The Pittsburgh Press (November 26, 1946)
Love: Rise of the ‘fag’
By Gilbert Love
Dr. George Gallup’s question-askers have found that 62 percent of the American people think it’s all right for women teachers to smoke, outside the classroom.
That’s not surprising, in this day and age, but it’s a reminder that the old coffin-nail has come a long way in a fairly short period of time.
Cigarettes were first used in America shortly after the Civil War but not many of them were seen until the 1880s, when a way was found to make them by machine. Actually, they weren’t seen very often after that, in anything that approached polite society. Most people regarded them as the work of the devil. A man who smoked them (apparently nobody thought that a woman would) was regarded as little better than a dope fiend.
To discourage their use reformers spread the word that they were made of discarded cigar butts. Young folks were urged to “take the pledge” never to touch the weed, and thousands of them did. Or maybe it was millions.
Cigars, pipes and chewing tobacco were tolerated, probably because they had been around longer. Strangely enough, cigarettes rolled by hand were not viewed with quite as much alarm as the “boughten” kind.
Remember that famous ad?
Despite the opposition, or maybe because of it, the use of cigarettes steadily increased. World War I brought them out of the pool parlors and saloons. Respectable citizens began smoking them right out in front of everybody.
In 1920, Americans consumed 75 billion cigarettes. If that seems a lot, remember that consumption now is well over 300 billion a year.
In the early ‘20s, disquieting reports that women were smoking cigarettes began to be heard. “I understand she smokes,” was a frequent whispered comment.
Girls were expelled from schools and colleges for a whiff of nicotine on the breath. But the flaming youth of the period insisted upon flaming, and before long a few institutions of higher learning had set up smoking rooms in girls’ dormitories.
About this time, cigarette manufacturers took their first diffident steps toward promoting their product among women. The pictures in their advertisements began to include girls. Not smoking, of course. Just part of the background.
Then came that famous ad in which the lady urged her escort to “Blow some my way.” The inference was that, although she didn’t smoke, or at least wasn’t smoking at the time, she enjoyed the aroma.
Use of cigars declining
In 1931, a WCTU gathering in Pittsburgh passed a resolution urging school boards not to hire teachers who smoked. School officials, interviewed afterward, estimated that 30 percent of the teachers in Allegheny County schools used cigarettes, but sad they could see no harm in it as long as the teachers smoked where their pupils couldn’t see them.
Dr. Gallup, in a survey made last year, found that 33 percent of American women and 75 percent of American men were smokers. The survey didn’t include anyone under 21, nor did it include servicemen, so the percentages probably are conservative.
Forty-eight percent of the men smoked cigarettes, 22 percent pipes and 12 percent cigars. That amounts to more than 75 percent because many of them smoked tobacco in more than one form.
It is interesting to note, in passing, that while the use of cigarettes has more than quadrupled since 1920, cigar consumption has dropped from more than eight billion to a little over five billion a year, and the use of chewing tobacco has been more than cut in half. Snuff consumption, however, has increased a little.