--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Frederick J. Pack collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 24 number: 3 published: 1921-01 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Frederick J. Pack, "How the Impending Tobacco Crusade Can be Avoided," *Improvement Era* 24, no. 3 (January 1921): 218–228.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2403unse 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: improvementera2403unse start_page: 218 end_page: 228 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1921-01) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2403unse publication_year: 1921 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 1921, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # How the Impending Tobacco Crusade Can be Avoided How the Impending Tobacco Crusade Can be Avoided By Dr. Frederick ]. Pack T'HE crusade against the tobacco evil is gradually gaining mo- mentum, and more particularly since the national prohibition of alcohol. A great many of the splendid men and women who formerly devoted their efforts to the liquor question, are now turning with the same zeal to the solution of the tobacco problem. Already the matter of tobacco prohibition is being widely discussed. Magazine articles captioned, "Is a Tobacco Crusade Coming?" "Legislation Against Tobacco," "Tobacco Next," etc., are only indicative of the general line of thought. The present article has been written chiefly for the purpose of making the fact clear that a tobacco crusade is inevitable, unless it is avoided by the tobacco interests themselves. HPHE term efficiency has probably been used more extensively during the past ten years than throughout all preceding time, and particularly as applied to industry. Up to about half a decade ago only a comparatively few commercial organizations appear to have grasped the necessity for the elimination of nonessentials, especially in matters of seemingly insignificant details. This attitude of extravagance was nothing more than the natural outgrowth of subduing and populating a new country in which opportunities and resources were so abundant that successes were easily made. The wastefulness of American methods is known the world over. But when the importance of more efficient methods became widely apparent, the movement spread over the industrial world with quite the suddenness of a prairie fire. Immediately almost every progressive organization began to examine its own operations with a view to eliminating factors of unnecessary waste and substituting therefor conservation and dispatch. Many of the larger institutions employed efficiency engineers; whose sole duty was to familiarize themselves with every detail of the business, and to point out places in which money and effort could be saved. As an outgrowth of this new conception of things, virtually every industry in the country is now systematically searching for THE TOBACCO CRUSADE 219 methods that will eliminate waste and otherwise expedite business. No task is considered too large and no detail too small. The proposed improvement may call for the reconstruction of the entire business, or it may concern itself with the simplest detail; it may involve the purchasing department, or it may relate to the salesroom; it may question the kind of tires used on the delivery machine, or it may pertain to the tariff on a train-load of merchandise; it may entail the building of a new factory, or it may correct the language used by a salesman in approaching a prospective customer. In the well-regulated industry nothing escapes the vigilant attention of the efficiency officer. The past few years have witnessed an almost unbelievable change in the management and success of our industries. Concerns that were not willing to give attention to improved methods have largely gone out of existence, while others, perhaps originally less successful, ha\e sprung quickly into prominence. The reform has reached into almost every type of commercial activity. The farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the miner, have all greatly profited by the change. Even the supposedly perfect methods of banking have undergone almost revolutionary modifications. The fact is now very clearly apparent that the margin between success and failure is an exceedingly narrow one. The loss or gain of a seemingly insignificant item not infrequently determines the success or failure of the entire enterprise. Fortunes are no longer made as the result of slip-shod chance methods, but rather as the outcome of carefully laid plans, in which all deterring factors, both large and small, are either eliminated or otherwise accounted for. The writer knows of one manufacturing institution that changed its balance, from the debit column to well within the credit column, simply as a result of having the workmen properly rearrange their materials on the bench before them. The manner in which this narrow margin can be manipulated is well illustrated in the case of a great copper deposit in one of the western states. The existence of enormous quanti ties of low grade ore had been known for many years, but r one had regarded them as sufficiently rich for commercial purposes, until one day an engineer of long vision decided that by employing methods of high efficiency the depoits could be made to pay. At the present time this property is one of the most valuable of its kind in the world, and yet the writer is informed that if the processes now used could be improved by as little as one-half of one per cent it would save to the coinp ny more than a thousand dollars every twenty-four hours. 