SMOKING IN AMERICA.

Inangahua Times, Volume X, Issue 1503, 30 January 1885, Page 2

SMOKING IN AMERICA.

While the practice of smoking, notwithstanding parental vigilance. the warnings of a Ltrge proportion of the faculty, and the well meant efforts of Aiti-Tobacco Associations, ha* m-id^ gigantic strides in Great Britain, a corresponding development of the usage has Ukeu pla -e in th« United States, where, according to some interesting statistics lately published. there were manufactured, in the year 1883, no fewer than tUrnv thousand and seven million* four hundred and ninety-four thousand and fifty-seven cigars, in addition to six hundred and forty millions of cigarettes, yielding to the revenue a total of nearly sight** a millions of dollars in taxation. As for < Him cigars, the bulk of these products are of the kind known as " domestics," and albeit made of genuine toliac* >, are not so skilfully manufactured a*, with a few exceptions, to suit the taste of the Eiirop«*aii, the Cnbao, or the South Aiuericrtii smoker. In tin* States, agnin, the affluent, in the fact of a protective tariff of the aimt atHictive orde'\ demand the choicest of H ivana cigars. A modest •' Londrvs" I of an approved Havana brand is held | in New York or Boston or io Chicago i to l>e cheap at twenty five cents, or on* shilling sterling while in San Francitco as much as halt' or tluw-quarters of a dollar will he sfivmi witliont mack lumiuaring fora '* Ikg»lia Britannia. It is in the article of cigarettes that the expansion of the American hmmm trade in manufactured tobacco has been most remarkable. Eight year* ago only eight millions of rigir.-ttes were manufactured in the Sittra ; an I even this insignificant aggregate «H an increase ofmoiv than throe ban r • P'>r cent, over the amon!>tmanalact«rtd in any lonuer year. Last year tot \I nuubc ofci'^arettesmanofactwrod had risen to the colossal figure of six hundred and foity millions. Of tliac niiiiilier only forty miliio'is were exported, so that the enormous quantity of six hiimlrt'd millions remained for hoiM consumption. As regards the nomWr of cigarettes imported into the. Unitorl States, it is comparatively small, and' is said to be annualy diminishing. It would be exceeding difficult to appor tion these six hundred million* of cigarettes among the classes most likely to srank* them yfor although in the Southern States of the Union the negtesses frequently smoke, the wbtto female population are universal^ abstainers from the weed. The Aiterican ladies am, as a rah*, fiercely intolerant of smoking, which carried on ra their presence is considerrd to>« M outrage on decorum. An itumen** proportion of the population oftho United States most thus be at onco set down as uonconsnmersof cigareUos ir, indeed, of tol>acco in any shape Ot form. Inquiry is baffled as to the a umber of American cititens who •out rive to use np six hundred millions >f cigarettes in the course of a year, jimply Lecan c it is altogether nu» >os*i >U to ascertain at whit age he> Atut-rit-ai) hoy ■ e^i •■ to swoksw v