Cigarettes and Race Hatred
By Editor
A NOTORIOUS outlaw who is under death sentence for a murder committed in a train robbery said: "I started wrong when I was a kid. I smoked cigarettes, the habit increasing on me all the time. I smoke more than thirty a day now. I ran with tough boys and bad women." Some of the best authorities on the depravity of boys and young men say that the cigarette is one of the chief elements in the process of degradation. Physicians tell us of the irritating effect that tobacco smoke has upon the system, and the cigarette is the worst form in which tobacco can be used, because of the almost universal practise of drawing the smoke into the lungs. There should be as wide-spread a campaign against the use of tobacco, and particularly against the use of the cigarette, as there is against the use of alcoholic drinks. They are twin evils that should be fought to the finish. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON gives out the statement that forty-five Negroes have been lynched during the first ten months of this year. This is a reduction of four as compared with the same period last year. Of the forty-five, only seven were charged with assaults on women. Some people have thought that practically all these lynchings were occasioned by the outraged feelings in communities where Negroes had mistreated women. The facts would seem to indicate that only a small part of the victims have been lynched for that crime. Race hatred is, without question, the foundation cause of most of this mob rule, and this fact ought to show us that our civilization has not advanced to perfection, by any manner of means. THE anti-liquor law in Little Rock, Arkansas, went into effect at midnight, December 31. That night the saloons offered bargain sales on liquor, and many were giving away packages to old customers. We are glad to see this territory added to the ranks of the prohibition states. But notwithstanding our successes in prohibitory lines, the per capita consumption of spirituous liquors is increasing year by year. What would the condition of the world be without the restraining influence of the moral power represented in our noble army of temperance workers? THE management of a big manufacturing company in New Brooklyn, Connecticut, has informed their female employees that they must discard hobbled and slashed skirts and all other forms of immodest dress, and attire themselves in a manner more becoming to modesty and more businesslike. It would be well if a similar sentiment could prevail in all business establishments throughout the country. THE postal savings banks have proved themselves very popular. California, which ranks as fifth in its postal savings deposits, has placed in these banks $5,704,636. 71,443 people in the state have availed themselves of the security afforded by the government to its depositors. AN item showing the great advancement made with the aeroplane is furnished by the plan that has been completed by the Aerial League of Paris to cross the Sahara Desert with a flotilla of aeroplanes. The distance to be traveled is approximately 1,400 miles. THE bubonic plague is spreading in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Fifty-two new cases were reported on a single day in November. The city is making vigorous efforts to place itself in a proper sanitary condition, with the hope of staying the plague. UNDER the new initiative and referendum law, the state of California has initiated a prohibitory liquor measure, to be voted on in the election next fall. She has also initiated a universal eight hour labor law. THE pipe factories in Missouri use more than 150,000 bushels of corn-cobs in making their corn-cob pipes, which are sent into all parts of the world. A YOUNG French aviator flew 13,000 miles in 39 days, and thereby won an $8,000 prize for distance flying.