Part 6 — TOBACCO AND THE CIGARETTE PART SIX—THE CIGARETTE

The question is often asked, “Why is the Cigarette doing more harm than the other forms of Tobacco?” We answer:—

First, because the user of the Cigarette is more apt to inhale than the user of pipe or cigars.

“When tobacco smoke is inhaled [breathed into the lungs], the nicotin enters the cerebral circulation directly and benumbs the brain. It enters the larynx and bronchial tubes, coating their membrane with carbon and acting as an irritant.”

Second, because the combination of the tobacco and the paper in the Cigarette form several poisons that are injurious. They are:—

Prussic Acid: the most deadly poison known.

Acrolein: rated in any standard book of chemistry as second only to prussic acid in its deadly effect. In Webster’s International Dictionary, 1901, it is defined as “A limpid, colorless, highly volatile liquid. Its vapors are intensely irritating.”

Pyridine: “It is the nucleus of a large number of organic substances, among which several alkaloids, as nicotin, ... may be mentioned.”

Carbonic Oxide or Monoxide gas: “Carbonic oxide (chem.): a colorless gas. C. O. of slight odor, called more correctly Carbon Monoxide. It is the product of the incomplete combustion of carbon.... It is fatal to animal life.”

Besides these poisons, nicotin is always present in tobacco in any form,—giving a total of five poisons in the Cigarette.

Third, Ignorance of the effects of Cigarettes on the human being. The Cigarette being so small, and the white paper so clean in appearance, thousands of innocent people are entrapped and ruined physically, mentally, and morally, by those “Little White Devils.” It has been estimated that from one thousand two hundred to one thousand five hundred boys begin smoking every day.

Women and Baby Smokers

In 1909, I was invited to speak at a woman’s missionary meeting, at Washington, D. C. At the close of the meeting an elderly lady asked for literature giving statements as to the effect of Cigarettes. She said she had a married daughter that was smoking Cigarettes, and teaching her little three-year-old boy to smoke!

I knew a woman who began smoking Cigarettes. I was shocked when I heard that she had placed a Cigarette in the mouth of her sweet little four-year-old girl. I tell you that made me mad! I said then that I would do all I could to knock out Cigarettes. A young married lady told me that her husband was a “Cigarette fiend.” He was dopy most of the time. When not under the influence of Cigarettes, he was restless, nervous, irritable, and unkind. Life to her became a burden.

“A Cigarette dealer in Philadelphia states that he sells one hundred fifty thousand Cigarettes a month to women who come in carriages, and send footmen to buy.”

A World Wide Evil

Dr. Clinton says that “a good deal has been said about the evils of Cigarette smoking; but not one half the truth has ever been told.”

Not only in America, but in every land, in every clime, is the effect of the Cigarette seen. In China, where such a successful crusade against opium was made, the tobacco people from our own civilized America went with an unlimited amount of advertising matter, and sample packages of Cigarettes, which were scattered broadcast, and now the Cigarette habit threatens to be a greater curse than opium was!

Effects Upon School Boys

A physician’s statement:—

“Cigarette smoking first blunts the whole moral nature. It has an appalling effect upon the physical system as well. It first stimulates, then stupefies the nerves. It sends boys into consumption. It gives them enlargement of the heart and it sends them to the insane asylum!

“I am often called in to prescribe for boys for palpitation of the heart. In nine cases out of ten this is caused by the Cigarette habit. I have seen bright boys turned into dunces, and straightforward, honest boys made miserable cowards by Cigarette smoking. I am speaking the truth,—nearly every physician and every teacher knows.”—Dr. A. Clinton.

In a school of 500 pupils, a careful investigation extending over several months was made, and briefly summed up, shows the following:—

“The average efficiency of the non-smokers in that school was ninety-five per cent, in other words, ninety-five out of every one hundred were reasonably sure of getting at least a good common school education, while of the Cigarette fiends, only five to ten per cent stand any show in school, and they are two and one-fifth years behind in their own grade, and more than three years behind the girls they started with in the first grade.

“The teachers who made this investigation expressed themselves to the parents of the boys as follows:—

“We desire to call attention to the fact that a large majority of the boys of this city are smoking Cigarettes; that the boys who are smoking are, on an average, years behind the boys who do not smoke; and still farther behind the girls in the same grades; that the mental, moral, and physical condition of many of these boys is extremely deplorable, and will certainly continue to grow worse unless the habit is stopped; that while the schools are insisting that this and other unclean and undesirable habits shall not be practiced in or about the school house or grounds; still, crowds of our boys are daily seen around the saloons and loafing places of our streets, smoking, loafing, swearing, and cultivating other undesirable habits.