220 IMPROVEMENT ERA It is w«'ll known that our entire industrial system is erected around a profit of something like ten per cent. An investment which will yield that amount is almost everywhere regarded as highly satisfactory, while on the other hand, one which yields say two or three, or even five per cent, is nowhere thought of as being in the same class. Most any legitimate institution can conduct its business so that there is no actual loss to its owners, but comparatively few of them can save an additional ten or fifteen per cent and distribute it as dividends. The industry that is ordinarily regarded as a failure is therefore seen to be removed from the highly successful one by a margin of only a few per cent. The fact is self-evident that no business can be more efficient than the men who run it, yet strange as it may appear, practically all of the improvements thus far made have had to do with machines, devices and methods, and very few of them with human beings, who, after all, are fundamentally responsible for the success or failure of the enterprise. The fact goes without argument that if the manager of an industry should improve himself by a given percentage, a corresponding improvement would be felt in almost every part of the industry. Yet, on the other hand, cases are altogether too numerous in which officials have put forth great effort to eliminate comparatively unimportant defects, say in factory methods, but at the same time have permitted themselves to indulge in habits that very greatly reduce their own efficiency. There can be no question that so long as human beings remain inefficient, business and all other activities will be proportionately limited. The reason for this discrimination between the human being, on the one hand, and devices and methods on the other, is in part due to the sacredness in which we hold "human rights," but more largely to the unwillingness on the part of the individual to liberate himself from the fascination of certain alluring habits and practices. The ever-increasing demand for greater and greater efficiency cannot stop, however, until every deterring factor, whether human or mechanical, has been properly adjusted. Individuals of the future who are not willing to sacrifice detrimental practices for the sake of greater efficiency, will suffer the same experience of similar individuals in the past —they will gradually fall behind and become lost in the wreckage of failures. As a matter of fact, the campaign for more and more efficient human beings is already well under way. It is by no means limited to industrial activity, but reaches out into every phase of life. The general trend of civilization is insisting that we improve ourselves in a wide variety of ways. Laws relating to health are being enacted, and much more vigorously enforced THE TOBACCO CRUSADE 221 than formerly; educational methods are being overhauled; moral conditions are being improved; and, unless all signs fail, it will not be long until the reform reaches even into our progeny and birth. Industrial institutions are also beginning to give attention to the habits of the individual. For a good many years certain types of employment have been forbidden to those who indulged in the use of alcoholic beverages, and at present a great many institutions take the stand that the use of tobacco is not compatible with good business methods, and, in consequence, discriminate against the employment of the tobacco addict. The Cadillac Motor Car Company has ceased to hire such individuals on the ground that, "Men who do not smoke cigarettes or frequent the saloon can make better automobiles than those who do." The present writer has letters on file in his office from nearly a hundred American business organizations, representing almost every section of the country and every branch of industry, nearly all of which either oppose the use of tobacco or prohibit it entirely. So that, at present there is already established a considerable opposition to the use of tobacco, and, what is more, this opposition is commonly the result either of business observation or of scientific experimentation. In the judgment of those who have given the matter careful thought, there can be no doubt that if the use of tobacco constitutes a menace to the highest degree of human efficiency, then, if for no other reason than for purely business ones, it must be abandoned. Opponents of the use of tobacco have gathered together great masses of evidence that seem to brand the habit as a very harmful one, in fact, much more deterring than could possibly be permitted in the management of an industrial enterprise. Tobacco interests, on the other hand, have contributed practically nothing of a scientific nature in support of their product. From the standpoint of both parties concerned, nothing could be more desirable, therefore, than to have the tobacco interests proceed with a long line of carefully conducted investigations, looking toward the demonstration of further truth in the matter. Such investigations, however, should keep carefully in mind the nature of the work already done, otherwise the ground will not be properly covered. The only possible way in which the impending tobacco crusade can be avoided is to prove that the habit is not harmful, or in some manner to correct the direful results that now exist. No one, of course, can undertake this task to better advantage than the tobacco interests themselves. 