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Cigarette Wars: The Triumph of "The Little White Slaver"
We live in an age when the cigarette industry is under almost constant attack. Few weeks pass without yet another report on the hazards of smoking, or news of another anti-cigarette lawsuit, or more restrictions on cigarette sales, advertising, or use. It's somewhat surprising, then, that very little attention has been given to the fact that America has traveled down this road before.
Until now, that is. As Cassandra Tate reports in this fascinating work of historical scholarship, between 1890 and 1930, fifteen states enacted laws to ban the sale, manufacture, possession, and/or use of cigarettes--and no fewer than twenty-two other states considered such legislation. In presenting the history of America's first conflicts with Big Tobacco, Tate draws on a wide range of newspapers, magazines, trade publications, rare pamphlets, and many other manuscripts culled from archives across the country. Her thorough and meticulously researched volume is also attractively illustrated with numerous photographs, posters, and cartoons from this bygone era.
Readers will find in Cigarette Wars an engagingly written and well-told tale of the first anti-cigarette movement, dating from the Victorian Age to the Great Depression, when cigarettes were both legally restricted and socially stigmatized in America. Progressive reformers and religious fundamentalists came together to curb smoking, but their efforts collapsed during World War I, when millions of soldiers took up the habit and cigarettes began to be associated with freedom, modernity, and sophistication. Importantly, Tate also illustrates how supporters of the early anti-cigarette movement articulated virtually every issue that is still being debated about smoking today; theirs was not a failure of determination, she argues in these pages, but of timing.
A compelling narrative about several clashing American traditions--old vs. young, rural vs. urban, and the late nineteenth vs. early twentieth centuries--this work will appeal to all who are interested in America's love-hate relationship with what Henry Ford once called "the little white slaver."
Until now, that is. As Cassandra Tate reports in this fascinating work of historical scholarship, between 1890 and 1930, fifteen states enacted laws to ban the sale, manufacture, possession, and/or use of cigarettes--and no fewer than twenty-two other states considered such legislation. In presenting the history of America's first conflicts with Big Tobacco, Tate draws on a wide range of newspapers, magazines, trade publications, rare pamphlets, and many other manuscripts culled from archives across the country. Her thorough and meticulously researched volume is also attractively illustrated with numerous photographs, posters, and cartoons from this bygone era.
Readers will find in Cigarette Wars an engagingly written and well-told tale of the first anti-cigarette movement, dating from the Victorian Age to the Great Depression, when cigarettes were both legally restricted and socially stigmatized in America. Progressive reformers and religious fundamentalists came together to curb smoking, but their efforts collapsed during World War I, when millions of soldiers took up the habit and cigarettes began to be associated with freedom, modernity, and sophistication. Importantly, Tate also illustrates how supporters of the early anti-cigarette movement articulated virtually every issue that is still being debated about smoking today; theirs was not a failure of determination, she argues in these pages, but of timing.
A compelling narrative about several clashing American traditions--old vs. young, rural vs. urban, and the late nineteenth vs. early twentieth centuries--this work will appeal to all who are interested in America's love-hate relationship with what Henry Ford once called "the little white slaver."
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1999
19 people want to read
About the author
Cassandra Tate
4 books3 followersA journalist, historian and author, Tate was born in Twin Falls, Idaho, grew up in Seattle, and attended the University of Washington for a year before beginning her journalism career. She worked as a reporter at the Twin Falls Times-News in Idaho and for the Elko (Nevada) News. From there she moved to the Lewiston (Idaho) Morning Tribune where she met her husband, Glenn Drosendahl, and won a yearlong Nieman Fellowship at Harvard for her environmental reporting. She was the first Idaho journalist awarded that honour.
After spending the 1976-77 academic year in Massachusetts, she and her family returned to Lewiston before moving to Seattle in 1979. Tate reviewed restaurants for the Puget Sound Business Journal, wrote for The Weekly, served as managing editor of Seattle Voice magazine and, while working as a science/medical reporter for the local Journal-American, wrote about the revival of nature at Mount St. Helens five years after the volcano erupted.
After writing op-ed pieces for The Seattle Times and magazines such as Smithsonian, she earned her bachelor’s degree at the University of Washington and stayed on to get her PhD in American history. Tate turned her doctoral dissertation into a book: “Cigarette Wars: Triumph of the Little White Slaver,” published by Oxford University Press.
She later became a major contributor to HistoryLink.org, the online encyclopedia of Washington state history. She wrote more than 200 essays for HistoryLink before turning her interest in missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman into the book “Unsettled Ground: The Whitman Massacre and its Shifting Legacy in the American West,” which was published in November 2020.
After spending the 1976-77 academic year in Massachusetts, she and her family returned to Lewiston before moving to Seattle in 1979. Tate reviewed restaurants for the Puget Sound Business Journal, wrote for The Weekly, served as managing editor of Seattle Voice magazine and, while working as a science/medical reporter for the local Journal-American, wrote about the revival of nature at Mount St. Helens five years after the volcano erupted.
After writing op-ed pieces for The Seattle Times and magazines such as Smithsonian, she earned her bachelor’s degree at the University of Washington and stayed on to get her PhD in American history. Tate turned her doctoral dissertation into a book: “Cigarette Wars: Triumph of the Little White Slaver,” published by Oxford University Press.
