Part 15

Matches, carelessness with 1,629 Cigars, cigarettes, etc., carelessness with 1,273 Gas, illuminating, carelessness in the use of gaslights, ranges, radiators, etc. 849 Bonfires, brush fires, igniting fences, etc. 849 Stoves, stovepipes, furnaces, steampipes, heat from 844 Chimney fires and sparks from chimneys 784 Children playing with matches or with fire 657 Candles, tapers, etc., carelessness with 500

Total number of fires 15,633 Not ascertained--suspicious 506 Not fully ascertained 4,797 ----- Total not ascertained causes 5,303 ------- Number of fires, causes ascertained 10,330

It also seems safe to say that in the large cities of the East, where it may be assumed that the records are more accurate than in the country at large, the percentages agree closely enough to justify the estimate made by Fire Commissioner Johnson of New York City that 15 to 20% of our fires are caused by the careless throwing away of lighted matches, cigars and cigarettes.[10]

[Footnote 10: American Industries, June, 1913, p. 21.]

The late chief of the fire department of New York, Mr. E. F. Croker, writes: "I am certain that an examination of the fire losses in our cities and towns, the loss of life as well as property, which has been caused by the cigarette habit would be found appalling. The paper and light tobacco used in cigarettes holds fire for some time, usually until the entire remnant which has been thrown away has been consumed. The majority of cigarette smokers are careless in the disposition of these remnants, and usually throw or drop them wherever they may be." So great is the menace of the smoker to property and life that New York has passed a law forbidding smoking in factories. Under this law, as interpreted by the corporation counsel, "the smoking of a pipe, cigar or cigarette in or about a factory using or containing inflammable material, is a public nuisance within the meaning of Section 1530 of the Penal Law, which provides: 'a public nuisance is a crime against the order and economy of the State,'" etc.[11]

[Footnote 11: Annual Report of N. Y. Fire Department for 1912, p. 13.]

The figures of fire losses given above apply to cities and dwellings. But tobacco is also the cause of many forest fires. The state forester of Massachusetts estimates that smokers are responsible for more forest fires in that state than any other single agency. The number which could be directly and positively traced to them in the single year 1908 was 111, involving a loss of $33,000. But it is clear that it is peculiarly difficult to trace the causes of forest fires on account of the fact that smokers throw down their matches or cigarette stubs, or cigar stubs, and pass on, quite unconscious of the damage which follows in their wake. "That the careless smoker, who persists in the habit when in woodlands or traversing the country during a dry time, whether at work or play, is the greatest menace to future forestry, it is believed there is little question."[12]

[Footnote 12: Sixth Annual Report of State Forester of Massachusetts, 1909, p. 40.]

In Connecticut the state forester reports that, out of 116 fires, of which the cause was ascertained in 1912, 25 were due to smokers. Regarding the 58 fires attributed to "Fishermen," "Hunters," "Matches," and "Strollers," he says: "It is evident that most of these fires were due to carelessness in handling matches, throwing down cigar butts, etc., or leaving fires unextinguished."[13] The loss of life due to smokers' fire must be enormous, but this is all that can be safely said in the absence of reliable statistics.

[Footnote 13: Sixth Annual Report of State Forester of Connecticut, 1912, pp. 461-2.]

The responsibility of the smoker is not limited to the destruction of property and of life. If he causes a certain percentage of fires, he must also be held accountable for his share of the cost of maintaining our fire departments, of the injuries suffered by firemen in performing their duties, of the cost of fire prevention, and of the cost of insurance.

A careful report made by the United States Geological Survey a few years ago estimated the annual loss and expense due to fires in the United States in the year 1907, including fire protection and insurance, as over $456,000,000. If smokers cause but 10% of this they cost us $45,000,000 under this item alone. If they cause 20%, as they obviously do in some places and as they are estimated to do by Commissioner Johnson, the cost under this item is $90,000,000, and the figures have undoubtedly increased since the government report was made six years ago.

3. In studying the effect of any expenditure upon society, we must take into account the diversion of social activity from one line of production to another. The consumer is the ultimate director of national production. If he elects to drink whiskey, instead of buying bread for his children, this means that the country produces more whiskey and less bread. If rich men elect to take large tracts of arable land for game preserves, they prevent that land from being used to raise food for the people. Likewise, if smokers elect to spend a certain part of their income upon tobacco, they determine that a certain area of land shall be devoted to the cultivation of this plant, which would otherwise be devoted to the cultivation of vegetables, or to dairy farming, or to raising whatever commodities their money would otherwise have been spent for. The amount of land thus preëmpted for the preserves of tobacco users in the United States is very large. It amounted in 1912 to no less than 1,225,800 acres or over one-sixth of the area devoted to raising vegetables. The value of the tobacco product was $104,302,856, or one-quarter of the value of all vegetables including potatoes. This must play no small part in maintaining the high cost of living in the United States.[14] Tobacco culture, moreover, tends, as is well known, to exhaust the soil and thus to rob future generations, unless fertility is artificially maintained at great expense.

