From penalizing excessive use and prohibiting moderate use in business hours, it is a short cut to choosing men who never use tobacco and thus never suffer any of its effects and never exhibit any of its offensive evidences. No young man expects to obtain a favorable hearing if he offers himself for employment while smoking or chewing tobacco. Business men dislike to receive tobacco-scented messengers. Cars and elevators contain signs prohibiting lighted cigars or cigarettes. Insurance companies reject men who show signs of excessive use of tobacco. Why? Because they are apt to die before their time. The Interborough Rapid Transit Company of New York City rejects applicants for motormen and conductors "for excessive or long-continued use of tobacco." Why? Because, other things being equal, such men are more apt to lose their nerve in an emergency and to fail to read signals or instructions correctly. Armed with these weapons against tobacco, parents and teachers can effectively introduce physiological arguments against excessive use, against use by those who suffer from nervous or heart trouble, and against any use whatever by those who have not reached physical maturity. By avoiding physiological arguments that children will not--cannot--believe contrary to their own eyes, parents and teachers are able to speak dogmatically of that which children will believe,--injuries to children, evils of excess, restrictions as to time and place, and offensiveness to nonsmokers. But even here it is wrong, as it is inexpedient, to leave the physical strength of the next generation to the persuasive power of parents and teachers or to the faith and knowledge of minors. Society should protect all minors against their own ignorance, their own desires, the ignorance of parents and associates, and against the economic motive of tobacco sellers by machinery that enforces the law. CHAPTER XXXVII THE PATENT-MEDICINE EVIL "Dhrugs," says Dock O'Leary, "are a little iv a pizen that a little more iv wud kill ye. Ye can't stop people fr'm takin' dhrugs, an' ye might as well give thim somethin' that will look important enough to be inthrojuced to their important and fatal cold in th' head. If ye don't, they'll leap f'r th' patent medicines. Mind ye, I haven't got annything to say agin' patent medicines. If a man wud rather take them thin dhrink at a bar or go down to Hop Lung's f'r a long dhraw, he's within his rights. Manny a man have I known who was a victim iv th' tortures iv a cigareet cough who is now livin' comfortable an' happy as an opeem fiend be takin' Dr. Wheezo's Consumption Cure." The Dock says th' more he practices medicine th' more he becomes a janitor with a knowledge iv cookin'. He says if people wud on'y call him in befure they got sick he'd abolish ivry disease in th' ward except old age and pollyticks.