CHAPTER XLVIII THE CIGARETTE

We are so accustomed to the sight and smell of tobacco that we entirely overlook the fact that the tobacco of commerce in all its forms is the product of a poisonous weed. It is first a narcotic and then an irritant poison. It has its place in all toxicological classifications together with its proper antidotes.

Tobacco has not achieved its almost universal popularity without strong opposition. In England King James launched his famous " Counterblaste " against its use. In Turkey, where men and women are alike slaves to its fascination, tobacco was originally forbidden under severe penalties; the loss of the ears, the slitting of the nostrils and even death itself being penalties imposed for the infraction of the law forbidding the use of tobacco in any form. Since then pipes, cigars, snuff and chewing tobacco have become popularized and tobacco in some form or another is used by almost every nation. The last development in the form of tobacco using was the cigarette rolled between the fingers, and the worst form of the cigarette is the manufactured article sold in cheap packages and freely used by boys who in many cases have not reached their teens.

The manufactured American cigarette seems to be especially deadly in its effect. It is said to contain five and one-half per cent. of nicotine, or more than twice as much as the Cuban-made cigarette contains, and more than six times as much as is contained in the Turkish cigarette.

I am not going to quarrel with the use of tobacco in general by mature men. He who has come to man's estate is free to decide for himself whether he shall force a poison on his revolting stomach; for the nausea that follows the first use of tobacco is the stomach's attempt to eject the poison which has been absorbed from pipe, cigar, or cigarette. The grown man, too, is able to determine whether he wants to pay the tax which the use of tobacco levies upon his time, his health, his income and his prosperity. The most that can be said of the use of tobacco is that if habitual users of the narcotic weed are successful in life they must be successful in spite of the use of tobacco and not because of it; for it is opposed to both reason and common sense that the habitual use of a poison in any form should promote the development and exercise of the faculties whose energetic use is essential to success.

What I desire to do is to warn the boy, the growing youth, of the baneful influence of the cigarette on minds yet unformed, on bodies yet in process of development. The danger of the cigarette to the growing boy lies first in the fact that it poisons the body. That it does not kill at the outset is due to the fact that the dose is small and so slowly increased that the body gradually accommodates itself to this poison as it does to strychnine, arsenic, opium, and other poisons. But all the time there is a slow

but steady process of physical degeneration. The digestion is affected, the heart is overtaxed, liver and bowels are deranged in their functions, and as the poison spreads throughout the system there is a gradual physical deterioration which is marked alike in the countenance and in the carriage of the body. Any person who cares to do so may prove for himself the poisonous nature of nicotine which is derived from tobacco and taken into the system by those who chew or smoke.

Dr. J. J. Kellogg says: " A few months ago I had all the nicotine removed from a cigarette, making a solution of it. I injected half the quantity into a frog, with the effect that the frog died almost instantly. The rest was administered to another frog with like effect. Both frogs were full grown, and of average size. The conclusion is evident that a single cigarette contains poison enough to kill two frogs. A boy who smokes twenty cigarettes a day has inhaled enough poison to kill forty frogs. Why does the poison not kill the boy? It does tend to kill him. If not immediately, he is likely to die sooner or later of weak heart, Bright's disease, or some other malady which scientific physicians everywhere now recognize as a natural result of chronic nicotine poisoning."

A chemist, not long since, took the tobacco used in an average cigarette and soaked it in several teaspoonfuls of water and then injected a portion of it under the skin of a cat. The cat almost immediately went into convulsions, and died in fifteen minutes. Dogs have been killed with a single drop of nicotine.

A single drop of nicotine taken from a seasoned pipe, and applied to the tongue of a venomous snake has caused almost instant death. A Western farmer tried to rear a brood of motherless chickens in his greenhouse. But the chickens did not thrive. They refused to eat; their skins became dry and harsh; their feathers were ruffled; they were feverish and drank constantly. Soon they began to die. As the temperature and general condition of the greenhouse seemed to be especially favorable to the rearing of chickens, the florist was puzzled to determine the cause of their sickness and death. After a careful study of the symptoms he found that the source of the trouble arose from the fumes of the tobacco stems burned in the greenhouse to destroy green flies and destructive plant parasites.

