leaves in my own back yard, still less take that pile into the park and burn it there; but I am at perfect liberty (if I choose, as I certainly do not) to light a fire on the street or in any public building, provided I put the dry leaves in my mouth and puff the abominable smoke into the face of every lady I meet. Such are the consistencies of civilized society.
Every such event as that in Quebec brings a little nearer the day when the non-smoking majority of the community will refuse longer to be injured and tyrannized over by the smoking minority. Property owners have rights which even cigarette fiends will ultimately be required to respect.
Pure Air and Life.
Senator Tillman, of South Carolina, for a long time urged upon the Senate the adoption of a resolution forbidding smoking during executive sessions of the Senate, and finally the resolution was adopted by unanimous vote, as it should have been.
Said Senator Tillman, speaking in favor of the resolution, "I am in danger of being driven out of the party and out of the Senate, for my very life depends upon pure air."
In this particular the Senator, so wonderfully restored after critical illness, does not differ from the rest of us, except in degree. Every pollution of the air we breathe shortens our life. The term, "vital breath," is no mere figure of speech.
Smokers, in forcing their tobacco-laden air upon all persons near them, are worse than public nuisances—they are public perils. Those that object to the proceeding object not so much to a disagreeable odor as to a health-destroying contamination. If we need pure-food laws, still more do we need pure-air laws; for the exercise of a little discretion will obtain pure food for us, but no amount of care short of a hermit's isolation will preserve one from the impure air of the smoker.
That law once laid by Christian Endeavourers before the Massachusetts Legislature forbidding smoking in public places was ridiculed by many unthinking persons. Even its friends were likely to make light of it. Every reform has met the same ridicule in its early days. It was once considered a part of individual liberty to throw into the street offal of all kinds. Once it was necessary in walking at night through the principal thoroughfares of many of the leading British cities to keep to the middle of the road, and even hold an umbrella over one's head, if one would not be covered with unmentionable outpourings from the upper floors of the houses. The time is coming when, just as we look back upon those days as unbelievable, we shall read with incredulity the statement that in the twentieth century men puffed tobacco-smoke freely into the faces of the men and women they might meet on the streets.
In this working age we all need to keep our bodies at their best, our faculties unimpaired. Let us banish smoking from all public places and go into universal executive session.
Twenty-Five Billion Coffin-Nails.
In 1916 the men and boys of this country (and, alas! some of the women) smoked no fewer than twenty-five billion cigarettes. In 1906 only four and a half billions were smoked. More than a fivefold increase in five years! What an increase that means in sickness, weakness, failures, and physical, mental, and moral flabbiness! Cigarettes have justly been called "coffin-nails." The little white rolls of tobacco have nailed down the coffin-lid for millions of silly devotees.
Why is the consumption of cigarettes increasing at this enormous rate? I wish I could believe that it is because the use of pipes and cigars is decreasing, but anyone's experience and observation will show the contrary. It is because the cigarette, by its seeming innocence, makes millions of new tobacco-users, especially among the boys, and leads to ever-increasing indulgence on the part of confirmed smokers. So slight a thing, men think, cannot do much harm.
That is just where boys and men make a fatal error. The fever-laden mosquito can enter through a very small opening. A mere scratch in the skin may issue in deadly blood-poisoning. The small amount of tobacco, like the small amount of alcohol, is not only harmful in itself, but it fixes upon its victim a habit which is almost unbreakable, and which leads on to ruin. If any tobacco-user questions the power of the weed over his will, let him try to break that power.
There is need of an anti-tobacco crusade alongside of the anti-alcohol crusade. The forces of health and righteousness cannot afford to wait for the latter victory before they seek the former. Every year finds King Tobacco more firmly entrenched, his resources vaster, his followers more numerous, their chains more firmly riveted. Every year we delay makes the warfare more difficult. There is immediate need that the churches take determined action. The enemy's progress has been at the rate of 500 per cent in a decade. What has been ours?