The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1908-03-21
THE SMOKING CAR.

NO QOuDL many IallIOaQ manager
has worked his grey matter" and
| burnt the midnight oil' in an at
tempt to solve the smoking car nui-
sance" 1t is probable that in no
place on the "face of the earth" is
mans inherent nastiness more con-
stantly in evidence, and yet on that
very account it is necessary for the
railroads to haul this pestilence breed
ing sink Of pollution through the
country. Ordinarily we have never
fully believed in the total depravity of
any person, but walk through an or
binary smoking car at the end of a
nights run of three or four hundred
miles, will go a long way towards con-
vincing anyone that there are some
men who are perilously near the total
depravity point. An intimate mixture
ofmany, many kinds of tobacco smoke
with the consequent many, many kinds
of breath exhaled; the many kinds of
tobacco juice and saliva hurled promis
cuously under seats and against car
sides, the many kinds and degrees of
foul language used and influenced by
many, many kinds of bad whiskey ccn-
sumed, makes up an atmosphere be-
side which the aroma from the Chica-
go drainage canal would smell like
new mown hay. We understand, of
course, that the end cf chair cars,
sleepers and the like, where smoking
Is allowed is but little better and speaks
just as eloquently of mans inherent
nastiness, as the ordinary smoking
car, but necessarily more care is given
to their cleaning and sanitation. We
understand the railroad commissioner
of the State of Iowa thinks the smok-
ing car ought to be abolished on all
American railroads, but he is led to
that conclusion by his Investigations
of different wrecks showing that smok-
ing cars are apt to be old and light in
construction. He observes that the
smoking care is apt to be hauled be-
tween the baggage car and coaches
where it is in an exposed place for the
weight and momentum of all the heavy
coaches being driven upon it in case
geSfs the following
'sBut there is more serious objec-
tion to be made 10 the average smo-
king car. 1t is filthy car. 1t is
the congregating place of the toughs
and the men who think they are
"sports." They not only smoke and
chew and spit on the floors of such
cars, but, in many cases, they drink
vile whiskey which they have pur-
chased in the cities from which they
are returning.
No one can form any adequate idea
of how depraved and how nasty and
filthy, how like a hog in his mire,
many men are until one has travelled
in some of these so-called smoking
cars. There is no filth comparable to
it, nowhere In the world. The Ian
guage which is habitually used in
some of the smoking cars also is a
stencil. Of late some of the railroad
managers have inaugurated policy
of cleaning up these human hog pens,
but with what success remains to be
seen. No improvement is more ur-
gently called for on American rail-
roads,"
The only objection to the above
that we can register is the fact that it
does the hog such a fearful injustice
"a hog wouldn't chew tobacco and
spit out the juice, that would be de-
cidedly "unhogly." Of course there
is difference in hog wallows, but to
our way of thinking the ordinary kind
is like mountain brook alongside an
ordinary smoking car, and we abso-
lutely protest against thus slandering
the hog.
Nor do we think the smoking car
will ever be abolished, because the
man who uses tobacco will do so
against the eutreaties and advice of all
those he holds most dear on earth, and
for whose judgment in other respects
he has the highest regard. The rail-
roads must, therefore, provide a car
where such men may wallow in the
filth they think they must produce,
there is no help for it, for if car is
notsprovided for them they would pol
lutte the other cars with as little con-
Germ or regard for the rights of others
as would lion in field with lamb.
However strange, contradictory and
paradoxical it may seem, it is fact,
nevertheless, that men who are in
other respects punctilliously circum-
spect in their regard for the rights of
others, show, in their use of tobacco
an absolute negation of that attribute,
so that talk of abolishing the smoking
car Is a waste of time. 1t is granted
that it is nuisance, a pestilence bree-
der, streak of filth going through the
country, an abomination, an evidence
of moral depravity and everything else
along that line that can be thought of,
but what are you going to do about
it? If car was to be made of pure
gold, with ivory seats, with the very
richest carpets obtainable in all the
earth, with priceless pictures and ta-
pestries, are there those who think
men would not spit tobacco juice on
the carpets and pollute the other parts
with tobacco smoke? Deluded NOR
tai you know not man if you think he
would not. No, no, the railroad smo-
king car nuisance is here to stay and
probably the only thing to do about it
is to so construct the cars SO that they
can have the hose turned on them at
the end of every trip-that will help
some.- The RaiIUay Co,sdNetOr.
| SENIOR PARTNER "Th at new
stenographer spells ridiculously. Ju-
nior partner-"Does she? Well IT she