Your ShelfYour Projects

SMOKING AMONG WOMEN

17%

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Apr 25, 1906

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 32, No. 17.

Read the full edition

SMOKING AMONG WOMEN.

By Editor

It was not an uncommon thing to find women in the Eastern and Middle states in our great-grandmothers' days who smoked. They were rarer in our grandmothers' days, and were considered in the community where the writer was reared, in the old "Empire State," somewhat below par. It was the "old ladies," and nearly always the unlettered and ignorant, who smoked. No respectable young woman did it, and if, perchance, she thought of doing it, she knew she would lose standing if she mentioned it. Such sentiments were, we believe, largely general in the North and East.
But a great change is taking place. European customs are possessing society more and more. Says the New York World:
On the continent it is a common sight to see women smoking in the cafés and other public places. No up-to-date American novelist would think for a moment of admitting to his exclusive pages a Russian or Spanish beauty who did not puff at a cigaret over her card-table. The moral American audience is apt to gasp for breath if an actress adds piquancy to a scene of flirtation by nonchalantly trying to blow rings in the air. It feels that she has had only due punishment if she comes near choking in the attempt.
It is getting to be quite a common thing, we are told, in woman's clubs. And in England one of the main railway lines between London and Liverpool has "installed a smoking car for ladies." It seems almost incredible, yet it is evidently so.
Now we suppose that tobacco-using is no worse in women than in men. It is bad enough in either; but it seems worse in the sex of finer fiber. It coarsens, and cheapens, and sensualizes; it tends to strong drink and lower, baser vices. It is a mighty help on toward the demi monde and lower. When women yield to degrading or debasing practises, they are much more likely to go lower, and that more rapidly than men. "Wo worth the day!"