The Washington herald., 1915-02-10
Pipe Dream of an Aristocracy.

The Massachusetts, legislature is considering
"a bill to prohibit smoking in public-in public
parks, the public streets, in waiting rooms, in
any part of hotels open to the public in public
conveyances. The proposed penalty is fine of
SIS and Imprisonment for not less than ten days.
The late Senator Hoar, in his devotion to Massa-
chusetts, insisted that the alleged Blue Laws of
the colony never existed; in fact, were invented
by the enemies of the Puritans, and were slander
on the great Commonwealth which the Puritans
founded. But the publication bug seems to have
struck the Massachusetts Legislature so hard that
it would make the Puritans wonder if the Blue
Laws were anything to be ashamed of in the light
of modern development.
This proposed statute for Massachusetts is no
mere copy OF a Kansas law against cigarettes. 1t
does not discriminate against any particular form
of the weed. 1t goes after the Connecticut wrap
per. the Cape Cod smokers plug and the Virginia
twist as we'll as the rice paper covered coffin
tack 1t prohibits alike the public indulgence in
the fragant Havana and the ancestral pipe which
makes its presence felt without either tobacco or
fire; but it leaves to the students, the scholars
and the literary folks of Back Bay the inspiration
and solace of their favorite brands in the privacy
OF the study.
There is the joker in this bill. 1t discrimnates
in favor of peculiar class rather than in favor of
a particular product. There has OF late been
manifest in the magazine advertisements a ten
dency on the part OF the tobacco manufacturers
to advertise popular authors by pcturing them
at work in their dcns, with pipes from which
curled up the smoke in fantastic but ingenious
circles which disclosed the name OF some favor
ite brand that furnished inspiration and gave con-
ISOLATION to literary genius. 1t is suspected that
the proposed legislation is in the interest OF that
IL 81 which made
the Hub, and from which it has declined by
son OF the influx Of 50 many common people who
have ignored the rules OF Boston decorum, and
smoked when and where they could in public
and in private. The proposed law will not affect
the scholars, the students, and the literary men
who breathe in inspiration from tobacco in their
sanctums or studies dens, but it will cut off
the common indulgence in tobacco in the public
Streets in the parks, and other public places, and
it will restore the weed emblem of the arls-
tocracv OF intellect. The sacred cod long ago
departed from Boston Bay. This bill il it be-
comes law may be the foreword to prepare the
way for the restoration OF this aristocracy which
once claimed monopoly on baked beans. Beans
having been classed universal, cheap food
product by the Department Of Agriculture, must
give way to some luxury, and tobacco is to be
prohibited to the man who has no private study.
There Is, however, danger IN SUCH leSlSldllOn'
1t will be remembered that William the Testy,
when governor of New York in the early days of
the colony, made law against smoking, and the
old Dutch burgers loaded their biggest pipes with
their strongest tobacco, and smoked him into
compromise, by which he confined the prohibition
to the long pipes of the Wauter Van Twiller
regime. We have the authority of the kncker-
booker History of New York, that this compro-
mise developed the great pipe plot, and the di-
vision of the people into political parties. There
were the Long Pipes, arstocratic stand
pattcrs, the Short Pipes, democrats, and the
Ouids who were the first mugwumps, who took
middle ground and chewed.
So may the people of Massachusetts be further
divided in their politics, and another Boston party
headed by former Mayor Fitzgerald dump this
prohibition into the bay. There so many
short pipes in Boston that it is serious question
whether the town can ever again be made
elusive, by trying TO prohibit smoking in public.