by Allan Brandt
The use of cigarettes within the military became a crucial battleground. On the one hand, the military represented conventional nineteenth-century views of discipline, morality, and health as well as the conviction that the state had the essential responsibility of protecting “manhood” from vice and decay. The cigarette, like alcohol, was often seen as undermining the control essential to military discipline. Delinquent boys with cigarettes hanging from their mouths did not project a desirable image of military decorum. On the other hand, tobacco had long been seen as an important element of the military experience. As military officials debated the increasing ubiquity of cigarettes in their units, soldiers vigorously defended their presence.
In 1907, Surgeon General Presley Marion Rixey of the Navy recommended that sailors under the age of twenty-one be prohibited from smoking. Enlisted men were quick to protest. An underage recruit explained:If this cigarette recommendation is made the rule and such a thing is ordered, it’s going to put us young fellows who like them on the beam. It’s all right to talk about your cigars and your pipes, but cigarettes are cigarettes, and when you once get to liking the little sticks there’s nothing that can take their place. Then don’t forget that life on the ocean, with none of your women folks or girl friends around to break the monotony, is a lot different from life ashore, and I tell you those dreamsticks help you to pass away many a dreary and homesick hour.28
By the time the United States entered World War I, opposition to smoking in the military was increasingly restrained.29 The campaign against tobacco, which had played on dominant chords of late nineteenth-century culture, now appeared prudish and out of tune with the moment. In the face of war’s bloodshed, the traditional notions that a prohibition on tobacco protected the troops from moral harm and health risks seemed frivolous. Ideas like deferred gratification and self-discipline were eviscerated by the violence of combat. “The men who for us have so long breathed the battle-smoke are to be defended from the dangers of tobacco smoke,” noted one critic of the anticigarette campaign. “We might as well discuss the perils of gluttony in a famine as those of nicotine on a battlefield.”30
The moral threat of the cigarette suddenly seemed tame and anachronistic, and smoking seemed positively safe compared to the profound violence confronting the men overseas. The heroes of the American Expeditionary Forces could hardly be viewed as delinquent and degenerate for smoking. When General Pershing was asked what the nation could do to assist in the war, he issued his famous plea to the home front: “You ask me what we need to win this war. I answer tobacco, as much as bullets.”31 Soon the very groups, such as the YMCA, that had stood at the center of cigarette opposition found themselves eagerly distributing them near the front and basking in the popularity of this largesse. Few transformations in our culture are so vividly clear as the shift from the bitter opposition to cigarette smoking voiced by the YMCA before the war and its enthusiasm for distributing cigarettes during the war. Many YMCA workers returned from their outposts in France as dedicated smokers.32
Despite these volunteer efforts, cigarettes were often in short supply and sold to the troops at a premium. Reports circulated widely that the YMCA and Salvation Army canteens were making a profit selling cigarettes to the troops. Soldiers complained that the YMCA, a major supplier, often charged fifteen cents a pack—the same price as in the United States. Dr. John R. Mott, general secretary of the YMCA, denied that the organization was making any money on tobacco and insisted that in many instances, especially at the front, tobacco and coffee were distributed for free.33 Although soldiers could purchase packs of eight at the military commissaries, these were often inaccessible.34
The collection and distribution of cigarettes became a way for those on the home front to demonstrate their support for, and solidarity with, the boys in France. Volunteers organized smoke funds to collect donations to assure that the troops had adequate supplies of cigarettes. The “Sun Fund” amassed 137 million cigarettes in a two-month period. “Tobacco may not be a necessary of life, in the ordinary sense of that term,” explained the New York Times, “but certainly it lightens the inevitable hardships of war as nothing else can do.”35 The National Cigarette Service Committee collected the names of soldiers without families to make sure they received cigarettes. Volunteers prepared packages for shipment to the troops under the auspices of groups such as the Army Girls Transport Tobacco Fund.36
Getting the donated cigarettes to the boys on the front, however, proved difficult. The New York Times reported: “We know there are hundreds of patriotic American societies, clubs, and individuals raising funds for smoke comforts for our soldiers. They know the difficulties they are encountering in getting these smoke comforts to our boys ‘over there.’”37 In May 1918, the War Department agreed to assume the responsibility of equitable distribution, issuing tobacco rations. “A wave of joy swept through the American Army today,” noted the New York Times. “This step has been long hoped for by the soldiers and recommended by all officers from corporal to General Pershing.” 38 The tobacco ration was set at four-tenths of an ounce per day (with papers) or four ready-made cigarettes. At the height of the tobacco shortage, the government decided to take the entire output of Bull Durham for distribution to the troops.39 For those back home, denied their cigarettes, the Times suggested, “There is a remedy! Enlist and all will be well!”40
Opponents of the cigarette now appeared petty and vindictive. As one opinion piece from 1919 stated:As for the poor fellows lying mangled in shell holes or in field and evacuation hospitals, with life slowly ebbing away from a body soon to become dreamless dust—who would be heartless enough to “prohibit” this last and only solace.41
Writing in retrospect, one commentator described the effect of the war on attitudes toward cigarettes: “Five million men, physically the flower of American manhood, were invited into a maelstrom of hardship, deprivation, danger and destruction. Smokers and non-smokers alike were collected and thrown haphazard into the field. Some young non-smokers witnessed husky, healthy and hard-boiled cigarette smokers. Cigar and pipe smokers with a grudge against the ‘fags’ found their prejudice slipping away. The general tendency was aided by the exigencies of the new and strange existence. . . . [T]he last vestiges of opprobrium that public understanding had not already removed were dissolved in the training camps and trenches.”42 The war radically reconfigured Victorian notions of risk and danger. The risks of smoking could only be known in context, and in this setting they looked very minor indeed.