Though the chickens had always been removed from the green house during the tobacco fumigation and were not returned while any trace of smoke was apparent to the human senses, it was evident that the soil, air, and leaves of the plants retained enough of the poison to keep the chickens in a condition of semi-intoxication.

The conditions were promptly changed, and the chickens removed to other quarters recovered rapidly and in a short time were healthy and lively though they were stunted in growth because of this temporary exposure to the effects of nicotine. The symptoms in chickens were almost identical with the symptoms nicotine poisoning in young boys, and the effects relatively the same. The most moderate use of the cigarette is injurious to the body and mind of the youth; excessive indulgence leads inevitably to insanity and death.

A young man died in a Minnesota state institution not long ago, who, five years before, had been one of the most promising young physicians of the West. " Still under thirty years at the time of his commitment to the institution," says the newspaper account of his story, " he had already made three discoveries in nervous diseases that had made him looked up to in his profession. But he smoked cigarettes, smoked incessantly. For a long time the effects of the habit were not apparent on him. In fact, it was not until a patient died on the operating table under his hands, and the young doctor went to pieces, that it became known that he was a victim of the paper pipes. But then he had gone too far. He was a wreck in mind as well as in body, and he ended his days in a maniac's cell."

Another unfortunate victim of the cigarette was, not long ago, taken to the Brooklyn Hospital. He was a fireman on the railroad and was only twenty-one years old. He said he began smoking cigarettes when a mere boy.

Before being taken to the hospital he smoked all night for weeks without sleep. When in the hospital he recognized none, but called loudly to everyone he saw to kill him. He would batter his head against the wall in the attempt to commit suicide. At length he was taken to the King's County Hospital in a strait jacket, where death soon relieved him of his sufferings.

Similar results are following the excessive use of cigarettes, every day and in all sections of the country. "Died of heart failure" is the daily verdict on scores of those who drop down at the desk or in the street. Can not this sudden taking off, of apparently hale and sturdy men be related, oftentimes to the heart weakness caused by the excessive use of tobacco and particularly of cigarettes?

Excessive cigarette smoking increases the heart's action very materially, in some instances twenty-five or thirty beats a minute. Think of the enormous amount of extra work forced upon this delicate organ every twenty-four hours! The pulsations are not only greatly increased but also very materially weakened, so that the blood is not forced to every part of the system, and hence the tissues are not nourished as they would be by means of fewer but stronger, more vigorous pulsations.

The indulgence in cigarettes stunts the growth and retards physical development. An investigation of all the students who entered Yale University during nine years shows that the cigarette smokers were the inferiors, both in weight and lung capacity, of the non-smokers, although they averaged fifteen months older.

It has been said that the universal habit of smoking has made Germany " a spectacled nation." Tobacco greatly irritates the eyes, and injuriously affects the optic nerves.

The eyes of boys who use cigarettes to excess grow dull and weak, and every feature shows the mark of the insidious poison. The face is pallid and haggard, the cheeks hollow, the skin drawn, there is a loss of frankness of expression, the eyes are shifty, the movements nervous and uncertain, and all this is but preliminary to the ultimate degradation loss and of self-respect which follow the victim of the cigarette habit, through years of misery and failure. Side by side with physical deterioration there goes on a process of moral degeneration which robs the cigarette smoking boy of refinement, of manners. The moral depravity which follows cigarette habit is appalling. Lying, cheating, swearing, impurity, loss of courage and manhood, a complete dropping of life's standards, result from such indulgence.

