[Sidenote: Cigarettes]
The practice school of Bodeling College was so good that large numbers
of boys and girls came out by streetcar from the neighboring large city
to attend it. These boys and girls took the cars at a convenient station
near the campus, where an enterprising business man had built a Station
Store, which furnished textbooks, stationery and refreshments, and gave
shelter in bad weather. This store was a great convenience, but the
college authorities found it also much of a nuisance, for here a group
of “smart” high school and town boys gathered, to loaf and smoke and set
a bad example to the smaller boys in many ways.
The grammar grade teachers found the cigarette evil especially hard to
deal with. The seventh and eighth grade boys, seeing their elders
swaggering about with cigarettes, imitated them freely. There were a
number of fine high school boys who did not smoke, but they rarely went
home as soon as the smokers, and so the smaller boys saw most of the
smoking set.
Miss Steele, the seventh grade teacher, went to Miss Hardy of the eighth
and they had a conference. At its close, Miss Steele announced her
program:
“I’m going to appeal to plain reason; I shall show them so clearly that
they can’t fail to understand how cigarettes hurt them in every way, and
then appeal to their sense of loyalty to themselves and their future.
When they know how cigarettes rob them of health and ability, their good
sense will dictate to them what to do.”
Miss Steele planned her campaign well. She was a large, plain,
wholesome-looking woman, a good thinker and a notable figure in all
movements for public welfare in her community. Her pupils all respected
her, and her school-room management was above criticism. She planned and
delivered now a series of talks on cigarettes, in which she explained
clearly just why they are so especially harmful to the young and what a
losing game the cigarette-smoker plays. Her pupils all listened closely,
the smokers with the rest.
When she had exhausted the subject, she asked all those who were
resolved never to smoke cigarettes to raise their hands; for she had had
successful experience with the effectiveness of a public pledge. Every
pupil in the room but one raised his hand. This one pupil was the son of
a prominent attorney, a smoker and a leader among the boys. His father
had instilled in him so keen a sense of honor that, because he did not
intend to stop, he refused to make the promise.
But in spite of this well planned campaign the smoking in the seventh
grade continued. Some of the boys, with the low ideals of honor which
characterize youthful cigarette users, had had no intentions of
stopping; others were sincere in their intentions, but yielded to
example or habit when the effects of Miss Steele’s warning grew cold. As
the stories of the failure of her efforts came to the teacher, she
became more than ever convinced that the use of cigarettes causes
unspeakable moral degradation. It did not occur to her that her method
of attacking the evil could have been a mistaken one.