222 IMPROVEMENT ERA A MONG the points that will have to be proved by the tobacco people is that the use of this material is not harmful, either physically or mentally. Seemingly, this will not be an easy task, for already a great mass of evidence has been gathered pointing in the opposite direction. For a long time it has been rather generally admitted that in the case of certain people of low vitality and others possessing an idiosyncrasy against it, the use of tobacco is almost invariably followed by undesirable results, but it has been very stoutly maintained by defenders of the habit that the use of tobacco is not injurious to the vigorous men of the country. With a view to ascertaining the truth in this matter, the writer recently gathered data from a large number of American university football squads. This group of men was selected because they represented the very highest type of physical manhood. Furthermore, they are young men, and at the same time are physically mature. Data relating to a large number of individuals were obtained, so that reliable averages might be secured. Information received from the various coaches included: whether smoker or non-smoker, age, weight, height, position on team, lung capacity, estimate of ability on team, average scholarship mark, number of failures and conditions, etc. K Among the suggestive, but not necessarily conclusive, findings, it was shown that only one-half as many smokers as nonsmokers were successful in the "try outs." This seems to mean that the use of tobacco reduces a man's chances of securing appointment to the college football squad by an even fifty per cent. But by far the most interesting and conclusive information was obtained in connection with the lung-capacity data. The fact was herewith revealed that the average lung capacity of the smoking football men was 7.3 per cent below that of the nonsmoking football men; this was true in spite of the fact that the smokers were 3.3 pounds the heavier. The squads represented Amherst College, Haverford College, U. S. Naval Academy, University of Montana, University of Pennsylvania and Western Maryland College, and included 108 men, 47 smokers and 61 non-smokers. The inferiority of the smokers becomes even more impressive when it is observed that this condition is not only true as an average of all of the men, but is similarly true in each of the squads. In the same investigation, it was revealed that smokers uniformly fall down in the matter of scholarship. As an average of 181 men, coming from twelve institutions, the smokers dropped below the non-smokers in scholastic standing to the THE TOBACCO CRUSADE 223 extent of 4.9 per cent. Moreover, this condition was true not only as an average of the whole, but also of each school. Then again, the smokers obtained 71 per cent of the lowest grades, and the non-smokers only 29 per cent. The smokers also furnished twice as many conditions and failures as did the nonsmokers. The following points were brought out in the investigation: 1 —Only half as many smokers as non-smokers were successful in the "try outs." 2 — Smoking associated with a reduction in lung capacity is of nearly ten per cent (9.2%), when men of equal weight are involved. 3 —Smoking is invariably associated with low scholarship. When it is kept in mind that this investigation had to do only with physically perfect men, the indictment is seen to be an unusually strong and sweeping one, for certainly no one will disagree with the conclusion that if tobacco is bad for this type of men then it must be even worse for all others. It is interesting to note that from a quantitative point of view, none of these deficiences could be tolerated in an industrial organization. Any employee, who, through mismanagement, should lose five or ten per cent of his normal business, would be dismissed immediately. The investigation just cited is by no means the only one of its kind on record. Scores of others directed along somewhat similar lines have uniformly brought to light the same results. The writer knows of no study thus far made in which smoking has not been shown to be intimately associated with reduced efficiency, both mental and physical. Insofar as available evidence goes, it does not appear that there is a single type of people which is immune to the attacks of nicotine. ^PHE second condition to be remedied by the tobacco interests, is the offensiveness of the habit. The odors and filth arising from the habit are extremely obnoxious to most non-users. This factor must be carefully reckoned with in any scheme designed to make the use of tobacco permanently acceptable to the American people. It is very doubtful that the average smoker, or even the above-average smoker, comprehends anything like the extent of the discomfort that his habit brings to others. If he properly understood the matter, it is hardly possible that he would continue to impose on people as he does at the present time. The popular manner of explaining his attitude is that the use of tobacco blunts his moral sense of right and wrong, particularly his obligations to those about him. The writer prefers to feel, however, that his widespread indifference to the rights of others 224 IMPROVEMENT ERA is due to his lack of understanding of the offensiveness of his habit, rather than to any reduction in American manhood. And still it seems strange that to the average tobacco user, no place is too clean or even too sacred for his indulgence, and that about the only effective way of keeping him from where he is not wanted, is to prohibit his presence. The truth probably is that his conduct is largely traceable to physiological changes induced by participation. Upon comparing the social attitude of a man before and after he acquires the habit, no one can doubt that something radical has taken place. Men who, before learning to smoke, are highly considerate of the comforts of others, not infrequently take on an entirely different attitude after the habit is acquired. The solution of this problem offers a very interesting field of research for those who propose to defend the use of tobacco. • The present widespread use of tobacco makes it practically impossible for the non-user to go anywhere without coming into immediate contact with it. On almost every railroad train in America, women and others to whom the habit is offensive, are forced to remain in their seats, while the smokers occupy more comfortable quarters in observation cars provided, of course, for everyone and paid for by all alike. When one goes into a hotel lobby, dining room, club house, or banquet hall, he is confronted with the same thing. On every hand