Los Angeles herald., 1906-04-16

When any habit becomes so noticeable
that 1t enters into the consideration of
the financial managers department,
then the opposition to that habit ceases
to be n reform and Immediately be-
comes business proposition. In this
day of money grabbing, of the prostitu-
tion of most every ideal for personal
gain, where desire and dollar mean the
same and ideals and poverty go hand
in hand, there can be no possible mis-
take in the business side of the cigarette
question when we read that the Great
Western Electric concern of Chicago,
employing 6000 men and boys, issue an
order that they will employ no cigarette
smokers.
"I think I have discovered one bless
ing at least in this insane stampede
for the dollar, in the organization of
the trusts, and the entire elimination
of every obstruction, even to the legis-
latures, which stand in the way of
profit. In the making of the man and
boy laborer a machine, a thing only,
with no individuality, he is looked
over in the same manner in which
the employer looks over machine in
which he is to invest money. A ma
chine easily clogged is not purchased.
A brain easily clogged is not employed.
In some places saloons have lost GUS
toners where the man likes his job
better than his booze.
Habit Makes Boy Slave
do you not think that any habit
which makes of a man a victim, makes
of the boy chained slave? In the ad-
descent period of boys life he needs
not the stimulant of a nerve food, at
a time when his wondering, growing
manhood transforms his calm peaceful
drifting days into a period of change
that he knows not of, experiences and
desires which come to him with such
swiftness that he is driven almost to
the point of insanity.
THE older boys unfortunately tell
him what it all means, and thus he
finds out the animal nature in himself.
Then TO feed his awakened senses on a
poison which takes to greater ex-
tremes his desires, is it wonder that
we have over 80 per cent of our youth
full delinquents in the juvenile courts?
Cigarette smokers, tobacco inhalers and
learning thus like the Spanlard, the
Mexican and the Turk, the habit of
tobacco inhalation is 1t a wonder if
later in life he exhibits those same
traits of character, or Winl<ing at i'm
purity and flirting with lies. All, the
horror of 1t! The loss of clean boy
hood, the death of perfect honor.
The Fight in Eastern States
"And in the fight which our great
American Anti Cigarette league had in
Indiana and Wisconsin, where, thank
God. the men of the legislature rose
to the demands made on them by
half million boys and drove cigarettes
from the borders of their states, did
the tobacco trust, through its debauch-
ers of honor, it's lobbyists, seek by fair
argument to defeat our prohibitory
bills?
mo, they made no fight in the COM
mittee rooms, they visited no member
with decisions of supreme courts prov
ing that it was fool legislation, that
it was an Unconstitutional measure
They lied in the press and through
paid for editorials about this.
"They knew that the highest court in
the land, in sustaining the Tennessee
cigarette prohibitory law, had said:
cigarettes are so manifestly against the
public health and morals that any state
has a right to forbid their manufacture
and sale within the confines of the
state and use police power to do so.
That they are not legitimate articles
of commerce and no interstate law is
violated in thus exercising police pow
ers to the interference of shipments
from one state to the other, and that
cigarette packages are not original
packages within the intent of the inter-
state commerce laws
Only Argument Is Money
"No, their only argument is money.
Brides, and you know how the sealed
envelopes, each containing $10O, were
passed to various legislators on the
floor of the Indiana legislature. how
one man, by a prearranged plan, sent
his envelope unopened to the speakers
desk, where it was opened to expose to
view the $40 bills. The man, a former
representative representing the tobacco
people, fled Immediately and there is
now a reward of $4,000 for his appre-
hension.
Poor tool of the tobacco trust, who
are the greater criminals? But so long
as Christian men clip the interest to
the marvellous profit coupons of to-
bacco stock, so long will this devilish
monster send our boys to perdition.
Damn the boy and make the dollar is
the motto of the tobacco trust
mot because 1 am the founder nor
because of the many noble men and
women who are identified with the
American Anti-Cigarette league do |
boast it as the greatest organization
in the land, but because in it's seven
years of existence it has secured one
and one-half million boys to sign
pledges against the cigarette, and in
fiuences every state in the Union to
take notice of the death nail.
"Of far greater Importance Is the or
ganization of a committee of body of
representative citizens for the saving
of every one of your 10000 boys, and
the girls as well, than the committee
for improved tenders, or the more
spectacular committee for the saving
of the foreign volcano victims.
"Where the faulty fender kills one
of your children, taking only life, the
cigarette in your midst kills it's hun
dred, taking soul and life as well. The
smoke from Mount Vesuvius may
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