[Footnote 14: See Abstract of the Census, p. 360.]

4. The demands made by smokers upon public conveyances increase materially the capital required to equip railroads and other means of communication. Smokers are never charged an extra fare for the inconvenience and expense which they cause, although special cars or parts of cars are provided for their use. On some of the smaller railroads, where the traffic is light and a single car would be ample to carry all of the passengers desiring to take a certain train, the train regularly includes a smoking car, thus adding 100 per cent. to the car accommodations required without adding to revenue. On the more crowded trains and on roads with heavier traffic, the space wasted is naturally not so great. But there is always some additional investment required, for which the railroads get no return. There were 47,095 passenger cars in the United States in 1910. Assuming that only 10% are for smokers, 4,709 cars are necessitated by the smoking habit; assuming an average cost of $15,000 per car, over $71,000,000 of capital, on which interest and depreciation have to be charged, must be invested, in order to serve smokers. And yet smokers are treated in our parlor cars as a privileged class, for, while ordinary travellers are entitled to but one seat, smokers get two seats for one ticket. Not infrequently a smoker will engage a seat in a parlor car and leave it empty during the greater part of his trip. He uses the additional seat provided gratuitously for him in the smoking section of the car, or in a special smoking car, while a delicate woman or an invalid, who fain would occupy and gladly pay for his seat, is debarred from doing so.

5. The cost of keeping the world clean must be enormously enhanced by smokers, though there is no political arithmetic which will give us any figures on the subject. Anyone who will take but a casual glance at the floors of railway stations, smoking cars, hotels, clubs, and other places of public resort will realize how much disagreeable work in the way of cleaning up the smoker forces society to do for him.

6. The effect of tobacco upon the health is an important item in the cost of the habit to the country, though one which can obviously not be expressed in figures. Dr. von Frankl Hochwart, the eminent nerve specialist, has written an article dealing only with the nervous diseases of smokers, and though this paper was read at a meeting of neurologists and eight physicians took part in the discussion, not one of them expressed dissent on any essential point.[15]

[Footnote 15: von Frankl Hochwart, in _Deutsche Zeitschrift für Nervenheilkunde_, Vol. XLIII, pp. 360-387.]

This distinguished authority based his statements on the study of 1,500 of his own patients who were heavy nicotinists. After eliminating all of the other poisons or diseases which might have affected these cases, he reached the general conclusion that, among smokers in general, about one-third complained of troubles which they attributed to tobacco. These symptoms were particularly strong in the case of heavy smokers, of whom half showed bad effects, lasting sometimes for a considerable time. The troubles were especially noticeable in the case of cigarette smokers. The most common complaints were palpitation of the heart and general nervousness, but a large number of other nervous affections were diagnosed as specifically attributable to nicotine, such as loss of memory, meningitis, aphasia, deafness, and dyspepsia.

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]

[Footnote 16: See Appendix to Report of N. Y. Factory Investigating Committee, pp. 492-513. See also von Frankl Hochwart, l. c.]

[Footnote 17: _Dangerous Trades_, p. 794.]

[Footnote 18: See article by Dr. Charles B. Towns in _The Century_, March, 1912.]

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]

[Footnote 19: _School Physiology Journal_, April, 1909, p. 122.]

[Footnote 20: See files of _Wisconsin Journal of Education_.]

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.

[Footnote 21: _Outlook_, Aug. 5, 1911.]

[Footnote 22: _Illustrated London News_, Nov. 2, 1912.]

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]

[Footnote 23: _Over the Teacups_, p. 184.]

[Footnote 24: _Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_, p. 102.]

_Cr._

Having now considered what tobacco costs the United States let us endeavor to ascertain what it does for the United States.

1. The first and most tangible item to be put on the credit side is taxation. In the year 1911-12, the amount paid by tobacco users towards the support of the government was as follows:

Internal revenue tax $70,590,151 Customs duties 25,572,000 ------------- $96,162,151

We may estimate the figures for 1912-13 as about $105,000,000. Thus it is clear that the tobacco habit is a means by which the government is able to secure a large contribution, albeit an involuntary one, from the users.