the smoker seems to think that he not only has a right to do as he may choose, but he plainly feels that his rights are being abridged if it is even suggested that his indulgence is out of place. In reply to this criticism it may be argued that it is the practice among the better class of smokers to enquire whether the habit is offensive to others present. But during an experience of many years, the writer has never, except in one case, replied that smoking is offensive to him without plainly disappointing or even offending the one who had asked. The exception was the case of a college graduate who had formerly done work under the writer's direction. Then, from still another angle, the use of tobacco presents an offensive aspect. The writer has in mind the filth arising from the indiscriminate disposal of tobacco refuse. The streets, public buildings, and even the home, are constantly strewn with fragments of partially used cigars and cigarettes. The practice of spitting, as commonly indulged in by tobacco chewers, is absolutely repugnant to everyone, except probably to the ones indulging. Then, furthermore, in any estimate of the offensiveness of the tobacco habit, the matter of its effect upon personal sweetness must be given due attention. THE TOBACCO CRUSADE 225 Defenders of the use of tobacco cannot side-step the seriousness of this whole offense, simply by calling the objector a "sissy" or one who "needs his teeth cut." The problem is a very serious one, and will have its due weight in the general matter of determining whether the habit shall be continued by the American people. The business world has already given the problem practical attention. None of the more progressive merchants would think of permitting his employees to smoke during working hours or in the presence of a prospective customer. It would be interesting to have the matter explained as to why abstinence is rigidly adhered to when dollars are involved but under other conditions wholly neglected. Just how the offensiveness of tobacco usage can be overcome without eliminating the entire habit the writer does not know. Its solution must be forthcoming from those who champion its cause and who profit by its existence. A NOTHER major problem to which the tobacco people must turn their attention is that of smoking by boys and young men. The question is not debatable as to whether this condition must be remedied. The gravity of the thing is such that if the tobacco problem presented no other objectionable feature, this one alone is sufficient to incite a crusade that will result in the prohibition of tobacco in all its aspects. The unanimity of opinion against the use of tobacco by minors, is alone of such a nature as to leave no question of the seriousness of the matter. Even the most devout supporters of tobacco have never yet made claim that it is not injurious to young people. Only recently the writer sent out several hundred letters to schools, detention homes, banks, and business concerns, asking for opinions as to the effect of tobacco on boys and young men, and of the great mass of replies that came back, not one contained the faintest approval of its use by such people, but, on the other hand, condemnation in every one of them. Unscrupulous tobacco venders may be willing to sell the article to the boys of other men, but not to their own. From one end of our country to the other, an unceasing cry is coming up from our schools and juvenile courts. If there were space in this article the writer could furnish denunciatorv statements received from such institutions in almost every important city in the United States. The all but universal complaint is that the use of tobacco by boys and young men is everywhere associated with low scholarship and low morals. By far the greater part of the boys who fail in the grades and early high school are tobacco addicts, a condition which is similarlv true of those who daily file before the judges of our juvenile courts. 226 IMPROVEMENT ERA The bankers and business men express much the same opinion. No one seems to want the tobacco smoking boy around. Almost as if written in one letter, these men of finance declare that he is not only inefficient and offensive but also unreliable and not infrequently untruthful. While it is true that widespread movements are being made to prevent the use of tobacco by minors, and it is further true that even a great many men who use tobacco themselves are taking part in the campaign, yet it must be admitted that to date the success has not been very encouraging. In spite of these efforts and also of the universal disapproval, it is probably true that more boys and young men are now using tobacco than at any other time. In the judgment of the writer the causes of the failure are not difficult to understand. Laws forbidding the use of tobacco to minors have been rather generally enacted and almost as generally have failed of enforcement. Administrators of the law have not been able to see the justice in punishing a boy for an offense when his father or some other adult, guilty of the same thing, is permitted to go uncensured and even unnoticed. The average judge, or other citizen, has great difficulty in understanding how a habit can be criminal in a youth of twenty and almost saintly in a man of twenty-one. While it has been very generally admitted by proponents of tobacco that its use is harmful to minors, yet it has been stoutly maintained by these same people that for grownups the habit has no injury. In this matter, the public, however, whether admitting it or not, have very generally felt that there is a considerable element of personal indulgence on the part of the smoking adult. But suppose, for the sake of argument, it were admitted that tobacco is more harmful to boys than to their fathers, what then? Will the boy believe it? It is a well-known fact that to the average American boy his father is