The Great American Handicap

530 IMPROVEMENT ERA

"I sold tobacco because folks here wanted it, just as I did soda, soap or salt. Otherwise they would have had to go or send three hundred miles for it in the early days of the settlement. They would have considered me as infringing on their personal liberty if I had put them to that inconvenience. I considered their habits none of my business. Johnny Otter used to come here when he was in town and buy corned beef and lunch tongues and feed them to that worthless hound of his, with money that his old widowed mother needed badly. "I wouldn't have dreamed of wasting canned meat in such a way, but I sold him what he wanted. He bought cigarettes and smoked them, too, a thing I would not have thought of doing. But I sold him the tobacco just as readily as I did the meat." "Ever sell 'em any liquor?" I questioned with malice aforethought. "Not one drop!" "Didn't they ask for it?" "Every day. There was always someone coaxing for booze. I had seen too much of the liquor curse. I didn't want any such dirty money. I see what you are getting at, too; and you are right. There was no more excuse for selling tobacco than for selling liquor. I want to say to you right here, and I'm not forgetting my own case when I say it, the man whose reason tells him not to use tobacco is doing wrong when he sells it. He is poisoning his fellow men for hire, and the fact that he avoids taking the poison shows that he knows that it is a poison. There's no question possible on that point. He convicts himself." "Have you labored with Art to show him the effects of cigarettes?" I asked, feeling rather uncomfortable under the almost fanatical glare of friend neighbor's accusing eye. He acted as if I were the guilty party rather than himself. "He's been taught all that I ever knew and all that I have been able to find out of its evils. He knows that science, medicine, hygiene, and business are all dead against it. He knows that a man full of poison is a sick man, whether that poison is nicotine or another. He knows that the tobacco-poisoned man cannot eat until he has had his cigarette, that he cannot start work until he has had another, that before he has worked long he must have still more, that not even natural, normal sleep can come to the tobacco user until he has had his "shot" of poison in some form of tobacco. He knows the tobacco user cannot compete with the non-user in the hills, in the hayfield, in the gymnasium, nor in the classroom. In times of reasonable thought he admits this. He even tries at times to quit. But there are his 'gang' with influence against quitting. There

THE GREAT AMERICAN HANDICAP 531

are all the novels and the movies to convince him that only with a pipe or a cigar or a cigarette may he face the world unashamed, fully clothed in the dress of the modern male. There are tobacco advertisements facing him everywhere with their lying half-truths and quarter-truths and their plain or rhymed prevarications that have not the shadow of truth. The tobacco trust with its millions has at its call the ablest writers, poets, painters and sculptors the land affords. It can at times command the help of doctors and so-called men of science. What chance has my boy's common sense and my commonplace ability against this vast organized, all-embracing determination to corrupt him? "What do you think he sprung on me this morning? A lot of rot from anarmy doctor. That is what started me going today. A pamphlet it is, put out by the tobacco trust. Some army doctor writes them a nice little testimonial for maybe a few thousand dollars, maybe for the advertising to be had, saying when he heard the cries of pain stilled and saw peace and rest brought to racked bodies in the war zone hospitals, he felt to say in his heart, 'thank God for tobacco.' Some such words as those. And now, Art, knowing tobacco and all its evil ways as well as I do, is carrying that sob stuff around to justify himself for using it." "It ought to be easy to answer," I ventured. — answers "It is it itself, for people who want it answered," was his rejoinder. "The answer is to insert the word 'cocaine' instead of 'tobacco.' Or the name of any other like dope will do. I myself have said in my heart, 'thank God for morphine,' but I hope none of my kin ever become slaves to it. A man whose brain was not clouded with tobacco smoke would see that the doctor's outburst merely classed tobacco with the other 'painkillers' that must be used only on a doctor's prescription. I tried to explain that to Art, but he says there is no comparison. And yet, I have known men to lie, steal, even to murder, to get more tobacco, just as they will to get 'coke' or any other habit-forming drug. Some day Art will see all that, but just now the tobacco trust is able to keep his mind off it. They are spending their millions to weaken young muscles, undermine youthful willpower and befog immature brains. They have proclaimed throughout the land that tobacco won the war. If it did, the Germans smoked it. That brazen boast is an insult to the hosts of strong, clean young men who did thei work without the aid of nicotine. There were likely a few 'coke' fiends in the trenches and no doubt they could not do their work without their dope. Just that much, 'coke' helped win the war. But the unthinking take the tobacco boast to mean that

532 IMPROVEMENT ERA

the laws of nature that make a tobacco user a weakling here were reversed in the war zone, and tobacco became an all-powerful food of the gods. The absolute fact is that but for this evil habit there would have been thousands of tons of food and munitions shipped in time of need that had to wait while tobacco went. Millions of dollars would have been available to buy liberty bonds that were burnt up in tobacco. Why, do you remember that in all the meatless, eatless, wheatless days when man, woman and child were called on to sacrifice every comfort and many a necessity for victory, not one word ever got into the big publications urging men to give up their tobacco. Everything yielded to the war but that. It seems to me that tobacco did all it could to lose the war. "But, thank God, the tobacco trust is digging its own grave. It is forcing us to use tobacco or fight. And let me assure you we are going to fight. Weare going to organize for the defense of our boys. Weare going to match the millions of the tobacco campaign fund dollar for dollar. While they let us alone we let them alone. But they have invaded even our homes now, and the war is already on. Another year will see America awake to the issue, and when it is, good-night and good-bye to tobacco." And with this off his mind, my usually quiet and goodnatured neighbor turned to his hoeing and let me go to my office.

Cedar City, Utah

"Children trained to extend justice, kindness and mercy to animals become more just, kind and considerate toward each other. Character training along these lines when the children are young, will result in their being better men and women, with broader sympathies, more humane, law-abiding, and, in every respect more valuable citizens."