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The delicate, wide-leafed tobacco plant (Nicotiana tabacum) became known as "the divine herb" and "the princess of plants." But the foes of tobacco spied the devil's hoofs beneath the princess' skirt. King James I of Great Britain called tobacco "the lively image and pattern of hell," slapped on a big import tax. Louis XIII of France and Czar Michael I decreed penalties for smoking, ranging from death to castration, and Pope Urban VIII threatened excommunication for anyone found smoking in church or on church premises. A signer of the Declaration of Independence, Dr. Benjamin Rush, attacked tobacco on grounds of health —one of a host of doctors who through the years have attributed to the plant 300 diseases ranging from impotence to bad eyesight. Long before cancer became a cry, cigarettes were known as "coffin nails." Henry Ford and Thomas Edison vowed that they would not knowingly hire anyone who smoked. In 1918 Evangelist Billy Sunday cried triumphantly: "Prohibition is won; now for tobacco!" In earlier days, the feeling against smoking by women was so strong that when Carmen came to Kansas before World War I, it was presented against a backdrop showing a dairy instead of a cigarette factory—and Carmen herself walked onstage carrying a milk pail. Not until after Bryn Mawr lifted its smoking ban in 1925 and Chesterfield began luring women smokers (with ads showing a gentleman lighting up, and a woman coaxing, "Blow some my way") did many women dare to smoke even in their own homes.
Back to the Breast. Just why do people smoke? Almost everyone has a theory.
Only fortnight ago Dr. J. Harold Burn of Oxford suggested that the lift usually associated with smoking may be caused by an adrenalin-related hormone called nore-pinephrine—the same hormone that raises the hair on the tail of a scared cat. But most scientists agree that smoking becomes a habit because of emotional compulsions rather than any physical need.
People smoke, they say, to convince themselves that they are mature and sophisticated, to avoid or lessen tensions, to aid social poise, or just to have something to do with their hands. Young people smoke cigarettes to appear older, older people to appear younger.
Psychiatrists stress that one of the biggest elements in smoking is oral gratification, an unconscious return to the breast.
But even cigar-smoking Sigmund Freud was not above poking a little fun at that notion; he once held up his long black cigar before a class and said: "Just remember, it is not always a symbol —sometimes it's just a cigar." Small-Town Touch. By stimulating, anticipating and satisfying the public taste, R. J. Reynolds has built itself into the biggest and, according to Wall Street, the best-managed company in the U.S. tobacco industry. But it has never lost its oldfashioned, small-town touch. It resisted the glamour of setting up offices in New York City, as most other cigarette companies did, stayed on in provincial Winston-Salem (pop. 118,000), where it employs one in every five workers, is the city's biggest booster and a major contributor to civic drives. From the company's red brick factories and its 22-story limestone office building, the tallest in North Carolina, the quick and pungent smell of tobacco drifts pleasantly over the city.