Amidst the deprivations of war, cigarettes were high on the list of “realizable desires.”43 The camaraderie of war came to be symbolized in the sharing of a cigarette, a new commodity of morale. Finding a cigarette for a wounded soldier was an act of tender generosity in the “brotherhood of the front.”44 Supporting such acts was a matter of patriotism: Bull Durham tobacco came out with the slogan, “When our boys light up, the Huns will light out.”45 As one commentator explained:The difference between the old army and the new was strikingly illustrated by the difference in their choice of tobacco. The soldier of the old army was most strongly addicted to the use of that unlovely article known as “plug”—thereby giving steady employment to the spittoon-makers. The men of our new armies, however, expressed an overwhelming preference for the cigarette. Thus does tobacco gauge the progress of civilization.46
Cigarettes were the “modern” tobacco for this “modern war.”
World War I would mark a critical watershed in establishing the cigarette as a dominant product of modern consumer culture. Rather than interrupting the rise of the consumer culture, the Great War accelerated it. In retrospect, promotion and patterns of use among servicemen during the war confirmed that the cigarette would not be, as Duke had feared, a mere fad. Promotional efforts, tightly tied to wartime patriotism and morale, proved impressively successful in transforming a popular, if marginal, product and behavior into a cultural idiom. Moreover, the wartime smoking experience would demonstrate a
central aspect of cigarette smoking: it is a behavior that is powerfully reinforcing, both biologically and psychologically. Soldiers returned home committed to the cigarette.
The rise in popularity during the war had been preceded by an intensification in promotion. In the aftermath of the dissolution of the American Tobacco Trust in 1911, advertising budgets skyrocketed as each company fought for its share of a growing cigarette market.47 One year prior to the breakup, the U.S. Commission of Corporations estimated total tobacco advertising expenditures at around $13 million, with cigarettes accounting for approximately one-third. Two years after dissolution, cigarette advertising alone would account for $13 million. As other forms of tobacco consumption declined in the years before World War I, demand for cigarettes rose dramatically. Although the new market for cigarettes cannot be ascribed only to increased advertising, corporate promotion was certainly effective in both channeling tobacco use to the cigarette and recruiting those previously uninitiated to tobacco. Even though cigarette makers emphasized differences in the production and taste of their respective products, they realized that they were at the mercy of the subjectivity of “taste.” And that taste depended as much on the consumer culture as on the blend of tobacco.
The “Coming of the Camel” campaign, sponsored by the Reynolds Tobacco Company, marked the first signs of what was to follow. Reynolds had never acceded to participation in the Tobacco Trust, and although Duke eventually acquired two-thirds of the company’s outstanding stock, its founder and president, R. J. Reynolds, refused to cooperate and even worked to promote the legal case against the Trust. When the Trust was broken, he resolved to crush Duke. “Watch me and see if I don’t give Buck Duke hell,” he reportedly announced upon hearing of the Supreme Court decision.48 Whereas his company’s primary market had been plug, in the waning days of the Trust he introduced a new cigarette, Red Kamel. The brand failed, but Reynolds liked the name, and in 1913 he brought out a new cigarette, now simply called Camels. A tobacco connoisseur, Reynolds combined bright, white burley with a sprig of Turkish tobacco to produce a “blended” cigarette, with a mild taste that closely resembled more costly options. Priced at ten cents a pack, it competed well with more expensive brands and still turned a profit given its use of cheaper domestic tobaccos.49 The apparent mildness of Camels was developed to create mass appeal. To help distinguish it from its competition, Reynolds offered no promotions. “Smokers realize that the value is in the cigarettes and do not expect promotions or coupons,” he explained.50 Against Duke’s earlier advertising devoted to these now traditional promotional devices, Reynolds went modern.
Reynolds committed unprecedented advertising money to promote this single product, creating a national campaign to make the Camel cigarette a truly national brand. In 1914, newspapers throughout the country ran ads several days in succession that announced simply, “The Camels are coming.” These were followed by a second wave of ads proclaiming, “TOMORROW there’ll be more in this town than all of Asia and Africa combined.” Creating such expectations—and their fulfillment—would become a central technique of modern consumer advertising. The third ad portraying the Camel cigarette package read “Camel cigarettes ARE HERE.” This advertising campaign—and here the term campaign appropriately reflects the strategic technique—met with unprecedented success.
