people like to be humbugged, and proceeding on that theory, P.T.
Barnum got together more animals and performers and freaks under
canvas than had ever been seen before. He made a tremendous fortune.
There is something in human nature which makes us an easy mark for any
pretentious thing that comes down the pike with banners flying. The
bigger the claim and the larger the figures, the more readily we fall
for it, but simple things must be proved.

When we are told there are 290,680,493,115 stars we accept it without
question, but if there is a sign saying "FRESH PAINT" we touch the
paint with our fingers to see if it is really so.

Fellows, there is a big sign posted all over the country, carrying in
large letters the two words, "It satisfies." It is the expensive
advertising propaganda of cigarette manufacturers, and the
"satisfaction" they are offering you is that brief and fleeting
sensation of being doped, so that "stern realities are changed to
pleasant seemings." It matters not to them that your health and morals
and money and life pay the cost, just so they sell their product.
They tell you cigarettes "satisfy." It is a preposterous fake. They
do not satisfy--they produce further craving--and they know that that
craving grows, until the habit is formed and their "satisfied" victim
becomes a hopeless slave--known as a cigarette fiend. There is only
one drawback for the cigarette manufacturer, his consumer is too short
lived; the cigarette devitalizes, pauperizes, and destroys. Like the
shock troops of the German army, they must be continually
recruited--recruited in numbers which almost stagger the imagination.

Did you know, fellows, that to keep up the consumption of cigarettes
at the present rate of manufacture there must be _two thousand_ new