Article April 25, 1925 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from John H. Kellogg, M. E. O'Brien, Mary Diane Hills, W. B. Jordan, Albert Currie Horsman

[Dr. John H. Kellogg, in the Literary Digest, New York, New York, Nov. 22, 1924]

A hundred years ago smokers were still so much in the minority, and smoking was so little popular, that smoking upon the streets was not allowed in Boston. Violators of the law were arrested. Even smoking on the Boston Common was not allowed, except on the top of a certain mound southwest of the music field, a place known as "Smokers' Circle." The Smokers' Circle was still maintained as late as the middle of the last century, but now the situation is reversed. Smoking has become so nearly universal among men, the few nonsmokers are practically ignored and their rights are trampled upon. Even in our institutions of learning, where students should be trained in correct bodily habits as well as in sound mental and moral habits, smoking has become a veritable institution, and is so strongly entrenched that college authorities have, for the most part, abandoned all attempt at control. One college president has recently published an appealing little tract entitled, "Why I am Opposed to Compulsory Smoking."

It seems to be high time that educators, especially the ruling authorities of colleges and universities, should take a stand against a practice which in recent years has come to be a menace physically, mentally, and morally to American manhood, and is even threatening an attack upon American womanhood. We are glad to note that a few colleges still maintain a defensive attitude against tobacco. We find in the Bulletin of Taylor University [Upland, Indiana] the following paragraph with reference to the use of tobacco: "The tobacco habit being such a ubiquitous vice, condoned in so many schools, Taylor has been forced to fence against it with an inflexible rule. No exceptions are made. Students who claim the privilege to attend Taylor and use tobacco or cigarettes during vacation or holidays are not desired. Our custom is, retirement on first violation of this rule. Dismissal for the use of tobacco is not expulsion, since the average school admits tobacco users. They are simply permitted to withdraw. Young men who have formed this habit should quit and try themselves out a few months before coming to Taylor and thus avoid falling under a temptation which would hurt them and embarrass us."

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