The Cigarette-Making Machine
The "Valve World," of Chicago, expresses it about right when it says that "an American cigarette-making machine has been set going in Switzerland, that rolls out 'coffin nails' at the rate of 150 a minute, and may be speeded up to 600. Now all we need is some kind of suction-pump to enable the slaves of the habit to keep pace with the machine. Never let it be said that our mechanical ingenuity failed to meet any emergency. We must increase our consumption of cigarets, or industry and commerce will languish." That is fine irony. It comes from one of the great industrial concerns of the country. If men of the world, looking at the folly of the thing in the light of good, common sense, can come to such conclusions, with how much stronger feelings of repulsion should the Christian look upon such things! In the light of science and reason and revelation and health, and good, common sense, in this enlightened nineteenth century, the makers of cigars and the distillers of liquors ought to go out of business, or starve. They would not starve; they would find better business.