p. 151 | Health and Temperance by J. O. Corliss

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 5, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 10.

Health and Temperance.

By J. O. Corliss

The Increasing Demand for Tobacco.

OUR attention has been called to an item in the Grocer and Country Merchant published in San Francisco. In its issue of January 30, 1885, a wholesale firm in that city publishes what it terms “The actual progressive scale of our tobacco trade,” from the commencement of 1877 to the close of 1885. The first year’s sales were but 6,840 pounds, but the business has constantly and rapidly increased until the actual sales for the year 1884 were 171,332 pounds, or nearly eighty-six tons!

Think of this! A single firm increasing its sales on the one item of tobacco alone twenty-five fold in eight years. The amount sold the last year, at twenty-five cents per pound, represents nearly $43,000. We may safely count the reported increase of sales by this firm as an index of the business of hundreds of other firms in the same trade; and as fearful as the yearly aggregate of tobacco sales might appear, could we ascertain it, we would then have but a faint idea of the colossal sum actually paid out each year for the vile stuff in its various forms.

Cigars and cigarettes are sold by the hundred or thousand, and are not represented in the pounds of tobacco reported sold. While many chew the filthy weed, comparatively few are seen smoking it in pipes on the streets. Not so however with cigars; hundreds who would be ashamed to be seen smoking a pipe, smoke cigars publicly without restraint. Little boys too, some so young that they can hardly talk plain, emboldened by the example of fathers and older brothers, puff the sickening smoke of their villainous cigarettes in the faces of all whom they meet.

Just think of the uncounted thousands that are worse than wasted each year at the shrine of tobacco. Why do so? Tobacco is neither food nor clothing; the use of it does not contribute to one’s health nor usefulness. On the other hand, it is a deadly poison, which, when taken into the system, contaminates the blood, and slowly but surely destroys the life forces. Who does not know that a few drops of nicotine taken into the stomach will destroy life?

The following from the Ukiah Press, of Mendocino County, this State, relative to the death of a citizen, will illustrate the deadly effects of this powerful virus upon the system:—

“Though aged, Mrs. Chandler was quite strong and hearty, and bid fair to live to a ripe old age. In cleaning a pipe a few days before her decease, she stuck the wire she was using into her finger, the nicotine from which produced blood-poisoning. After two days of suffering, her physician removed the finger, but the poison had taken too deep a hold of her system, and she expired after lingering about forty-eight hours. She was conscious to within a few hours of death, and, though suffering intense agony, bore her pain with fortitude and courage.”

A poison so powerful as this certainly has no business in the human system in any form. And he who would encourage its general use, because he may reap a profit from its sale, should be held in the same estimation as the man who deals out whisky for the same purpose. Why may not temperance lecturers find here a fruitful theme upon which to display their eloquence. Surely something ought to be done to stay the tide of evil that must certainly follow an increased demand for the filthy and poisonous weed, tobacco. J. O. CORLISS.