---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - A. Ray Olpin
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 24
number: 8
published: 1921-06
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'A. Ray Olpin, "Blessed Are They Which Are Persecuted for Righteousness’ Sake," *Improvement Era* 24, no. 8 (June 1921): 741–741.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2408unse
  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: improvementera2408unse
start_page: 741
end_page: 741
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1921-06)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2408unse
  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.
---

# Blessed Are They Which Are Persecuted for Righteousness’ Sake

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"On the Run"
     The Tobacco Record, one of the leading tobacco papers in
the United States, published in Brooklyn, New York, has the
following editorial under date of May 11, 1921, which shows
the attitude of the Tobacco People on the nation-wide fight
that is being made against the use of tobacco. The Era quotes
it in full. Notice how they worry over the "solace of tobacco:"

   "Don't Laugh When They Tell us They are Going to Make
        Everybody Stop Smoking!" Think of What the
                            Prohibitionists Did

     Several hundred earnest men and women assembled in New York
recently to voice their protest against the enactment of blue laws. Governor Edward I. Edwards of New Jersey was one of the principal speakers,   and he sounded a key note when he said:
    "Don't laugh when they tell us they are going to make everybody stop
smoking. That's just what we did when they talked about prohibition."
    It would be well if these words of Governor Edwards could be forcibly
impressed upon the mind of every friend of tobacco, for while there can
be no question but that the friends of tobacco in the United States vastly
outnumber its enemies, it is a fact that too many of these friends have
been inclined to treat the efforts of the anti-tobacconists as a joke.
    To the great majority of the friends of the weed it has seemed inconceivable that a relatively small minority could ever bring about the enactment of laws that would deprive the majority of the solace of tobacco,
and therefore they have been inclined to regard the anti-tobacconists as
objects of mirth rather than as a menace to the personal liberty of the
American people.
     Yet, the Tobacco Record submits that it is no more inconceivable today that the United States may come to be dominated by the anti-tobacconists within the next ten years, than it was ten years ago that the idea
of nation-wide, bone-dry Prohibition would have become a part of the
fundamental law of the land by 1920.
     Comparatively few of the friends of the weed seem to have the slightest conception of the fact that the anti-tobacconists are working more zealously and more assiduously at the present time than the Prohibitionists
worked any time in the past.
    The recent announcement in the daily newspapers that four express
car loads of anti-tobacco literature attached to a fast mail train has passed
through Omaha on a given date on its way from New York to California,
and that this shipment was part of a 50 carload lot of anti-tobacco literature
that had been prepared and printed in New York for distribution in all
parts of the country, demonstrated that the anti-tobacconists were not lacking in powerful financial resources.
    But the preparation, printing and distribution of hundreds of tons of
anti-tobacco literature, is only an incident in the nationwide campaign for