The Camden chronicle. (Camden, S.C.) 1888-1981, October 26, 1923, Image 2
The fifth annua! convention of Un
American Legion opened officially
in San Francisco on Monday. Fifteen
thousand or more legionuireti from ull
over the country were on hand for'
the opening of the convention. '
UNLESS you strip a good
cow she will go dry, and un
less you constantly add to
your account here it will not
grow.
Loan & Savings Bank
CAPITAL $100,000.00
4 Per Cent. Paid on Savings Deposits
A Checking Account
Is a Recognised Convenience
It saves unnumbered annoyances. It is the
judge and jury when arguments arise re
garding paid bills. The check is irrefuta
ble evidence; its testimony is absolute.
The First National Bank is an institution
of many years stnding . It enjoys the con
fidence of its customers and community.
It welcomes checking accounts ? large or
small ? and assures every assistance con
sistent with safe and equitable banking
methods.
Just Received
CAR LOAD
OF FINE
Youn
MUL
PRICES RIGHT
Springs & Sh annon
(Incorporated.)
Corn Oats Hay
TOHACCO'H MONEY TOIJ..
Itise of Cigar(t MarkM Most Extliided
(irowlli.
Robert Kenton, in The Dearborn In
dependent.
Two billions of dollars a year for
tobacco! And this doesn't include the
indirect com!, via soil depletion, drain
o.p pfflcjency, ill health, shortened
1 iv(*V
Hdoxe at its pre -Volstead worst
look a. direct toll from national econo
my of only a little more than a billion
and a bait' dollars. And .Jdhn Barley
corn's indirect levies, HO gross in form
that they were easily visualized, weiv
less, say some students of the sub
ject, then art- Lady Nicotine's more
subtly taken indirect tribute today.
For the tobacco-using habit has
grown in America during recent years
as i^ever before since Sir Walter
Raleigh introduced it to the civilized
world. Most forms of its use have in
creased rapidly, blut the rise of the
cigaret marks the most extended
growth in tobacco consumption in
this country. In the last twenty years
cigaret smoking among us has in
creased by more than 2,000 per cent.
The economics of the tobacco-using
habit have received very little atten:
tion from students and 'commentators
of the subject. As with alcohol; un
til the light of economic truth em
blazoned the roadway to national pro
hibition, the use of tobacco has been
treated more or less emotionally by
both its friends and its critics. King
James I, tobacco's first strong oppo
nent, denounced it in' virulent but only
rhetorical terms. So did others who
in the early days tried to prevent its
spread. They decried it. as filthy, un
becoming, un-Christian rather than as
costly. . ? i ? ? ?
The approximately 1,000,000 per
sons whose time is given to cultivat
ing tobacco on the farms are only
about one-half the number of all the
persons in the country who are en
gaged in seeing that our pipes are
filled, our cigarettes rolled, and our
cigars and plugs made of easy access
in more than 10,000 stores devoted
exclusively to the sale of tobacco pro
ducts.
In 1921 almost 150,000 persons were
engaged solely in the manufacturing
of cigars and cigarets alone, their
salaries and wages aggregating $120,
000,000. The number was smaller
than in 1010 or 1014, when prior cen
suses were taken. This is due, no
doubt, to increasing use of machinery,
for the wholesale price value of the
output of these workers' toil rose
from $.'*14,884,000 in 1014 to $806,
740,000 in 1021. This in turn was due
in some measure to a heightened level
of values; but as will be shown, it is
owing in great part to extraordinary
spread of the use of tobacco among
the people of this country. When you
add to the figures above the profits of
retailers you will find that, we are
now spending nearly one and a half
billion dollars a year for cigars and
eigarets alone.
? They are the chief forms of tobacco
used in this country, but older forms
hold on as a whole and grow with te
nacity that is astonishing.
Only one form, insofar as the wri
ter's researches show, has ever pass
ed out or even receded. It is the an
cient classical one of sniffing snufT,
that is, of inhaling powdered tobacco
through the nostrils. ' Snuffing boxes
still adorn the desks of United States
senators, but the practice of sniffing
pinches of the stuff long ago became
obsolete.
But wo art- consuming more snuff
than ever before. Last year, for ex
ample, it took nearly It), 000, 000
pounds of it to satisfy our craving for
tobacco in that form. The consump
tion of snulT has increased by 7,000,
000 pounds in the last ten years. The
humble folk who use it now pay $7,
000,000 a year in taxes, for the
privilege of ''dipping."
The plug holds on but nut so well
as the snuff box; there has been a
slight decline in the use of chewing
and smoking tobacco. These kinds
are so interchangeable that no statis
tical line can be drawn between them,
all t he decline probably has been in
the realm of the "chew." which has
become less fashionable than it was of
yore. However, of l>?>th smoking
and chewing tobacco wo now consume
plus exports, abeut 4OO.000.000
pounds a year. approximately four
pounds for every man. woman and
ihitd m the country.
The consumption of cigars has just
about held its own during the last ten
years. Of them we now consume ap
proximately 10,000,000,000 a year.