Magistrate Crane, of New York City, says " Ninety-nine out of a hundred boys between the ages of ten and seventeen years who come before me charged with crime have their fingers disfigured by yellow cigarette stains - I am not a crank on this subject, I do not care to pose as a reformer, but it is my opinion that cigarettes will do more than liquor to ruin boys. When you have arraigned before you hopelessly deaf through the excessive use of cigarettes boys who have stolen their sisters' earnings, boys who absolutely refuse to work, who do nothing but gamble and steal, you can not help seeing that there is some direct cause, and a great deal of this boyhood crime, is, in my mind, easy to trace to the deadly cigarette. There is something in the poison of the cigarette that seems to get into the system of the boy and to destroy all moral fiber.

" He gives the following probable course of a boy who begins to smoke cigarettes: " First, cigarettes. Second, beer and liquors. Third, craps-petty gambling. Fourth, horse-racing - gambling on a bigger scale. Fifth, larceny. Sixth, state prison."

Another New York City magistrate says: " Yesterday I had before me thirty-five boy prisoners. Thirty three of them were confirmed cigarette smokers. Today, from a reliable source, I have made the gruesome discovery that two of the largest cigarette manufacturers soak their product in a weak solution of opium. The fact that out of thirty-five prisoners thirty-three smoked cigarettes might seem to indicate some direct connection between cigarettes and crime. And when it is announced on authority that most cigarettes are doped with opium, this connection is not hard to understand. Opium is like whisky,- it creates an increasing appetite that grows with what it feeds upon. A growing boy who lets tobacco and opium get a hold upon his senses is never long in coming under the domination of whisky, too. 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."

I think the above statement regarding the use of opium by manufacturers is exaggerated. Yet we know that young men of great natural ability, everywhere, some of them in high positions, are constantly losing their grip, deteriorating, dropping back, losing their ambition, their push, their stamina, and their energy, because of the cigarette's deadly hold upon them.

Did you ever watch the gradual deterioration of the cigarette smoker, the gradual withdrawal of manliness and character, the fading out of purpose, the decline of ambition; the substitution of the beastly for the manly, the decline of the divine and the ascendency of the, brute ?

A very interesting study this, to watch the gradual withdrawal from the face of all that was manly and clean, and all that makes for success. We can see where purity left him and was gradually replaced by vulgarity, and where he began to be cursed by commonness.

We can see the point at which he could begin to do a bad job or a poor day's work without feeling troubled about it.

We can tell when he began to lose his great pride in his personal appearance, when he began to leave his room in the morning and to go to his work without being perfectly groomed. Only a little while before he would have been greatly mortified to have been seen by his employers and associates with slovenly dress; but now baggy trousers, unblackened shoes, soiled linen, frayed neck-tie do not trouble him.

He is not quite as conscientious about his work as he used to be. He can leave a half finished job, and cut his hours and rob his employer a little here and there without being troubled seriously. He can write a slipshod letter. He isn't particular about his spelling, punctuation, or handwriting, as formerly. He doesn't mind a little deceit.

Vulgarity no longer shocks him. He does not blush at the unclean jest. Womanhood is not as sacred to him as in his innocent days. He does not reverence women as formerly; and he finds himself laughing at the coarse jest and the common remarks about them among his associates, when once he would have resented and turned away in disgust.

Dr. Lewis Bremer, late physician at St. Vincent's Institute for the Insane says, " Basing my opinion upon my experience gained in private sanitariums and hospitals, I will broadly state that the boy who smokes cigarettes at seven will drink whisky at fourteen, take morphine at twenty-five, and wind up at thirty with cocaine and the rest of the narcotics."

The saddest effects of cigarette smoking are mental. The physical signs of deterioration have their mental correspondencies.

Sir William Hamilton said: "There is nothing great in matter but man; there is nothing great in man but mind." The cigarette smoker takes man's distinguishing faculty and uncrowns it. He "puts an enemy in his mouth to steal away his brains."

