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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 29

Chapter V. — Some Collateral Evils of Smoking

page 20

Chapter V.

Some Collateral Evils of Smoking.

35.—There are many smokers who do not drink intoxicating liquors, but they are, nevertheless, exceptions to the general rule. The all but universal testimony of medical men and of the public is, that smoking leads to drinking. There is even a proverb, that "smoking is sauce to drinking." The drinking customs are so associated with the practice of smoking, that one continually tends to promote the other. The connexion between "the pipe and the pot" is notorious.

36.—The fact is recognised and explained by "A Physician" in an able article recently contributed to the "People's Friend." He says, speaking of tobacco:—"Its action on the salivary glands is instant. In the experiment I alluded to, I secreted 1¼oz. avoirdupois (of saliva) in an hour's time. As a result of this effect, tobacco dries the throat and tongue—nay, in some cases it produces inflammation and ulceration. This phenomenon's import has not been sufficiently noted. Simple though it may appear, upon it depends one of the deadliest of the dangers of tobacco. We are not aware that this has been observed previously,* but from our own observation we have no hesitation in saying, this is the great and melancholy stumbling block which makes thousands and tens of thousands graduate from smokers into drinkers. The dryness of the tongue, and the thirst, in myriads of cases suggest alcoholic drinks. The desire on the part of the smoker is increased by the peculiar depression which tobacco engenders alike on body and mind. The body being invaded by one narcotic is a prey to another. Tobacco makes the breach, and alcohol too often follows with the grand attack. The one is the pioneer of the other. Pipes and cigars are the Uhlans of intemperance. The pipe and the punchbowl pretend to no relationship in daylight. In darkness they are brothers. In their orgies they are hand in hand—arm in arm. They pass each other openly with a knowing wink, but in secret they are in partnership. The pipe, indeed, is the gate to the great hall of narcotism. It is possible to be at the gate without entering, but how great is the temptation! Thousands, of course, matriculate into pipedom without graduating into alcoholism; but of drinkers do we find one but smokes? The pipe, indeed, is the punchbowl's helpmate—it affords one an appetite for drink, it strengthens the narcotism. Two page 21 strings are stronger than one. Take a peep into our bars and drinking saloons, and behold how tipplers are flourishing the glass in one hand and the pipe in the other. The publican knows full well the intimate relation between the two, and hails tobacco as his strongest ally—as the caterer of new custom. Accordingly, he encourages smoking in every room. Nay, every publican is a tobacconist—cigars, pipes and tobacco allure the eye in bars as much as the beer-barrel. 'Smoke on,' means 'drink on.'"

37.—This view of the connexion between drinking and smoking is confirmed from various independent sources. The statistics of a whole County of Good Templars showed that the smokers were fully seven times more liable to break their obligation than the non-smokers. A Temperance reformer of many years' standing, who had never heard the above statement, recently informed the writer that he had himself taken note of the cases in one of our largest towns, and he had found that more than forty out of fifty of those who broke the pledge were smokers.

38.—There is another evil that specially attaches to juvenile smoking. It often introduces to bad company, boys whose education, but for this practice, would have preserved them from contamination. Many boys learn to smoke and chew tobacco, long before they venture to frequent the public house. They are compelled to keep their smoking secret, because they know that their parents strongly object to it. The very fact of their thus acting contrary to parental authority keeps up a state of habitual disregard of that authority, and a fear of detection, which render home less attractive, and form a barrier to frank and loving intercourse between the boy and his parents and sisters. A distaste for elevating pursuits is engendered, and thus he is drawn more and more towards depraving society. A furtive pipe by the roadside, or under a hedge or haystack, very naturally leads to a furtive visit to the public-house, and there the ruin is accomplished. At length the secret is revealed to the sorrowing parents—the turning point in the boy's destiny has arrived. He may be induced to listen to loving remonstrances, and abandon evil habits before their mastery is supreme; but the probability is, that he will now resent parental control altogether, and abandon himself without reserve to evil courses. On the contrary, if the youth had manfully resisted the fascination of the pipe, his company would no longer have been sought by evil companions. His capacity for elevating pursuits would have remained unimpaired, and by ordinarily judicious training he might have become an ornament to his family and a blessing to the world.

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39.—Smoking not only leads boys into habits of deception; it often prepares the way for a career of crime. Boys who smoke, often help themselves without permission to their smoking father's tobacco, or to that of men with whom they are employed. They very often pilfer from their employers the means to buy it. The testimony of governors of reformatories and prisons abundantly confirms this statement. The governor of a reformatory at Blackley near Manchester, stated that out of fifteen boys who were admitted after the opening of the institution, twelve had been smokers, and eight chewers. Ten confessed to having either stolen tobacco, or money wherewith to buy it. Mr. Joseph Tucker, a retired London warehouseman, whose firm made an annual return of more than £500,000, declared, "We never had an act of fraud in our establishment which was not traced to a smoker." It was aptly remarked by an American statesman, "He would not say that all smokers are blackguards, but he never knew a blackguard who was not a smoker."

40.—The connexion between tobacco and strong drink is not more intimate than its connexion with other and still more depraving forms of licentiousness. Tobacco lessens physical health and destroys manly power it is true, and in some cases occasions complete impotence; but at an earlier stage of the indulgence it increases the morbid desire for sensual pleasure. It produces an irritable state of the nerves, and an incapacity for higher enjoyments, that naturally drive their victim for relief to depraving indulgences. Hence the intimate connexion known to subsist between smoking, drinking, and unchastity. The tobacco shop, the drink shop, and the house of ill-fame form a triple unholy alliance. The once innocent youth is not usually introduced by his hardened comrades to the last of these resorts, until he has been prepared for the complete overthrow of his virtue by the influence of drink and tobacco. The temptations and the facilities to this career of vice are to be found on every hand. The places of resort where all this ruin is accomplished, are adapted alike to the capacity of the most wealthy, and to that of the poorest.

41.—The enormous increase of wealth which modern enterprise has produced, brings with it perils peculiarly its own. The lowest forms of vice are gilded and disguised by all the refinements of art and luxury. Vast multitudes of our educated young men are spending their time and money in a way that unfits them for all manly effort either for their own or their country's good. The baneful influence spreads in every direction and leavens society even up to the halls of parliament. Assuredly the smoke-room is not the place, and the dreamy stupefaction of tobacco is not the agent, for cultivating that honest, straight-forward, manly intelligence and conscientiousness that we should page 23 look for in the legislator. In the tendencies of recent legislation there are unmistakeable proofs of the extent to which luxury and its cognate vices are threatening to sap, not only the physical stamina, but the morals of the nation. The unblushing defence of the Indo-Chinese opium traffic; the legalization of vice in the interests of libertinism, by means which unwarrantably interfere with the rights of defenceless women; and other similar measures; are calculated to fill thoughtful men with alarm. The national conscience and the national arm are alike being paralysed by narcotic indulgence. British legislators must be made of sterner stuff than the emasculated devotees of the smoke-room and the cigar divan, if England is to retain her place among the nations and avert impending disaster.

* This observation has been made by many other writers.