“This was plain talk, and it had immediate effect. It is estimated that seventy-five per cent of the Cigarette smoking by boys was stopped. What was called the worst school in the country, is now spoken of as doing good work. The school board raised the salary of the teachers and principal twenty-five per cent. The people are pleased. The improved condition of the boys is noticeable in their language, dress, manners, efficiency, and especially in their moral tone.

“The former principal and superintendent smoked.”

But think! that is but one school among thousands in America that is wasting money in trying to educate numbskulls! Bob Burdette, in his comical way, says:—

“My son, as long as thou hast in thy skull the sense of a jay bird, break away from the Cigarette, for lo, it causeth thy breath to stink like a glue factory; it rendereth thy mind less intelligent than that of a cigar store dummy, yea, thou art a cipher with the rim knocked off.”

When you rub the rim off a cipher you have less than nothing.

Theodore Roosevelt expresses himself as follows:—

“If you are going to do anything permanent for the average man, you have got to begin before he is a man. The chance of success lies in working with the boy, and not with the man.”—Theodore Roosevelt.

Bad Example of Educators and School Men

Superintendent J. K. McBroom, in an address to educators, said in part:—

“What will we do with a superintendent who uses tobacco? Send him to the legislature? Legislative atmosphere seems to be mostly tobacco smoke anyway. Send him to the reform school, I was going to say; then I remembered that wouldn’t do, for that of course is only for youthful offenders for whom there yet lingers hope of reformation.”

Speaking of boys, Mr. McBroom says:—

“Now is the time of most urgent need that every safeguard and every vigilant precaution be thrown around them to save them from the vile habits and tendencies which they are exposed on every hand, and which if allowed to get their grip now, will handicap the boys all their lives, and in many cases ruin them for any further effective or ambitious effort.

“Chief among these vices, because usually the first to gain a foothold, is the use of tobacco; and that seems to be the father of all the rest. It breeds deception at the very start, in every single case, I believe; bad company, and even worse meeting places; dwarfed ambition, sluggish intellect.

“Now if the young man has any capacity or inclination in the line of school work, we have the strongest possible appeal to his pride and his ambition in telling him that the use of tobacco is absolutely ruinous to good scholarship. But the pupil will find a fatal flaw in the logic if the superintendent himself uses tobacco; for almost inevitably in the mind of the pupil, the superintendent is a notable example of high scholarship. The best teaching, except for some rudiments and routine of instruction is mostly a matter of intangible atmosphere; the right kind of influence, contact and association of the pupil with a strong, clean, wholesome personality in the teacher. Now if superintendent or college professor or any other schoolman, has one conspicuous weakness; one habit that is universally considered a bad habit, he fails in exactly the most important point; and though he may be strong as an instructor, disciplinarian, administrator, yet he will be weak as an educator, as a maker of character.

“He may surround himself with a corps of strong, loyal young men and women, who will attend to the education of the pupils, while he attends to the administration of the system; but even then, his own influence in the development of character in the pupils will be zero or a negative quantity. Now that kind of influence might answer in the management of a railroad or a packing house, but in the administration of a school it is not good enough.”

What can we say to the boys when they quote the example of physicians, college professors, school superintendents, ministers of the gospel, churchmen, and even their own fathers? Such men should read the following statement with care:—

“There is something about this Cigarette habit that weakens and unnerves the boy. It destroys his memory, impairs his other cognitive faculties, robs him of his power of attention, saps his will-power, and deprives him of his initiative; he becomes tremulous and timid, and fears to do the things he would.

“Often this filthy and disgusting habit has so fastened itself upon the impressionable boy nature, that it can not be shaken off. What base slavery! What bonds of vice that eat like canker into the physical being of its victim!

“Many physicians with whom I consulted in the matter have assured me of the effect of tobacco upon the growing boy, and all have regarded the Cigarettes as the most pernicious form of tobacco using. Do college professors, and college men, and other users of Cigarettes who are in a position to influence boys, ever think of their responsibility for the bad example they give? How can advice to refrain from the Cigarette be heeded when it comes from one who is himself a user of the Cigarette?”—Wm. H. DeLacy, Judge of the Juvenile Court, Washington, D. C.

Boy Criminals and the Cigarette

Judge Ben. B. Lindsey, of Denver, known as “The Boys’ Judge,” says:—

“The Cigarette not only has a grip upon boyhood, but it invites all other demons of habit to come and add to the degradation.”

