Dr. Pease Assails Nicotine, but Doesn’t Rebuke Senate [excerpt]

Questions Whether McKinley, for Smoking, Was Not Guilty of Greater
Crime Than His Assassin; Says Fight on Tobacco Is Gaining.

     It looks as though the United States Senate’s audacity in striking from an appropriation bill the Smoot amendment prohibiting smoking in any building in the District of Columbia used by the executive departments of the government is to go unrebuked.
     Dr. Charles Giffin Pease, indubitably the champion rebuker of the age, was asked yesterday at his home, 101 West Seventy-second Street, what he was going to do about the Senate.
     “Is it not a legitimate question,” demanded Dr. Pease, “to inquire who is guilty of the greater crime, President McKinley, who practiced the poison addiction (smoking, the doc meant; even the word makes him shudder) to his own hurt and a greater hurt to the human race by elevating the example to the highest political office in the land, or the assassin who fired the shot under the excitement of the moment?”
     It may have been a legitimate question, but it wasn’t a fair one. No question is fair if one of the two possible answers is Czolgosz. Dr. Pease sent a stern glance after the query, however, and proceeded.

Classes Smoking as Crime

     “Unless we as a people,” he said, “are willing to face such serious and potent questions we are not well-wishers of humanity.”
     He looked at the reporter as though he suspected him of not being a well-wisher of humanity.
     “That’s true, doctor,” said the reporter, hoping to allay this suspicion, “but what are you going to do about the Senate? It has given President-elect Harding permission to smoke in his office.”
     “It is difficult,” replied Dr. Pease, “to move people to a sense of responsibility as an example or progenitor, especially those holding high official positions. They should be willing to sacrifice all harmful addiction for the sake of humanity. It is said that McKinley’s surgeons said that he would have recovered from the gunshot wound had he not had a tobacco heart.”
     “So it is,” said the reporter, who had just heard it with his own ears, “but about the Senate now”—