Cigars probably have given way
slightly to cigarets, which appear,
however, to have hewn out a new but
extensive field for tobacco in this
t ount ry.
The older forms of tobacco use ? es
pecially those expectorative ones
which so roiled Mrs. Trollope and
Charles Dickens ? have been with us
since the Indians acquainted our an
cestors with the ''weed."
But of cigarets we knew nothing,
until they we r? introduced into this
country by foreign visitors to the
Centennial exposition <|t Philadelphia
in 1 H7t>. No habit ever progressed
over such protest as that made in
America for a half-century against
the "fad". The onslaughts of its' op
(k.ihiiIs eKC?tdl3 ih IwT,?n(l viru
lone^ til# pronunciamontos* of King#
and i > < ? i > ? : against iobiic?o >?? ijie
seventeenth century.
Yet tho cigaret went ahead steadily
ami stnrtlingly. Twenty years ago,
however, we managed to get along
with ^,000,000,000 ready-made ciga
rets a year. Today we are consuming
between 50 and 60 billion factory
rolled cigarets in addition to many
billions of the "roll-your-own" vari
ety. Since 1014 the smoking of ciga
rets has quadrupled in volume, cpn
Kumption increasing at the rate of
about ten billions a year.
Kvery year now in America then;
are smoked from 500 to 600 ready
made cigarets ftfr every man, woman
and child in the country.
How much of this, is duo to the
adoption of .the habit by large num
bers of girls and women is a matter
purely $f speculation; no doubt, how
ever, it is considerable.
It is impossible to estimate the
volume of <?roll-your-own" variety of
cigaret smoking that is done in thin
country. Books orf cigaret papers con
taining iiot more than twenty-live
sheets are not taxed; hence there are
no statistics on production. Yet
enough of the other kind were made
and sold last year to yield more than
$1,000,000 in federal taxes, . thougn
most of the taxable cigaret papers
used in this country are imported.
The money cost of the nation s cig-f
arets, and all tobacco, too ,is well
illustrated by a comparason drawn in
a speech made in Tennessee a year or
two ago by Dr. P. P. Claxton, then
chief of the United vStates bureau of
education.
"Pt jrorof hs in the United States j
last year/' he said, "cost the smokers
more than was spent for teachc-i *
salaries in all grades of schools and
universities. The entire country spent
three-fifths as much for education as
for tobacco, and Tennessee spent one
fifth as much for education as for to
bacco."
Our tobacco bill now exceeds the
value of all the metals taken from our
mines; it is -twice the present farm
price value of the wheat crop, almost
equal the corn cropland is about the
same as the value of all the cotton
grown in the country.
Hut this is the direct toll. Unly
some parts of the indirect cost ot to
bacco are reducible to figures. One of
these is fires caused by smokers.
According to authoritative figures
there were destroyed between 191 1
and 1021 by, fires originated by care
less smokers dwelling houses having
a total value of $l5,k24,508.
According to persons who collect
national statistics on the subject,
careless smokers cause the destruc
tion by fire of more than $165,000
worth of property a week, giving ori
gin to 6.6 per cent of all fires occur
ing in the country. Among them have
been some of the most distressing lire
disasters, such as the one oecuiiing a
few years ago in Birmingham, New
York, in which sixty-two women and
girls were burned to death and fifty
others seriously injured.
The fire cause rated as "Matches
Smoking" now leads al others used in
statistics dealing with the subject.
Tobacco's greatest indirect eco
nomic toll however, is in the reduction
of human efficiency caused by its use.
This opens up the age-old question of
whether with the average person to
bacco's harmful effects are offset in
any way by helpful contributions.
In the main this phase of the ques
tion has been dealt with chiefly By
emotional and rhetorical processes.
Professors of many of the world s
most capable minds and hands have
been inveterate users of tobacco, and
some of them have defended it stoutly.
But they have defended it generally
only from the safe emotional back- j
ground that poets and other imagmt- ;
live writers have adumbrated peans of :
praise for both nicotine and alcohol - j
from the same wordy background !
from which both nicotine and alcohol j
usually have been attacked as well.
However, within recent yeais -r'
eral laboratory experiments h:iv J
thrown considerable scientific light ? - rv j
the subject. And virtually ail the j
evidence thus evolved, it mu>t Ik a<i
mitted, weighs against the use of tu ;
baoo in any form. j
In its isue of May, l'.M 1, the Kffi? -
iency Magazine published the follow i
ing:
"As the result of a series of experi
ments bv Dr. A. I). Hush it has boon ;
ascertained that tobacco smoking
causes a decrease of 10.5 per cent in
mental efficiency. There wan a series
of 120 tests on each of fifteen men
several (liferent psysic fields. Th
men who volunteered for the tests
were all medical students ranging in
age from twenty-one to thirty-two j
years, of varying previous experience, '
from the farm laborer to the life-long
student. The subjcct* werr attrnri rtv.vi ?
at the University of Vermont, where
Dr. Bush is an instructor in physiolo- ?
gy"
FOKGKKY CASES NOl. PBOSSED.
Milton l,yle Had Appealed to Supreme
Court and (.'ranted New Trial.