Another writer says:—

“There is no surer way for the young boy to procure as associates the criminal and immoral, than for him to begin the smoking of Cigarettes; the use of the Cigarette draws to him the older and more vicious who are ready to initiate him into that kind of life which paves his way to destruction.”

In testimony of the grip which the Cigarette habit obtains upon boys, and its tendency to crime, read carefully the following statement from Abraham Bowers, Immigration Secretary of the Y. M. C. A. of Chicago:—

“It gives me pleasure to endorse the work of the Anti-Cigarette League. While I was teacher of the boys in the Cook County jail, I found that almost every one of them could attribute his downfall partly to the use of Cigarettes. They were the most seriously afflicted with the habit of any class of boys I have ever known. They desired to have a recess every forty-five minutes to go outside the room to smoke a Cigarette. At night frequently about two or three o’clock in the morning, some of them would be aroused from their sleep for the want of a Cigarette, and not having it they would pound the cells, and wake all the other boys and men in the jail, if necessary to get the Cigarettes. Many of them admitted that they had been led to steal originally to get money with which to buy Cigarettes.”

The following statement is from the pen of Judge Leroy B. Crane, of New York:—

“Cigarettes are ruining our children, endangering their lives, dwarfing their intellects, and making them criminals fast. The boys who use them seem to lose all sense of right, decency, and righteousness. To have great men requires the most forceful means to check this pernicious and death-dealing habit. Ask the mothers of the land to help you and they will respond.

“In my court ninety-five per cent of the boys brought before me charged with offenses from shooting crap to burglary are Cigarette smokers, while those who do not smoke them seldom appear before me.

“This morning three boys were brought before me for petty larceny, the oldest eighteen, the youngest sixteen,—the stain of Cigarettes on their fingers, and the mothers there to accompany their boys. I was compelled to send one to the reform school at the mother’s request; the other two were placed on probation to give them another start.

“I call Cigarettes Little White Devils. The U. S. government should pass laws preventing their sale and manufacture within its borders.”

Of the tendency of the Cigarette to promote crime and insanity, the following experience will testify:—

“Of all the juvenile criminals tried in my court, not one for years has been found free from the stain of Cigarettes on his thumb and first two fingers. Of all the lunatics tried in my court, an attempt is made to learn the cause of lunacy, and in more than half Cigarette smoking is assigned as the cause.”—Judge Balder, Louisville, Ky.

“It does seem, as one stated, ‘that either the smoking of Cigarettes causes insanity, or that it is the insane who smoke.’”

Says Thomas A. Edison:—

“Acrolein is one of the most terrible drugs in its effect on the human body. The burning of ordinary cigarette paper always produces acrolein. That is what makes the smoke so irritating. I really believe that it often makes boys insane. We sometimes develop acrolein in this laboratory in our experiments with glycerine. One whiff of it from the oven drove one of my assistants out of the building the other day. I can hardly exaggerate the dangerous nature of acrolein, and yet that is what a man or a boy is dealing with every time he smokes an ordinary Cigarette.”

“The blood of persons poisoned by the inhalation of illuminating gas, rich in carbonic oxide, is found to be coagulated and indurated, and may be pulled in strings from the veins and arteries.

“Owing to the loose structure of the Cigarette, its combustion is modified and destructive distillation proceeds with combustion, and owing to the incompleteness of oxidation, carbonic oxide is largely produced instead of carbonic acid. This carbonic oxide inhaled into the lungs enters the blood unresisted, and the damage it does is in direct proportion to the quantities inhaled. Carbonic oxide when inhaled in small quantities produces faintness, dizziness, palpitation of the heart, and a feeling of great heaviness in the feet and legs. These are exactly the effects of the Cigarette and the depression and nervousness which follow as a reaction make the victim crave some balm or tonic for his malaise. He is then led to consume the drug in ever increasing quantities.”

Notice the following prison record:—

“On the first day of this month we had 278 boys between the ages of ten and fifteen. Ninety-two per cent of the whole number were in the habit of smoking Cigarettes at the time they committed the crimes for which they were sent to the reformatory. Eighty-five per cent had become so addicted to their use as to be classed at the time as ‘Cigarette fiends.’ Of 4,117 boys received into the reformatory since its organization on June 8, 1893, ninety-five per cent were in the habit of using tobacco, and nearly all were Cigarette smokers. Consequently we see that the Cigarette is a great factor in developing criminals.”—Hon. Geo. Torrence, formerly Superintendent of Illinois State Reformatory.

