The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. NationNation, Carry Amelia
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The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation
Nation, Carry Amelia
Nation, Carry Amelia, 1846-1911; Social reformers -- United States -- Biography; Temperance -- United States
The tobacco user can never be the father of a healthy child. Therefore
he is dangerous for a woman to have as a husband. If I were a
young woman, I would say to the men who use tobacco and who would
wish to converse with me: "Use the telephone; come no closer!" I
would as soon kiss a spittoon as to kiss such a mouth. When a man
begins to smoke he is taking his first lessons in drink. The two habits
travel together.
A man never can attain his majority and use tobacco. He never can
realize his full capabilities or his possibilities. He can always attain to a
better standard without nicotine.
There is one objection that, from a business standpoint, every business
man ought to make to tobacco. When he employs a man that uses
tobacco he gets only a certain per cent. of his employee's time and of his
brain, because the employee must serve his tobacco master part of his
time and when he is not smoking his mind is preoccupied because he is
thinking of smoking. Consequently, he cannot concentrate his mind upon
his business.
I have heard poor, silly, empty-headed women say that it is manly
to smoke. If it is manly to smoke, why isn't it womanly to smoke? The
tobacco habit is the reverse of manhood and destroys manhood, for manhood
means strength of character, not the gratification of lust.
If tobacco is good for men, it is also good for women. I do not
suppose that one could find a man so low and degraded as to walk down
the street with a woman who had a cigarette or cigar in her mouth.
Women should make the same standard for men that men do for women.
Many women would smoke in public if men did not denounce it. MEN
WOULD QUIT SMOKING IN PUBLIC IF WOMEN DENOUNCED
IT AS MUCH.
I have heard some women say, "I like the smell of a good cigar."
I never smelled a good one. It is not made. They are like snakes; they
are all bad. I never knew of but one good use that tobacco was put to,
and that was to kill lice on cows. My father used it for that purpose on
his farm. It does kill that kind of germs.
The evil has become so common that whenever you go abroad you
are compelled to breathe the contents of somebody else's month. It
would be rude of me to take a piece of fruit out of my mouth and throw
it into somebody else's mouth, but anyone may throw his poisonous
breath and smoke into my mouth and I have no defense. Spitting is
forbidden in the cars. Smoking is a great deal worse, but the reason why
it is not denounced is that people can get a revenue from men's smoking,
while they have to clean up after spitters, and there is no money in that.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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