Aiken, Get. 10.- The moat surprise
iViK feature of thin week's Aiken court
of general sessions came late th'S
afternoon, when the eases against
Sam Padgutt, J. C, Westbury and Mil
ton I .y If, charged with conspiracy, tho
latter having already been convicted
about 1 months ago of passing forg<yl,
checks on three Aiken banks, wore
nolpfossed.
The supreme courrt to which Lyle's
attorneys appealed, had recently
granted a new trial and it was in view
of this decision that this action came.
A satisfactory adjustment of the civil
differences between the banks and the
three defendants was arranged and,
too, Mrs. Sam Padgett, who was ar
rested in Augusta with the throe de
fendants, after the Aiken banks had
been fleeced, has relinquished and re
leased Ml right to bring any damage
suit against the banks. The lawyers
representing all parties presented the
petition to nolpross to the solicitor
this afternoon, who, in turn, pre
sented it to Judge Featherstone. The
judge said that the action of the su
preme court would probably keep the
banks from getting a conviction and
it would cost the county about $3,000
to try the case, therefore the petition
was granted. ^
The conspiracy trial was booked to
I'unie before the court here next Tues
day. More than ordinary interest has
been attached to this, in view of the
former trial of Milton Lyle, in April
of 1022.
The forged checks were passed here
January 12, 1022. Sheriff HowJ&d
holds warrants for Lyle from Georgia
authorities, to whom he will answer.
J. Cr Westbury will also answer an
indictment by a Newberry bank. The
lawyers representing the defendants
are W. M. Smoak, H. E. Gyle? and
Claude E. Sawyer. P. F. Henderson,
who represented the banks, assisted
Solicitor Gunter.
R. B. Kincaid, white, constructioa
boss, charged with the murder of Cal
vin Hightower, negro laborer, last
May, who was on trial yesterday, had
a verdict .from the jury today of not
guilty.
The negro, Tom Hill, who killed his j
brother, John Hill, near IlaskiU's
dairy, in this county, some time in the
spring, was* convicted this afternoon
of manslaughter.
When Annie, the wife of Michael
Harnauge, of Rah way, N. Y., asked
him for food for herself and her five
children, all under 10 years of age, he
struck her in the back, with a rfleat
i cleaver, inflicting, a vfcry serious
wound.
Mary B. Talbert, one of the most
prominent negro women in the coun
try and former president of the Nat
ional Association of Colored Women's
clubs, died in Buffalo, N. Y., Friday.
HONOR ROLL FOR flBST MONTH
At The Charlotte Thompson
V School.
First Gmde? Mary Brown, K.niily
Ives, Marietta Thompson.
Second (J rude? Charles Janu s.
| Third Grade ? Elisabeth Gillis, !>0ra
Mathis, Mary Lindsay Pearce.
Fourth Grade? Louise Jame*,
Need ham Pittman, -Marguerite Croft,
Huth Dixon. .
Fifth Grade--? Miriam Hill, Kli^. ?
beth Workman, Hlanding Claikson.
| Sixth tirade ? Robert n.ukson,
Sara Davis, Henrietta Irby, Elizabeth
Jamos, E?J*. Mathis, Maureen Sowell.
Seventh Grades ? Nellie Dixon, Kva
Irby, Mae James, Thelma Pearce.
Eighth Grade ? Mae Burgess, Alex
ander Olarkson, Howard James,
Frank So>vell.
Ninth Grade ? Ellen Deas Boykin,
Leonoru James, LeNoir Sanders, Lau
rie Workman. .
Tenth Grade ? Virginia Owens.
Eleventh Grade- ? T. J. Brown, Jr.,
Charlie Bruce, Kate Dixon, J. T. Mc
Leod, Hawkins Watson,
New York city is raising a fund of
$250,000 to defray the expenses of the
next Democratic national convention,
which it is hoping to land for Gotham,
"One 'Bang' in the
Fall Makes the
Whole World
Grin"
?j! ; ? ?'
Because every regular
feller knows his days of
re^l sport have come
p. gain.
As usua'l ? our sport
goods department is
completely stocked with
guns, ammunition, sup
plies and equipment for
hunters. Priced right,
too !
"They're flying, boys.
Come down and hear
what the regulars have
to say about places to
get 'em."
Mackey
Mercantile
Company
B. (I. SANDERS
T. K. TROTTER
KERSHAW FARM LANDS.
Are advancing* in price. We have several
desirable farms for sale at rock bottom
prices, if taken by Nov. 1st.
ALSO, several well located residences, on
which the prices are right and terms can be
arranged. See us.
CAMDEN REAL ESTATE EXCHANGE
"We Sell Lots"
Phone 226 Office Bruce Building
$1,000.00
Will be Your
REWARD
For carrying ten shares in this Association, paying
ten dollars regularly per month for 6 1-2 years.
START NOW!
6 ?0 On Savings
Fidelity Building & Loan Association
W. F. NETTLES President G. A. RHAME, Vice President
J. IT. "WALLACE, Secretary-Treasurer .
Of fie* m People* Bank, ?26 Broad Street.