Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Finding Aid for the Anti-Cigarette League of America archive,1911-1914
335
View entire collection guide
Search this collection
Table of contents
Title: Anti-Cigarette League of America archive,
Date (inclusive): 1911-1914
Collection number: 335
Extent: 1 box (0.5 linear ft.)
Repository: University of California, Los Angeles. Library.Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library History and Special Collections for the Sciences
Los Angeles, California 90095-1490
Abstract: The collection contains forty-eight items connected to the Anti-Cigarette League of America, from 1911 to 1914, including:
letters from Manfred P. Welcher, Field Secretary, trying to arrange the League's first convention; letters of approval for
the League or the idea of the convention, from a variety of supporters; other League ephemera.
Physical location: UCLA Biomedical Library Manuscript Cage
Language of Material: Collection materials in English
Collection is open for research.
Property rights in the physical objects belong to the UCLA Biomedical Library. Literary rights, including copyright, are
retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright
and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish if the Biomedical Library does not hold the copyright.
[Identification of item], Anti-Cigarette League of America archive, Ms. Coll. #335, Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library
History and Special Collections for the Sciences , University of California, Los Angeles.
Purchased from antiquarian and ephemera bookseller aGatherin' (West Sand Lake, NY), March 2010.
The Anti-Cigarette League of America, an anti-smoking advocacy group founded by Lucy Page Gaston in 1890, had substantial
success until the early 20th century in passing anti-smoking legislation in American states. Gaston, a teacher, writer,
lecturer and member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) maintained that cigarette smoking was a dangerous new
habit, particularly threatening to the young. The League campaigned not only for smoking bans in public places but also
for banning cigarettes themselves. With strong public support, between 1890 and 1930 fifteen states enacted laws to ban the
sale, manufacture, possession, and use of cigarettes; twenty-two other states considered such legislation.
The League's influence waned when the fight against alcohol trumped that against cigarettes. "The tobacco habit may be a
private and personal bad habit, but it is not in the same class as intoxicating liquor," said Wayne B. Wheeler, general
counsel of the Anti-Saloon League; a similar attitude was taken by army doctors and military officials during World War I,
who claimed tobacco calmed the weary soldier, sedated the wounded, and distracted the bored. Eventually, all the states
repealed their cigarette prohibition laws and associated smoking bans in most public places. Kansas was the last to do so,
in 1927.
The 48 items inlude letters and ephemera. Most of the letters deal with arrangements for a projected first convention of
the League at the Lake Mohonk Mountain House, a Hudson River resort. The convention was canceled due to low registration.
The antiquarian bookseller aGatherin' compiled an itemized inventory which is enclosed in lieu of a container list.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.
Anti-Cigarette League of America -- Records and correspondence
Antismoking movement -- United States -- Archival resources
Tobacco -- United States -- History