Reliable testimony:—

“I regard the Cigarette as a fuse of infernal fire, tending to explode the worst passions of the body! In dealing with more than sixteen thousand delinquent children during the last eight years, I find as a rule the user of Cigarettes is a stunt, a weakling in body, mind, and morals.”—Zed H. Copp, Chief Probation Officer, Juvenile Court, Washington, D. C.

Heart Tracings

We invite your attention to the work of the delicate little instrument, called the sphygmograph, which records the strength and regularity of the heart beat. Notice the following tracings:—

No. 1 shows a healthy heart beat. No. 2, the heart beat of a young man while smoking. Where the mark ^ is, you will notice that the heart skipped a full beat. No. 3, after smoking, with a partial skip in the heart beat, even while under the stimulus of tobacco. No. 4, the heart beat of a tobacco user.

The tobacco heart has become a prominent feature in the medical diagnosis of the day.

Danger to Growing Boys

This progressive use of the Cigarette is especially true with boys in the period of rapid growth. The wreath of Cigarette smoke which curls about the head of the growing lad holds his brain in an iron grip which prevents it from growing and his mind from developing just as surely as the iron shoe does the foot of the Chinese girl.

In the terrible struggle for survival against the deadly Cigarette smoke, development and growth are sacrificed by nature, which in the fight for very life itself, must yield up every vital luxury such as healthy body growth and growth of brain and mind.

If all boys could be made to know that with every breath of Cigarette smoke they inhale imbecility and exhale manhood; that they are tapping their arteries as surely and letting their life blood out as truly as though their veins and arteries were severed, and that the Cigarette is a maker of invalids, criminals, and fools—not men—it ought to deter them some. The yellow finger stains is an emblem of deeper degradation and enslavement than the ball and chain.

Hudson Maxim.

Cigarette School Boy

A Few Years Later

Business Men and the Cigarette

How do employers of men and boys rate the Cigarette smoker? Read the following terse statements:—

“We might as well go to the insane asylum for our men as to employ Cigarette smokers.”—The late E. H. Harriman, Railroad King.

“Never advance the pay of a Cigarette smoker; never promote him; never trust him.”—Elbert Hubbard.

“More and more young men are hoisting the sign, ‘I am a fool,’ by appearing in public with a Cigarette.”—P. M. Sharpless, Cream Separator Manufacturer.

“The use of intoxicating liquor by men, and the use of Cigarettes by boys, is creating a race of feeble-minded, unhealthy, and valueless citizens.”—John Wanamaker.

“We do not employ boys in the Larkin office, who smoke Cigarettes. An applicant addicted to the use of Cigarettes would hardly interest us; but if he seemed to possess qualifications that made him desirable, he would have to decide between Cigarettes and the job.”—Wm. R. Heath, Vice-President Larkin Company, Buffalo.

The notice which follows was posted throughout the factory of the Cadillac Motor Company, Nov. 28, 1911:

“Cigarette smoking is acquiring a hold on a great many boys in our community; the habit has grown to an abnormal extent among boys and men in the last year or two. Since it is such a bad practice, and is taking such a hold upon so many people, we think it a disgrace for a grown man to smoke a Cigarette, because it is not only injurious to his health, but is such a bad example to the boys.

“Boys who smoke Cigarettes, we do not care to employ or to keep in our employ. In the future we will not hire any one whom we know to be addicted to this habit. It is our desire to weed it entirely out of our factory just as soon as practicable. We will ask every one in our factory who sees the seriousness of this habit to use his influence in having it stamped out. We have two objects in interesting ourselves in this matter. First, to help men and boys; second, We believe that men who do not smoke Cigarettes or frequent saloons, can make better automobiles than those who do.”

The following is an extract from the Fidelity, one of the oldest insurance companies in America:—

“After a careful investigation we have decided that we will not bond a man who uses Cigarettes, for such men are not safe, physically or morally.”

“I verily believe that the mental force, power of labor, and endurance of our profession is decreased at least twenty-five per cent by the use of tobacco.”—Ex-Senator Doolittle, in an address delivered to the graduating law class of Wisconsin University.

Cigarettes and Tuberculosis

The claim made by Surgeon General Rixey of the United States navy that the smoking of Cigarettes is responsible for many of the cases of pulmonary tuberculosis that occur among the men of that body is an interesting one. The Cigarette has long been considered a dangerous luxury, and taking into consideration the opinion of Dr. Rixey, the statement that during the past three months the crew of the ship Missouri—700 men—used one thousand five hundred books of Cigarette papers, one thousand two hundred pounds of tobacco and thirty-seven thousand Cigarettes, the fact that the ratio of men suffering from pulmonary troubles in our navy is larger than in the navies of either Germany or England, is not surprising. As a matter of precaution and common sense, this devotion to the Cigarette should at least be curbed to a very great extent.—Washington Post.