2. The typical and commonly recognized advantage of tobacco is in the satisfaction of a certain craving and the production of a certain enjoyment which may be briefly designated by the medical term euphoria. This gratification is apparently not an entirely simple sensation, if we may credit the testimony of smokers, nor is it uniform in all persons. Some claim that tobacco quiets the nerves and therefore makes them more peaceably inclined, more ready to effect compromises in a dispute, and altogether more sociable. Others on the other hand, claim that it stimulates the mind and enables them to do better intellectual work.

In all cases the effect is personal, not social, and the evidence with regard to it is entirely subjective. Thus the claim that tobacco stimulates a person's brain, rests upon his own testimony. There is no reason to believe that the effect of nicotine on literary output can be detected by others, and the many cases in which smokers have deliberately given up the habit and yet continued to do their brain work with no diminution of effectiveness, create a strong presumption against attaching much weight to the subjective testimony on the subject. Equally indefinite and even less susceptible of objective measurement is the feeling of gratification or enjoyment which comes from the taste of the weed, and the narcotic effect of the nicotine. There is reason to suspect, however, that its comforting effects are often exaggerated. In such a case we shall avoid a prejudiced opinion, if we take the testimony of those whose interests favor the use of tobacco. The following statement occurs in an advertisement distributed by a tobacco company: "How have your cigars tasted for the last two weeks? Haven't you a mouthful of crumbled cigar now? Do you like a cigar that tasted like a dried cornstalk? Do you enjoy having a cankered tongue and a tender throat?" "You are smoking cigars, aren't you? Your throat tickles, your head is 'swimmy' in the morning, you have to steady your hand to sign a check, your stenographer hates you and your wife breathes a sigh of relief when you leave in the morning." This is not from the tract of an anti-tobacco society, but reflects unconsciously the opinion of the sellers of a certain brand of Havana cigars regarding the effects produced by other brands, in other words, by those which are in most common use by persons who cannot afford the more expensive grades. Indeed, it seems very probable that in many cases smoking is done, not because of the real enjoyment which comes from the practice, but because it has become a habit which the nicotinist cannot break himself of.

These facts point to the conclusion that while a part of what tobacco users spend is contributed by them towards the support of the government, and therefore should be credited to their account, the only clear and definite advantage is their euphoria, the purely subjective feeling of satisfaction which is indefinite and vague, and which there is reason to think is often exaggerated.

Our balance sheet, based upon this discussion might thus be formulated as follows:

MADAM NICOTINE IN ACCT. WITH THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES

_Dr._

1. To amount spent on tobacco and accessories, $1,200,000,000 less taxes, say 105,000,000 ---------------- $1,095,000,000 2. Fire loss, a. Towns, $45,000,000 to $90,000,000 " " b. Forests, " " c. Loss of life in fires, 3. Preëmption of arable land, 1,200,000 acres, 4. Extra expense for R. R. equipment, hauling, etc. 5. Expense of keeping the country clean, 6. Morbidity, 7. Retarding education of children, 8. Waste of time, 9. Weakening of social sense, 10. Weakening of will power,

_Cr._

Smokers' Euphoria,

In this balance sheet the item _profit and loss_ is intentionally omitted. To include it would give this study the form of an argument instead of the simple statement of facts which it is intended to be. Every reader must, therefore, decide for himself on which side of the account the balance should be inserted, and doubtless many will decide this question, as they decide so many other questions, according to their personal inclinations. The smoker will be convinced that the enjoyment which he gets out of tobacco is worth all that the habit costs the community. The non-smoker, on the other hand, will feel that the non-smoking majority pay altogether too much for the pleasure of the smoking minority. Neither point of view interests the writer, and he will have spent his time in vain, if he has not made it clear that he has endeavored to construct a _social_ balance sheet. The only question to decide, therefore, is whether the value of tobacco to society is worth what society pays for it in direct expenditure as well as in the destruction of property, lives, health, etc.

Certain other familiar topics are also omitted, not because they are lacking in interest or importance, but because the author believes in the maxim _ne sutor supra crepidam_ and, being an economist, has limited himself to strictly economic and tangible topics. The field of ethics, e. g., is not entered, though some of the social and economic facts which are brought out may supply the moralist with useful data. Nor is the subject of manners considered, though courtesy may be regarded, in the words of an English statesman, as "a national asset." History too, is untouched, though tobacco first led to the introduction of slavery into Virginia and, therefore, has played an important part in our political and social evolution.