Anything which impairs one's success capital, which cuts down his achievement and makes him a possible failure when he might have been a grand success, is a crime against him. Anything which benumbs the senses, deadens the sensibilities, dulls the mental faculties, and takes the edge off one's ability, is a deadly enemy, and there is nothing else which effects all this so quickly as the cigarette. It is said that within the past fifty years not a student at Harvard University who used tobacco has been graduated at the head of his class, although, on the average, five out of six use tobacco.

The symptoms of a cigarette victim resembles those of an opium eater. A gradual deadening, benumbing influence creeps all through the mental and moral faculties; the standards all drop to a lower level; the whole average of life is cut down, the victim loses that power of mental grasp, the grip of mind which he once had. In place of his former energy and vim and push, he is more and more inclined to take things easy and to slide along the line of the least resistance. He becomes less and less progressive. He dreams more and acts less. Hard work becomes more and more irksome and repulsive, until work seems drudgery to him. Professor William McKeever, of the Kansas Agricultural College, in the course of his findings after an exhaustive study of " The Cigarette Smoking Boy " presents facts which are as appalling as they are undeniable

" For the past eight years I have been tracing out the cigarette boy's biography and I have found that in practically all cases the lad began his smoking habit clandestinely and with little thought of its seriousness while the fond parents perhaps believed that their boy was too good to engage in such practise.

" I have tabulated reports of the condition of nearly 2,500 cigarette-smoking schoolboys, and in describing them physically my informants have repeatedly resorted to the use of such epithets as ` sallow,' ` soreeyed,' ` puny,' ` squeaky-voiced,' ` sickly,' ` short winded,' and `extremely nervous.' In my tabulated reports it is shown that, out of a group of twenty-five cases of young college students, smokers, whose average age of beginning was, 13, according to their own admissions they had suffered as follows: Sore throat, four; weak eyes, ten; pain in chest, eight; ` short wind,' twenty-one; stomach trouble, ten; pain in heart, nine. Ten of them appeared to be very sickly. The younger the boy, the worse the smoking hurts him in every way, for these lads almost invariably inhale the fumes; and that is the most injurious part of the practise."

Professor McKeever made hundreds of sphygmograph records of boys addicted to the smoking habit. Discussing what the records showed, he says "The injurious effects of smoking upon the boy's mental activities are very marked. Of the many hundreds of tabulated cases in my possession, several of the very youthful ones have been reduced almost to the condition of imbeciles. Out of 2,336 who were attending public school, only six were reported `bright students.' A very few, perhaps ten, were `average,' and all the remainder were `poor ' or `worthless ' as students. The average grades of fifty smokers and fifty non-smokers were computed from the records of one term's work done in the Kansas Agricultural college and the results favored the latter group with a difference of 17.5 per cent. The two groups represented the same class rank; that is, the same number of seniors, juniors, sophomores, and freshmen."

A thorough investigation of the effects of cigarette smoking on boys has been carried on in one of the San Francisco schools for many months. This investigation was ordered because a great many of the boys were inferior to the girls, both mentally and morally.

It was found that nearly three-fourths of the boys who smoked cigarettes had nervous disorders, while only one of those who did not smoke had any nervous symptoms. A great many of the cigarette smokers had defective hearing, while only one of those who did not smoke was so afflicted. A large percentage of the boys who smoked were defective in memory, while only one boy who did not smoke was so affected. A large portion of the boys who smoked were reported as low in deportment and morals, while only a very small percentage of those who did not smoke were similarly affected. It was found that the minds of many of the cigarette smokers could not comprehend or grasp ideas as quickly or firmly as those who did not smoke. Nearly all of the cigarette smokers were found to be untidy and unclean in their personal appearance, and a great many of them were truants; but among those who did not smoke not a single boy had been corrected for truancy. Most of the smokers ranked very low in their studies as compared with those who did not smoke. Seventy-nine per cent. of them failed of promotion, while the percentage of failure among those who did not smoke was exceedingly small.

