The age-herald., 1901-11-05

, lars. And any licensed dealer convicted of selling cigarettes to minors would up- on conviction. lose his license. Indirectly this imposed fine of fifty dollars. My object was to render impossible the sale of cigarettes to the babies attending the public schools.
 The bill was no sooner introduced than the tobacco representatives flocked to AL bany. The bill was fought on the floor, and in the committees. It was called "a strike bill" and I was accused of en- deavoring to extort money from the to- bacco company The Assembly was divid- cd. This division only served to hurry endorsements. Newspapers applauded the bill, and thousands of parents sent me letters encouraging me to persist. single-handed I fought the battle, and barely lost passing the bill in the As- sembly The next season the tobacco in terests defeated my renomination.
 cite this personal iexperience merely to show that this company of cigarette makers will not stop at any impediment They will fight in England through every channel. They will cut rates in competi- ton and wage personal warfare until they have the British youth in their dead
 
 ly clutches.
 England, in fighting the American To- bacco Company, or any of it's many aliases is not contesting an industrial question alone. She is battling for the health of her children. Every father and mother every adult brother and sis ter should see to it that this health-de- stroying monster be kept off its broad acres. The Consolidated Tobacco Com pany, and it's allied dependencies, do more harm in America than any known disease, from consumption to smallpox. It owns this land. It controls legislatures and city councils, it makes laws and law makers; in fact it is a scourge.
  l creature made glorious in raiment that cost less than $10O a year. We have seen her coming down the grassy lane, with her jaunty straw hat ribboned with pink. Perhaps she wore calico dress, but the lily of the field peeped through the fence and envied her. In the door, way the tendrils of the honeysuckle vine reached down to fondle her glorious hair, and you wondered if she really belonged to this earth, this maiden in the calico dress
 Afterward you discovered that she did. She married brisk fellow who knew how to make money and years after ward you saw her receiving in a gown from Paris, but the rose had been tinted and the fragrance was no more.
 Overdress among women has been termed one of the curses of America. Surely it's example stimulates discontent. Envy Is no supporter of virtue. A wo- man may be a member of a church, but when she pays a great price for a gown because it was made by a certain man, knowing. too, that not far away is hun gry child standing in the doorway of a wretched home, she Is not a Christian, and she has not within her the spirit of Christ's immortal democracy
 Dress in society is largely a matter of | gorgeous spite, of gew-gawed conquest. When one society woman is more richly | dressed than her neighbors, she Is her superior Mentality is showed aside. Intellectual graces cannot prevail against the Paris "artist of founces.'' l The right to appear as well as she pos 1 sibly can is granted to every woman. 1 But senseless extravaganza does not add | to appearance. Emphasizing innate coarseness, 1t is often a hamperer. Mod esty is the handmaiden of taste. Mrs Roosevelt does not give bad ad- I vice: she sets a wise example. If the wife of the President can dress on $500 year that sum ought to be sufficient for the average woman in society, and in society is where you are likely to meet the most average woman" On $500 year wo- man cannot afford many gowns A gown is worth about $1OO. But she can | buy dress for $5O
 Mrs. Roosevelt is an exponent of true democracy.