She later became a major contributor to HistoryLink.org, the online encyclopedia of Washington state history. She wrote more than 200 essays for HistoryLink before turning her interest in missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman into the book “Unsettled Ground: The Whitman Massacre and its Shifting Legacy in the American West,” which was published in November 2020.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 14, 2024
Doing a too much for History IA, but just enough for a love of the game
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January 19, 2009Tate talks a lot and repeats herself a lot. Maybe she's trying to really rub the point in but I think maybe she's just not that great of an editor. She could have made the book half as long and a lot more engaging. Although! I did learn a lot and finished the book for a reason. Did you know that lung cancer was virtually non-existent before the 1920s? Most doctors had never seen lung cancer before but had to go off of British reports on what it looked like. Then suddenly, in the 1920, there were 12 cases of lung cancer in a month. Also, Lucy Page Gaston, the strongest anti-cigarette crusader of the prohibition era died of throat cancer.
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December 20, 2022"They were almost everywhere: on billboards, in the movies, on the radio, in magazines and newspapers and novels. The heroes of detective novels, in particular, could scarcely move from one page to the next without searching for, taking out, lighting, inhaling deeply on, grinding out, or tossing away a cigarette. Even among nonsmokers, cigarettes were accepted as emblems of modernity and sophistication. Their place in American culture was symbolized by the president himself, Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose cigarette was a s much a part of him as his confident grin.
Cigarettes were legally restricted as well as socially stigmatized. Between 1890 and 1930, fifteen states enacted laws to ban their sale, manufacture, possession, or use, and no fewer than twenty-two other states and territories considered such legislation. By 1920, minors could legally buy cigarettes only in Virginia and Rhode Island. Many municipalities imposed further restrictions, from making it illegal for women to smoke in public, to outlawing smoking in or around school buildings, to banning certain kinds of advertising. Cigarette smokers faced discrimination in the courtroom, in the workplace, and in daily life. In 1904, for example, a New York judge ordered a woman to jail for thirty days for smoking in front of her children. A few years later, a Seattle woman won a divorce on the grounds that her husband was "a cigarette fiend." A New York woman took the precaution of requiring her fiance to sign a prenuptial agreement promising never to smoke cigarettes (he also agreed to be kind to his mother-in-law and to beat the carpets every spring without grumbling).
Cigarettes were legally restricted as well as socially stigmatized. Between 1890 and 1930, fifteen states enacted laws to ban their sale, manufacture, possession, or use, and no fewer than twenty-two other states and territories considered such legislation. By 1920, minors could legally buy cigarettes only in Virginia and Rhode Island. Many municipalities imposed further restrictions, from making it illegal for women to smoke in public, to outlawing smoking in or around school buildings, to banning certain kinds of advertising. Cigarette smokers faced discrimination in the courtroom, in the workplace, and in daily life. In 1904, for example, a New York judge ordered a woman to jail for thirty days for smoking in front of her children. A few years later, a Seattle woman won a divorce on the grounds that her husband was "a cigarette fiend." A New York woman took the precaution of requiring her fiance to sign a prenuptial agreement promising never to smoke cigarettes (he also agreed to be kind to his mother-in-law and to beat the carpets every spring without grumbling).
June 6, 2017
Cigarette Wars: The Triumph of the Little White Slaver: A review:
Cigarette Wars is about the anti-cigarette movement during the 1990's through the1940's in a detailed, but occasionally dull, way. Unlike most histories, it does not take sides on the issues raised in the history, instead, it goes on a walking tour of all the anti and pro-cigarette movements sins (including the tobacco industry)
One of the talents of Cigarette Wars is that it doesn't make you sympathize with any side and instead, shows that both sides acted unquestionably bad, and uses that to show that the way we think about the tobacco industry and the anti-cigarette movement is very, very, wrong.
It also in a metaphorical sense mocks the framing of the tobacco industry as the evil industrialists and the anti-cigarette Crusaders as God-given saviors. It also doesn't go into detail about how tobacco gives you lung cancer. Which I think is a wise choice, as it is already deeply ingrained in our culture after the cigarette trials during the 80s and 90s. As it would also be as unnecessary to talk about the extermination of the Jews during Hitler's reign, as those particular parts of the subject tend to overshadow the lesser-known parts of the issue in traditional media.
In conclusion, Cigarette Wars: The Triumph of the Little White Slaver is informative, but a sometimes boring story that should probably be read by most for a balanced view of the issue of cigarette use and abuse.
Cigarette Wars is about the anti-cigarette movement during the 1990's through the1940's in a detailed, but occasionally dull, way. Unlike most histories, it does not take sides on the issues raised in the history, instead, it goes on a walking tour of all the anti and pro-cigarette movements sins (including the tobacco industry)
One of the talents of Cigarette Wars is that it doesn't make you sympathize with any side and instead, shows that both sides acted unquestionably bad, and uses that to show that the way we think about the tobacco industry and the anti-cigarette movement is very, very, wrong.
It also in a metaphorical sense mocks the framing of the tobacco industry as the evil industrialists and the anti-cigarette Crusaders as God-given saviors. It also doesn't go into detail about how tobacco gives you lung cancer. Which I think is a wise choice, as it is already deeply ingrained in our culture after the cigarette trials during the 80s and 90s. As it would also be as unnecessary to talk about the extermination of the Jews during Hitler's reign, as those particular parts of the subject tend to overshadow the lesser-known parts of the issue in traditional media.
In conclusion, Cigarette Wars: The Triumph of the Little White Slaver is informative, but a sometimes boring story that should probably be read by most for a balanced view of the issue of cigarette use and abuse.
September 18, 2009
Excellent introduction to issues surrounding tobacco use during the turn of the century. I recommend reading this alongside Alan Brandt's The Cigarette Century for a full picture of issues surrounding tobacco use.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews