Adrian High School - Sickle Yearbook (Adrian, MI)

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his friends and quite naturally, in looking around the city, they drop into some of the open smoke-houses. He sees other boys of his own age and men smoking, and in a desire to be like the rest, and to be a man, he smokes his first cigarette. By steps like these the habit is generally formed. The only way to permanently check the evil is to keep the boys that do not now use tobacco from acquiring the habit. One might just as well try to twist a rope of sand, or to make. water run up hill, as to attempt to kill out cigar- ette smoking by imposing fines, penalties, or restrictions upon those that are addicted to the habit., Such things only tend to make the boys sneaky and to encourage smoking under cover. The problem that we have got to solve, if we want to stop the spread of smoking and ultimately kill it out, is the problem of recreation. VVhat are we going to provide for the boy to do from the time he leaves school in the afternoon until he re-enters it again in the morning? The twentieth century home has failed conclusively to find something for the boy to do. It now falls upon the public to supply the missing link, and the school is the unit that must do it. It is the height of folly to argue that the boy does not need any recre- ation, and that we are already giving too much attention to it. The facts of the case are that we have given it no consideration, and what recreations the boys have found they have found for themselves, with the result that we now have too much of the trivial, inconsiderate, and the demoralizing side of recreation. The school, as a social center. which is being agitated by the broad- minded and best informed educators of today. will without a doubt in time help to solve the problem. Give the teacher the opportunity to be associated with the boys, not only in the artificial atmosphere of the classroom, but also when the boys are not under such close restraint and are enjoying themselves, and then they will be able to do something in the way of moral education. In connection with the gymnasium, let us have the play ground for the younger pupils. For the young men, let us have the pool and bil- liard tables and the bowling alleys, where they can mix and have a good social time and still be surrounded with all that is good and inspiring. ' Give the boys and girls the opportunity of having their social clubs, of holding their parties and dances, of having their amateur theatricals and stereopticon lectures, and you will soon find a higher set of ideals growing among the students, due to the fact of a closer association and understanding of their teachers. Perhaps you think that is far-fetched and that cigarette smoking has no connection with recreation, but you take any ten boys who use cigarettes,

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RECENTLY a professor in one of our leading universities said that if something wasn't done in the immediate future to stop the growth of the pernicious evil, cigarette smoking, among the boys and young men of today, that in the next two generations American manhood would no longer stand at the head of the world. One who has given the matter little thought can- not realize the vast hold tobacco has upon the youth of today. It is an ap- palling fact, but nevertheless true, that in nearly every one of the leading high schools of the state fully fifty per cent of the students use tobacco in some form. And the form that is most prevalent is cigarette smoking. Of course, the reason that cigarettes are used among the boys more than any other form of tobacco is that there is less nicotine taken directly into the body in smoking them than in smoking anything else. But every- one knows that is nothing in favor of cigarettes, as it is due to this very fact that such a large number are used by the boys. It is not my purpose to treat of the physiological evils of cigarette smoking. Volumes by more competent persons have already been written upon that subject, and any person today who stands up and claims that cigarette smoking is unharmful is casting a very serious refiection upon his own intelligence. The big problem today is how to remedy the evil. Much has already been written upon this subject also, and many ways and means of checking the evil have been expounded by different reformers. All of these, after having been tried, have met with more or less indifferent success. It has been my pleasure while in the local high school to go through two or three anti-cigarette campaigns, and it is my honest opinion at the present time, based upon what I have seen and heard while being closely associated with my schoolmates, that no permanent result nor permanent good has been accomplished by those campaigns. There -is no use in trying to cure any disease or remedy any evil until you first remove the thing that causes that disease or evil. It is generally admitted and likewise deplored that in the hurry and scurry of the twentieth century life the home is being neglected. Time is at a premium, and father and mother do not have any of it to waste. After the boy has partially grown up and reached the age of fourteen or fifteen, where he is out of the nurse's care, he receives all too little attention from his parents. He comes home from school in the afternoon and finds the house deserted. Father is at the office working, and mother is either doing the same thing or paying a society call to some neighbor. XVhat does the healthy, normal boy do, who loves friends and companions? VVhy, he goes down town. the most natural thing in the world. Here he meets some of

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ask them how they started, and they will tell you, if they are honest, that some afternoon or evening, when they didn't have anything to do, they idly strayed into some smoke-house and there smoked their first cigaretteg or, that they began when in company with some older boys, perhaps in school. Reformers can talk, preachers can preach, and teachers can make rules, but the cigarette evil will spread until someone destroys the conditions that promote its growth. What we all need to do is to quit preaching and quarrel- ing about the evils of cigarettes and to get to studying in earnest on how to check its growth. Then we will be able to make some progress against it. CLAUDE L. BENNER. I