Gerrit Smith Quotes
Criminality is not always obvious, in proportion to its extent. The sin of the traffic in intoxicating liquors, was, until the last few years almost universally unfelt and unperceived. But now, we meet with men, who, though it was “in all good conscience,” that they were once engaged in it, would not resume it for worlds; and who see more criminality, in taking money from a fellow man, in exchange for the liquor which intoxicates him, than in simple theft.
Gerrit Smith, 1797-1874, U. S. Congressman (Free-Soil, NY), Presidential Nominee, Prohibition Party, Letter to Rev. James Smylie of Mississippi in response to his tract defending slavery, 1837
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This quotation not only illustrates Ford’s wide ranging concern about public affairs but illustrates that the addictive properties of cigarettes were known long before the cancer and other disease causing properties of tobacco were understood. Yet the addictive properties were the last deleterious effects of smoking that the tobacco companies would admit to. At the end of the 20th century, the CEO’s of the major tobacco company all lied to Congress in hearings, claiming that cigarettes were not addictive. Ford and millions of people knew better generations ago.
Douglass had written of how the slave owners used alcohol to maintain control over the slaves: {611086}.
This work of Chekov’s was censored heavily by the Russian Communists of the 1920s and 1930s who publicly glorified the Russian peasant. Chekov’s observation, like many of poverty-stricken populations observed the status quo and did not comment on how the state of affairs came to be in the first place.
He was describing the way that the Colonial America, Native American communities coped with the adverse consequence of violence brought about by liquor which had been given to the Indians by white traders for the purpose of impairing the Indians’ judgment so that they would trade more easily and on better terms. Since then and into the 21st century, business people have entertained’ potential customers with alcohol for the same general purposes.
Gerrit Smith, also spelled Gerritt, was a leading American social reformer, abolitionist, politician, and philanthropist. Spouse to Ann Carroll Fitzhugh, Smith was a candidate for President of the United States in 1848, 1856, and 1860, but only served 18 months in the federal government—in Congress as a Free Soil Party Representative, in 1853–4.