Between its introduction in 1913 and 1915, Camel became the first truly national cigarette brand. By the end of the war, it had climbed to the top of sales. With market share determining what brands of cigarettes the government bought for soldiers during the war, Camel, now accounting for over one-third of the U.S. cigarette market, received a significant boost.51 By 1918, with Camel holding such a significant part of the overall cigarette market, that massive promotion was no longer required, Reynolds cut his advertising budget. Camel was soon joined by two other competitive national brands, the handiwork of the other two dominant companies after the breakup of the Trust, American Tobacco and Liggett & Myers. Each also came to rely on an intensive advertising campaign similar to Reynolds’s Camel campaign. By the mid-1920s, the three firms commanded over 80 percent of the cigarette market, each with a single brand: R.J. Reynolds’s Camel, Liggett & Myers’s Chesterfield, and the American Tobacco Company’s Lucky Strike. Each brand would become a national icon for its corporate parent.52
The rise of national brands of cigarettes was but one indication of the cultural transformation occurring in the early twentieth century. The consumer culture in which the cigarette became so prominent and popular marked the construction of the first truly national, secular culture in American history. The localism and regionalism that characterized the “island communities” of the nineteenth century gave way to a fully nationalized cultural ideal that diluted local economies, values, and practices.53 Small-scale production, regional distribution, and local clienteles were all on the way out. With a national culture came national products. Tobacco traversed this sea change through the cigarette. Moreover, such national commodities drew together, at every cash register, the country’s diverse ethnic, regional, and social groups. Rich, poor, black, white, German, Indian, Jewish, or Chinese, you could always smoke a Camel.54
Closely tied to the twentieth century’s new norms and beliefs was the cultural dominance of youth. If the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting alcohol, was the nineteenth century’s last stand, the triumph of the cigarette marked the impressive social and cultural shifts that would characterize the new century. When T. S. Eliot described “Cousin Nancy” in 1917, he captured this transformation.
Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked
And danced all the modern dances;
And her aunts were not quite sure
How they felt about it,
But they knew it was modern.55
Through the 1920s, as the cigarette became an increasingly omnipresent prop in the culture of youth, smoking stood as a prominent symbol in the fires that burned between generations.
The cigarette soon came to play an important role in the rituals of adolescent identity. For many adolescents eager to leave childhood behind, the cigarette signified adult status. Even as smoking became phenomenally popular in the 1920s and 1930s, it caused increasing concern for parents, who now had the burden of policing this behavior among their offspring, often while practicing it themselves. Many parents noted that the fact that they smoked incited intergenerational conflict. Adolescent boys came under intense peer pressure to smoke; “to refrain from smoking,” noted one author, “would be the same as joining the ‘sissy’ group of boys.”56 Impressively, just as smoking became a marker of masculinity, it simultaneously became a symbol of beauty, glamour, and sexuality for women.
Many would link cigarettes with a new sexual accessibility among adolescent women, a marker of independence and autonomy. Following the war, young men and women smoked together with impunity. For women, the cigarette was part of a syndrome of rebellion that typically included cosmetics, dancing, and sexual experimentation. “The coarsening effect upon young womanhood through the smoking of cigarettes, through the exposure of nakedness in public appearance, of overpainting the face and lips, and of petting parties, are everywhere apparent,” noted the Buffalo Evening Post. “It may be true that women have the same right as men to drink and smoke and indulge habits peculiar to masculinity, but that means the lowering of the standards of womanhood to the level of the men.”57
Even as strident opponents of the cigarette lost favor, attitudes toward women and young smokers ranged from ambivalent to disapproving. While states debated comprehensive restrictions on smoking, local governments instituted their own. In 1904, Jennie Lasher was sentenced to thirty days in jail in New York under a new state law for endangering the morals of her children by smoking in their presence.58 The New York City Board of Aldermen unanimously passed an ordinance in January 1908 restricting public smoking among women. Public establishments permitting women to smoke could lose their licenses.59 Katie Mulcahey was arrested under the law and fine
d $5. “I’ve got as much right to smoke as you have,” she told the magistrate. “I never heard of this new law, and I don’t want to hear about it. No man shall dictate to me.” After defaulting on the fine, she was taken to a cell.60 Mayor George Brinton McClellan, Jr., had actually vetoed the ordinance, but it had been incorrectly posted by a court clerk. Mulcahey was soon freed.61
The fact that the antismoking movement centered so forcefully on smoking among women and children ultimately undercut its legitimacy. As notions of women’s equality grew and women campaigned for political recognition, arguments against their smoking seemed like a dusty artifact of Victorian moral beliefs of female separateness and vulnerability. Smoking bans directed at women offended their newly honed sensibilities. Such opposition was perhaps as effective a motivation for women to smoke as any advertisement. And there is overwhelming evidence that women were experimenting with the cigarette long before the industry would explicitly acknowledge this in its own advertising and promotion.62
Apparently, not all the cigarettes shipped to France during the war were used by the troops. As A. E. Hamilton explained, the gender boundaries associated with smoking dissolved in the war:But since 1914, when nurses and you lassies joined Tommy and Doughboy in a smoke, this line has begun to melt away, until the picture of the flapper without her cigarette has become like a picture of [Vice President] Charles G. Dawes without his pipe.63