---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Smith, Bernard Herman
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 15
number: 6
published: 1912-04
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Smith, Bernard Herman, "The Passing of the Home," *Improvement Era* 15, no. 6 (April 1912): 547.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1506unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera1506unse
start_page: 547
end_page: 547
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1912-04)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1506unse
  publication_year: 1912
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1912, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# The Passing of the Home

<!-- page:547 -->

:

 The Tobacco Curse From many towns and cities the Era has received letters commending the effort in our last issue to warn the young men of the evils of cigarette smoking.

 Many teachers strongly declare against the evil habit. More and more it is becoming the fashion in large mercantile houses,
railroad offices, and other business establishments to discard the cigarette smoker. The yellow forefinger and thumb which he carries about with him are insignia for dismissal, or for refusal wherever he presents himself for work. Not only is the habit death- dealing to the boy physically, but it destroys his ambition for work, and his moral stamina.

 Dr. George H. Brimhall, who has charge of from seven hundred to one thousand boys in the Brigham Young University,
speaking upon the subject, said :

 "I don't know of anything else, unless it is unchastity, that seems to so wither and shrink up the manhood of a boy as the smoking of cigarettes. Long experience has shown that the word of honor of a cigarette smoker is never at par."

 Here, then, we have the strong word of a leading educator I in our own state for the truth of the statement that physical dej terioration and moral degeneracy follow the dirty habit. Dr. L.
 J Bremer, of St. Vincent's Institution for the Insane at St. Louis, !

Mo., wrote, a few years ago i

 "There is an alarming increase of juvenile smokers, and, basing my assertion on the experience gained in private practice and at St.
Vincent's Institution, I will state that he boy who smokes at seven will drink whiskey at fourteen, take morphine at twenty five, and wind up with cocaine and the rest of the narcotics at thirty and later on."
 •'I might as well go to a lunatic asylum for employees, as to hire cigarette smokers," said E. H. Harriman, once the great head of the Union Pacific railway system.
 "I am not much of a mathematician," said the cigarette, "but I can add to man's nervous troubles, I can subtract from his physical energy, I can multiply his aches and pains, I can divide his mental powers, I take interest from his work, and discount his chances of
 —
success." David Starr Jordan.