Of twenty boy smokers who were under careful observation for several months, nineteen stood below the average of the class, while only two of those who did not smoke stood below. Seventeen out of the twenty were very poor workers and seemed absolutely incapable of close or continuous application to any of their studies.

Professor Wilkinson, principal of a leading high school, says, " I will not try to educate a boy with the cigarette habit. It is wasted time. The mental faculies of the boy who smokes cigarettes are blunted." Another high school principal says, " Boys who smoke cigarettes are always backward in their studies; they are filthy in their personal habits, and coarse in their manners, they are hard to manage and dull in appearance."

It is apparent therefore that the cigarette habit disqualifies the student mentally, that it retards him in his studies, dwarfs his intellect, and leaves him far behind those of inferior mental equipment who do not indulge in the injurious use of tobacco in any form.

The mental, moral, and physical deterioration from the use of cigarettes, has been noted by corporations and employers of labor generally, until today the cigarette devotee finds himself barred from many positions that are open to those of inferior capabilities, who are not enslaved by the deadly habit.

Cigarette smoking is no longer simply a moral question. The great business world has taken it up, as a deadly enemy of advancement, of achievement. Leading business firms all over the country have put the cigarette on the prohibited list. In Detroit alone, sixty-nine merchants have agreed not to employ the cigarette user. In Chicago, Montgomery Ward and Company, Hibbard, Spencer and Bartlett, and some of the other large concerns have prohibited cigarette smoking among all employees under eighteen years of age. Marshall Field and Company, and the Morgan and 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 superintendent of the Lindell Street Railway, of St. Louis, says: " Under no circumstances will I hire a man who smokes cigarettes.

He is as dangerous on the front of a motor as a man who drinks. In fact, he is more dangerous; his nerves are apt to give way at any moment. If I find a car running badly, I immediately begin to investigate to find if the man smokes cigarettes. Nine times out of ten he does, and then he goes, for good."

The late E. H. Harriman, head of the Union Pacific Railroad system, used to say that they " might as well go to a lunatic asylum for their employees as to hire cigarette smokers." The Union Pacific Railroad prohibits cigarette smoking among its employees. The New York, New Haven, and Hartford, the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific, the Lehigh Valley, the Burlington, and many others of the leading railroad companies of this country have issued orders positively forbidding the use of cigarettes by employees while on duty.

Some time ago, twenty-five laborers working on a bridge were discharged by the roadmasters of the West Superior, Wisconsin Railroad because of cigarette smoking. The Pittsburg and Western Railroad which is part of the Baltimore and Ohio system, gave orders forbidding the use of cigarettes by its employees on passenger trains and also notified passengers that they must not smoke cigarettes in their coaches.

In the call issued for the competitive examination for messenger service in the Chicago Post-office, sometime since, seven hundred applicants were informed that only the best equipped boys were wanted for this service, and that under no circumstances would boys who smoked cigarettes be employed. Other postoffices have taken a similar stand.

If some one should present you with a most delicately adjusted chronometer,-one which would not vary a second in a year-do you think it would pay you to trifle with it, to open the case in the dust, to leave it out in the rain overnight, or to put in a drop of glue or a chemical which would ruin the delicacy of its adjustment so that it would no longer keep good time? Would you think it wise to take such chances?

But the Creator has given you a matchless machine, so delicately and wondrously made that it takes a quarter of a century to bring it to perfection, to complete growth, and yet you presume to trifle with it, to do all sorts of things which are infinitely worse than leaving your watch open out of doors overnight, or even in water. The great object of the watch is to keep time. The supreme purpose of this marvelous piece of human machinery is power. The watch means nothing except time. If the human machinery does not produce power, it is of no use.

The merest trifle will prevent the watch from keeping time; but you think that you can put anything into your human machinery, that you can do all sorts of irrational things with it, and yet you expect it to produce power - to keep perfect time. It is important that the human machine shall be kept as responsive to the slightest impression or influence as possible, and the brain should be kept clear so that the thought may be sharp, biting, gripping, so that the whole mentality will act with efficiency. And yet you do not hesitate to saturate the delicate brain-cells with vile drinks, to poison them with nicotine, to harden them with smoke from the vilest of weeds. You expect the man to turn out as exquisite work, to do the most delicate things to retain his exquisite sense of ability notwithstanding the hardening, the benumbing influence of cigarette poisoning.

