A brief yet detailed history of the fluctuating popularity of the
cigarette in America and of the reform movements dedicated to
snuffing it out. According to journalist and historian Tate, in her
first book, when James B. Duke created the modern American
cigarette industry in the 1880s, the cigarette was demonized as a
symbol of moral degeneracy. Only decadent bohemians or unwashed
immigrants smoked "coffin nails." The stigmatized cigarette was an
easy target for Progressive Era reformers. In 1899, Lucy Page
Gaston founded the Anti-Cigarette League to lobby for the
prohibition of smoking. An evangelical Protestant, Gaston forged
strong alliances with other reformist groups, such as the YMCA and
the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Attacking the cigarette as
a moral blight, Gaston deemed smoking a "gateway" vice that led to
alcoholism, narcotics addiction, gambling, and criminality. Many
industrial leaders, notably Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and John
Harvey Kellogg, refused to hire smokers because "they simply could
not be trusted." Fifteen states banned the sale of cigarettes
before 1917. Yet WWI changed everything. In sending troops to
Europe, Congress prohibited alcohol and prostitution near army
bases but allowed the "lesser evil" of cigarette smoking. Billions
of cigarettes were thus shipped overseas as army rations. The
cultural impact of this policy was immense, according to Tate,
serving to "transform what was once a manifestation of moral
weakness into a jaunty emblem of freedom, democracy, and
modernity." Throughout the postwar period and beyond, cigarettes
became identified with Hollywood glamour and the loosening of
traditional values, especially among women. Antismoking advocates
were mocked as Puritan killjoys. The cigarette had won the battle
of acceptance, but, as Tate deftly points out, the cigarette wars
continue, with medicine rather than morality now leading the
assault. An entertaining account of a little-known episode in
American cultural history, and a keen reminder that the
ever-embattled cigarette has risen from its ashes more than once.
(Kirkus Reviews)
Cigarette Wars is a meticulously researched, engagingly written history of the first anti-cigarette movement in America, 1880 to 1930, when cigarettes were both legally restricted and socially stigmatized. Progressive reformers and religious fundamentalists often came together to condemn smoking, but their efforts failed after the First World War, when millions of soldiers smoked and smoking began to be associated with freedom and modernity. Early anti-cigarette movement activities articulated virtually every issue that is still being debated about smoking today. Theirs was not a failure of determination but of timing.
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