“It has been brought to the attention of the bureau from many sources,” says the surgeon general, “that Cigarette smoking is becoming a serious impediment to robust health in the navy. This habit seems to have taken a decided impetus in the service since the Spanish war and has spread to incredible proportions.”—The Deadly Cigarette, Lucy Page Gaston.

Leads to Drinking and Opium

Dr. Chas. L. Hamilton, of the Keeley Institute, says: “The continual dryness of the mucous membranes of the mouth and pharynx, due to the paralyzing influence of the Cigarette on the nerve terminals and which the drinking of water will not relieve, is readily quenched by alcoholic drinks, and this discovery, once made by the Cigarette habitue, leads to frequent indulgence in liquor, and aided by the effort to combat malnutrition and its attendant weaknesses, almost invariably causes him to become an alcoholic inebriate.”

Also a quotation from Dr. B. Broughton, in charge of the opium department of the Keeley institute, Dwight, Ill.: “More young men are led into the opium habit by Cigarette smoking than by patent and proprietary medicines. Sixty per cent of all males under forty years of age, treated at Dwight for morphin, opium, or cocaine using in 1896 had been smokers of Cigarettes, and sixty per cent of these had no other excuse than that they needed some stimulant more than the Cigarette furnished them.”

“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 Cigarette more than they do the 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.”—Some Effects of Tobacco Using.

Cigars and Fires

“Cigarettes for boys spell tragedy everywhere! The fire at Bangor last Sunday began with a careless smoker. The Baltimore fire, the Chelsea-Boston fire, the fire of the Windsor Hotel, New York, the Albany Statehouse fire, and the Horrible Triangle Waist Company holocaust, all of these, with charred human bodies, and wrecked homes and lives, are traced to the carelessness and brutal disregard accompanying the Cigarette habit.

“Fire Commissioner Waldo attributes 700 fires per year in New York to this cause. The tobacco companies deny the evil of their product, and invite inspection of their premises and processes. But a mere inspection of the Cigarette boys, in the public schools and factories ought to be enough!”—Editorial in Religious Weekly.

Dangers of Inhaling

The following paragraphs are selected from “Confessions of a Cigarette Smoker in England.”

“Inhaling consists simply in drawing a volume of smoke from the Cigarette into the mouth, and then taking a deep breath, in the act of which the smoke is carried from the mouth down into the lungs....

“Let the nicotin fumes go where they may, in their passage they come into contact with the nervous system, and the result is an instantaneous communication to the brain, which takes the form of a momentary semi-paralysis—that is, when a man is new at the habit.

“I remember very well the experience of a youngster of eighteen on his being taught to inhale the smoke of a Cigarette for the first time. One afternoon some friends persuaded him to make the attempt, and he did so. Almost upon the instant he fell full length upon the floor in a dead faint; and his features became pallid, his pulse faint and irregular; and those about him were for a time in a great fright. A day or two later he tried to inhale again, with a result not quite so bad; and he went on trying till now he is a veritable slave to the habit.

“A leading tobacconist in the city of London told me that in the space of five years he had seen regular frequenters of his shop completely broken down in mind and body through having contracted the inhaling habit; moreover, that some of them were in the cemetery who, he was convinced, need not have been there. Of course, the medical certificate did not give inhaling tobacco smoke as the cause. Very likely it said consumption. But I can quite believe, and so can any confirmed inhaler, that it was the Cigarette that was the cause of it all.

“The moral of all this is a simple one. Never upon any consideration be tempted to inhale for the first time. Probably this initial attempt would lead to the establishment of the habit, with all the sad consequences I have enumerated. And, as I indicated at the outset, breaking away from it is such a difficult matter that not one person in a thousand ever succeeds in the attempt. Inhaling is one of those habits which can not be broken off by degrees. The division must be drawn sharp and clean, and there must be no smoking of any sort. To the confirmed inhaler this system of cure is a painful one; but it is the only one I have known to succeed.”

A Sure Cure

“I have found a way to cure Jimmy of smoking Cigarettes,” said Mrs. Maloney over the back fence to Mrs. O’Brien.

“And what is that?”

“By the laying on of hands. It is a great remedy and a sure cure.”