Let the boy or youth who is tempted to indulge in the first cigarette ask himself-Can I afford to take this enormous risk? Can I jeopardize my health, my strength, my future, my all, by indulging in a practise which has ruined tens of thousands of promising lives ?

Let the youth who is tempted say, " No!. I will wait until mind and body are developed, until I have reached man's estate before I will begin to use tobacco." Experience proves that those who reach a robust manhood are rarely willing to sacrifice health and happiness to the cigarette habit.

Many years ago an eminent physician and specialist in nervous diseases put himself on record as holding the firm belief that the evil effects of the use of tobacco were more lasting and far reaching than the injurious consequences that follow the excessive use of alcohol. Apart from affections of the throat and cancerous diseases of lips and tongue which frequently affect smokers there is a physical taint which is transmitted to offspring which handicaps the unfortunate infant " from its earliest breath."

The only salvation of the race, said this physician, lay in the fact that women did not smoke. If they too acquired the tobacco habit future generations would be stamped by the degeneracy and depravity which follow the use of tobacco as surely as they follow the use of alcohol.

In view of these facts the increase of cigarette smoking among women may well alarm those who have at heart the well being of the rising generation. So rapidly has this habit spread that fashionable hotels and cafes are providing rooms for the especial use of those women who like to indulge in an after-dinner cigarette. A noted restaurant in New York recently added an annex to which ladies with their escorts might retire and smoke. We often see women smoking in New York hotels and restaurants.

Not long ago the writer was a guest at a dinner and to his surprise several ladies at the table lighted their cigarettes with as much composure as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

At a reception recently, I saw the granddaughter of one of America's greatest authors smoking cigarettes. What a spectacle, to see a descendant so nearly removed from one of Nature's grandest noblemen, a princely gentleman, smoking! And I said to myself, " What would her grandfather think if he could see this ? "

On a train running between London and Liverpool, a compartment especially reserved for women smokers has been provided. It is said that three American women were the cause of this innovation. The superintendent of one of our largest American railways says that he would not be surprised if the American roads were compelled to follow the lead of their English brethren.

It is not unreasonable to suppose that this addiction to the use of tobacco is in many cases inherited. A friend told me of a very charming young woman who was passionately devoted to tobacco. At a time when it was not usual for women to smoke in public her craving for a cigarette was so strong that she could not deny herself the indulgence. She said her father, a deacon in the church, had been an inveterate smoker, and her love of tobacco dated back to her earliest remembrance. Every woman should use the uttermost of her influence to discourage the use of the cigarette and enlist the girls as well as boys in her fight against the evil and injurious practise of cigarette smoking.

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. - SERMON ON THE MOUNT.

My strength is as the strength of ten Because my heart is pure. - TENNYSON.

Virtue alone raises us above hopes, fears, and chances. SENECA.

Even from the body's purity the mind Receives a secret sympathetic aid. -THOMSON.

PURITY is a broad word with a deep meaning. It denotes far more than superficial cleanness. It goes below the surface of guarded speech and polite manners to the very heart of being." Out of the heart are the issues of life." Make the fountain clean and the waters that flow from it will be pure and limpid. Make the heart clean and the life will be clean.

Purity is defined as " free from contact with that which weakens, impairs or pollutes." How forceful then is the converse of the definition: Impurity weakens, impairs, and pollutes. It weakens both mind and body. It impairs the health. It pollutes not only the thoughts but the conduct which inevitably has its beginning and its end in thought.

Innocence is the state of natural purity. It was the state of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. When they sinned "they knew that they were naked." They lost innocence never to regain it. But purity may be attained.