A MILLION DOLLAR CIGARET
OBJECTS: A Black Muslin Flag on Which Is Written
Some of the Woes of the Cigaret Habit
Some months ago in Jersey City, N. J., a large warehouse and its contents were destroyed by fire. This was the dreadful blaze known as the Great Triangle Fire which finally destroyed a million dollars worth of property. The deadly cigaret was believed to have been the cause of this disaster. An employee walking about the place tossed or allowed to drop from his hand a lighted cigaret.
A cigar thus dropped goes out at once; a cigaret continues to burn until it burns itself out, and so this cigaret continued to burn and ignited other material, and thus the great fire had its start, and one million dollars worth of property was thus destroyed. That was a Million Dollar Cigaret.
All cigarets are costly. They destroy things much more valuable than personal property or real estate. They destroy health, character, and the chances of good success in life. These things are more valuable than hills of gold. The cigaret is more deadly than natural death, for it produces a living death and at last flings the ruined soul on the bank of the Lost River in the Kingdom of Eternal Darkness.
Sir Christopher Furness has found that cigaret smoking among boys not only causes deterioration of physique, but "tends to develop lounging habits, with the result that the juvenile smoker's work is less conscientiously done, and he is lacking in sprightliness and alertness. Where, as is often the case," Sir Christopher adds, "the boy smokes clandestinely, habits of deceitfulness will probably be formed." Sir George William's experience as an employer has conclusively proved to him that a boy is a far from satisfactory worker if he smokes, and he says:
The effects of smoking, with its tendency to encourage drinking, are to reduce a lad's energy, to lessen his intellectual capacity, and to weaken his moral character.
The fact that every great public school prohibits smoking among its boys, and punishes offenders with a strong hand, is eloquent of the evil effect tobacco has on the young mind. The Leeds School Board some time ago enlisted the services of eminent medical authorities in its battle against the cigaret, and the Plymouth Board circularized the teachers and parents of the children on the subject. A Committee of the Liverpool School Board which investigated the matter declared that "cigaret smoking affects the system generally, and arrests physical development," and it would be possible to quote thousands of such opinions from the educational side.
It goes without saying that the doctor is the strongest enemy of the cigaret for boys. "All the evidence," says Dr. Andrew Wilson, "points to the undermining of a growing lad's physique by indulgence in tobacco," and Doctor Wilson continues:
Add to this the moral effect—that of rendering the already precocious boy still more precocious, and of turning him into an insufferable prig, and you thus condemn the habit from another point of view.
Sir Henry LittleJohn, the veteran medical officer of health for Edinburgh, has used his great influence against the boy smoker on many grounds, and there is much force in his argument that
the practise is fraught with dangers to society at large, owing to the secrecy with which the habit is carried on, the assembling at nights, the tendency to visit ice-cream shops to assuage the heat of the mouth that has been engendered by the filthy practise, and, in addition, we have ultimately that disregard of the proprieties due to the other sex which is introducing in our midst a laxity of morals, which, in the future, must bear fruit.
Magistrate Crane of New York City says:
Ninety-nine out of a hundred boys between ten and seventeen years of age, who come before me charged with crime, have their fingers disfigured by yellow cigaret stains... The poison in the cigaret seems to get into the system of the boy and destroys all moral fiber.
Tobacco interferes with the functions of the eye, of the heart, and of the kidneys. Tobacco smoking interferes with the development of the boy.
Professor McKeever says the cigaret-smoking boys of several schools, the records of which were investigated, were described by his informants by such epithets as sallow, sore-eyed, puny, squeaky-voiced, sickly, short-winded, and extremely nervous.
The greatest danger of the cigaret habit is its insidious nature. The boy does not realize the danger until it is too late to correct it. Hundreds of tombstones today bear silent testimony to this fact.
A chemist took the tobacco used in an average cigaret and soaked it in several teaspoonfuls of water and 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.
Investigation shows that prominent business men positively refuse to engage men for responsible positions who smoke cigarets. The cigaret smoker, sooner or later, proves to be unreliable either physically, mentally, morally, or all three.
In Detroit alone, sixty-nine merchants have agreed not to employ cigaret-users. Chicago firms such as Montgomery Ward & Co., Marshall Field & Co., Morgan & Wright Tire Co., all prohibit cigaret smoking among employees, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, head of the Ford Motor Company, are both opposed to the cigaret.
The manager of one of Ohio's largest mercantile houses, when asked for a job for a boy who smoked cigarets, said:
I'm sorry, but I can't use cigaret smokers. First, they smell bad, and I don't want to put them in contact with the nice young ladies who work here or the nice ladies who trade here. Second, cigarets prevent the development of strong, clear, reliable moral character. They excite the lower passions and dull the sense of right and wrong.
Judge Ben Lindsay of Denver says:
I have been in the Juvenile Court nearly ten years, dealing with thousands of boys who have disgraced themselves and their parents, and I do not know of any one habit which is more responsible for the troubles of these boys than the vile cigaret habit.
Superintendent, Mervine of the Wells Fargo Express Company, issued a letter to all agents of the company, in which he said:
Any one who habitually smokes cigarets, in this climate especially, has something connected with his record or his qualifications that makes him a dangerous person.
Dr. Sims Woodhead, professor of pathology in Cambridge University, says that cigaret smoking, in the case of boys, partially paralyzes the nerve-cells at the base of the brain, and this interferes with the breathing or heart action.
Now produce a flag made of black muslin which you call the Cigaret Flag, on which you have pinned small slips of paper on which you have written some of the short sayings herewith given, Read these lines from the flag and say, "We will now listen to the message of the Cigaret Flag."
If you blow a mouthful of cigaret smoke through a clean white handkerchief, it will leave a dark brown slimy stain. In this carbon deposit are the different poisons which eat on the delicate spongy membrane of the back of the throat like acid on a piece of cloth.
Conclude by warning the boys not to smoke the deadly cigaret, never to begin; and if they have smoked, then first urge them to make the last cigaret the last forever. Tell them that Jesus wants boys with clean lips and pure hearts. The cigaret habit has roots which go deep into the heart. This is what makes the grip of the habit so strong. Jesus said that "Every plant my heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up." So this is one of the plants doomed by God. Let him pull it out from your heart by the roots; only thus can it be taken away to stay.
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