THE TOBACCO SCAVENGER by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jan 2, 1907

THE TOBACCO SCAVENGER.

By Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Cigaret Smoking.

IN Paris I saw a sight that saddened a beautiful hour for me. Under the restaurant window where I sat, a wretched man and a boy passed. The boy's body was dwarfed and he was hollow-chested and stoop-shouldered. His face was clay-colored and his eyes were utterly devoid of expression. He was searching along the pavement where men lounged, smoking and drinking their coffee or other beverages and presently he reached down with a sharp-pointed cane which he carried, and eagerly fished up a stub of a cigar from the dust of the pavement.

Then he indicated another to the ragged, soiled, and wretched-looking man behind him, who secured it, and the two passed on.

They were tobacco scavengers, who scour the streets of Paris for the stubs of cigars and cigarets and sell them to manufacturers of smoking tobacco and cigarets. These stubs, taken from the dust and saliva of the street, are dried and chopped

and sold to young boys and other patrons of the cheap cigaret and pipe.

The scavenger himself was a walking poster, proclaiming the effect of cigaret-smoking on the undeveloped body and mind.

His face haunted me for days after I saw him.

Not over sixteen years old, yet life is blighted and ruined for him, his intelligence clouded, his body stunted.—Ella Wheeler Wilcox.