Particularly striking was the unconscious evidence which was given to the public at the time of the attack upon the life of Ex-President Roosevelt in October, 1912, when his physicians used the following expression in a public bulletin: "We find him in magnificent physical condition due to his regular physical exercise, his habitual abstinence from tobacco and liquor."
The manufacture of tobacco is generally regarded as an unhealthy occupation, and many assert that it tends to produce miscarriage in the case of women.[16] Some, like Sir Thomas Oliver, think the evidence on this point not conclusive. But this eminent English authority holds that tobacco is bad for the health of English soldiers and speaks of it under the head of occupational diseases.[17] "Tobacco especially," he says, "I believe to be a cause of heart trouble among soldiers, though many authorities doubt it. I have known a man who was anxious to be invalided out of the army produce the most marked cardiac symptoms by the surreptitious use of strong cake tobacco." "Smokers' cancer" is a term familiar to physicians. It is not necessary to discuss at length the effects of tobacco on health in an article dealing mainly with the economic and social phases of the question. Suffice it to point out the fact of its harmfulness, leaving to physicians the consideration of the mode and extent of nicotine morbidity.[18]
7. That tobacco is bad for the mental development of children is so commonly conceded by teachers that the Boy Scouts organization has as one of its main purposes the discouragement of the cigarette habit among boys. General Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, is said to have gone through the campaign in West Africa without smoking and to have escaped fever when thousands of others were attacked by it.[19] The attitude of the Boy Scouts is seen in the following resolution, passed November, 1912, by a large conference of scout commissioners held in New York City: "Resolved, That the local councils of the Boy Scouts of America recommend that all scout masters and other officials while in uniform or on duty refrain from the use of tobacco in any form as being detrimental to the general aim of our movement in the development of healthful habits of life in the growing boy." In the state of Wisconsin, a movement has been inaugurated to discountenance smoking on the part of all persons, teachers or pupils, connected with the high schools.[20]
8. That tobacco causes a considerable loss of time must be obvious to anyone who has observed the habits of the smoker. Not only is a certain amount of every day devoted to this occupation, but personal experience shows that this loss is not confined to those who smoke. It is now a very common thing for people to smoke at committee meetings, and it seems to the writer that the proceedings always become slower and less brisk when the dope of tobacco smoke fills the air.
9. Tobacco often seems to have a distinct effect in weakening the social sense. This is a statement which cannot be buttressed by statistics, but in such a matter we can put a good deal of reliance on the testimony of smokers whose prejudices would naturally be on the other side. The editor of the Outlook says: "Of late years men who smoke without any regard to the comfort of others have so greatly increased in numbers that it is not surprising that an organization has been formed to limit smoking."[21] A more striking piece of evidence, because obviously unconscious, is that which is given by a well-known English author, Mr. G. K. Chesterton. A friend of his had been dining with a man who was both a teetotaler and a non-smoker. In relating the story he says: "It ended with the guest asking the host if he might smoke, and receiving a stern reply in the negative. My friend (I am happy to say) immediately lit his pipe and vanished in smoke. Having sufficiently and properly perfumed all the curtains and carpets with smoke, he purged the house of its smoker."[22] Note the parenthesis "I am happy to say." Here is a well-known author who is willing to publicly claim that it is proper and right for a guest to knowingly and intentionally commit a nuisance in his host's house in the matter of tobacco. "Senatorial courtesy," dominant as it is in the matter of appointments to office, gives way before tobacco, and a senator, whose health is seriously affected by tobacco smoke, has appealed in vain to his fellow statesmen to spare him this infliction in the executive sessions of the senate.
The Triangle shirtwaist fire in New York made so slight an impression on smokers, that, when in July, 1913, the inspectors visited the same premises, they found the elevator boy smoking a cigarette and the proprietor of a factory in the same building smoking a cigar, in violation of a law passed in consequence of this very fire. It would be a mistake to regard the New York factory owners who have recently been fined for violating the anti-smoking law as peculiarly obtuse and unimaginative. They are simply examples of the fact, familiar enough to non-smokers, that the nicotine habit tends to make smokers indifferent to the social effects of smoking. There is nothing paradoxical in saying that a habit which is often associated with sociability leads to anti-social conduct. The same is true of the alcohol habit, the opium habit, and indeed of all similar habits. Even the lady-like tea habit may have anti-social effects, if it so dominates the life that a person will neglect an engagement or a duty rather than lose the pleasure of the afternoon cup.
10. That tobacco affects the will power, and therefore national efficiency, was recognized years ago by the genial "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," who said: "I think self-narcotization and self-alcoholization are rather ignoble substitutes for undisturbed self-consciousness and an unfettered self-control."[23] And again he says, "I have seen the green leaf of early promise grown brown before its time, under such nicotian regimen, and thought the umbered meerschaum dearly bought at the cost of a brain enfeebled and a will enslaved."[24]
Cr.
Having now considered what tobacco costs the United States let us endeavor to ascertain what it does for the United States.