his ideal, and that he is constantly striving to be like him. His one ambition is to become manly and he is anxious to do anything and everything that will hasten the time of its arrival. He sees adults smoke, and, therefore, very naturally turns to the habit himself. The one fact that the use of tobacco is always acquired clandestinely is of itself sufficient to prove that boys do not believe what their elders tell them about it. No intelligent smoking boy can be made to believe that he is doing wrong but that as soon as he reaches the age of twenty-one his sin will become a virtue. The uncontroverted facts in this particular phase of the tobacco problem are: To boys and immature young men the use of tobacco is universally harmful and never beneficial. Most industrial institutions are discriminating against their employ- THE TOBACCO CRUSADE 227 ment. The widespread efforts put forth to correct the matter do not appear to have met with great success. The use of tobacco by these young people is still on the increase. The entire problem must be met and solved by the industrial interests furnishing the tobacco. If they do not do so, the failure must sooner or later result in their going out of business. The American people think too much of the youth of the land to permit the evil to go on uncorrected. l^INALLY we call attention to the stupendous waste in money and effort occasioned by the habit. And in this immediate connection it should be kept in mind that these expenditures constitute a dead loss. The very best that has been claimed for the use of tobacco is that it soothes and quiets the nervous system. No one has seriously maintained that it increases normal efficiency. It is probably true that in case of inveterate smokers, whose nerves have been upset through continued contact with the poison, the use of tobacco depresses the nervous system and temporarily brings it back to near normal, but there is absolutely no reason in theory or in practice to justify the statement that the use of tobacco adds to the world's output. It is a dead loss. With this fact before us, it will be advisable to refresh our minds as to what the tobacco habit is costing. In the first place, its culture is utilizing more than one and one-half million acres of our choicest land. This item of itself is by no means an unimportant one. It is very doubtful that the American people can afford to permit so large an area to be set apart for the production of an article that gives nothing in return. If thi9 resource, and the hundreds of thousands of men and women now connected with the tobacco industry, were to be devoted to beneficial purposes, our national prosperity would be greatly enhanced. While it is true that the prohibition of tobacco would necessarily result in the loss of vast sums of money now represented by equipment, yet the gains would far more than compensate. The immediate cost of tobacco to the American people, has variously been placed between $1,200,000,000 and $2,000,000,- 000 annually. This tremendous sum will mean more by comparison. It is sufficient to construct each year four to five Panama canals. Ten to fifteen times as many universities as now exist in the United States could be maintained by this vast tax. It would annually construct 1,000 substantial church buildings in every state in the Union. Two hundred thousand homes could be built annually, with enough left over to provide for their perpetual upkeep. * But in arriving at the cash outlay occasioned by the tobacco 228 IMPROVEMENT ERA habit, one must take into account other items than the actual money paid in exchange for it. Among such matters the fol lowing are suggestive: cost of pipes and other accessories; cost of cleaning up after the tobacco user; cost of smoking accom modations and other extra equipment, on trains, in hotels and elsewhere; cost of forest and other fires caused by the smoker's carelessness. These items alone will aggregate many millions of dollars each year. It will thus be seen that from at least four points of view the tobacco problem is greatly reducing the efficiency of American civilization. These objectionable features must be remedied, otherwise, in the economy of progress, a demand cannot but go forth insisting upon the removal of the cause that produced them. The nation is not yet ready to demand the complete prohibition of tobacco, but the handwriting is even now being placed on the wall. Nothing could be more desirable than to have the tobacco interests conduct extensive investigations looking toward the correction of existing evils. The elimination of these deterring factors is the only possible way in which the impending tobacco crusade can be avoided. Civilization is in too serious a mood to have its progress permanently impaired by any industry, large or small. University of Utah Song of Work, Health and Play If there's anything that's lofty in this lovely life to share, We're right there — We're right there We're right there! — zealous work and zestful play a-plenty and to spare, If there's — We're right there We're right there We're right there! — Where purity is paramount, and every virtue rare; Where the lure of learning leads us to be joyful, strong and square; Where daily problems summon temp'rance, courage, faith and prayer; — We're right there We're right there We're right there! — Chorus. Then we'll work, work, work away; We'll dance and sing and play; We'll herald health alway By "Non-use of Tobacco" today. If a slogan is for signal social betterment assigned, It's our kind — It's our kind — It's our kind! If it furthers vim and vigor that is wholesome and refined, It's our kind — It's our kind — It's our kind! When it savors of sound health scientifie'ly defined, And sustains "The Word of Wisdom," that our Maker has designed For the welfare of the body, of the spirit and the mind, It's our kind — It's our kind — It's our kind! Minerva C. Petersen