SMOKING IN TRAMCARS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1077, 1 August 1912, Page 4

SMOKING IN TRAMCARS.

A hot and bitter fight is being Waged in Kansas City, Missouri, between the Metropolitan Street Car Company and the cigar manufacturers as to whether the public shall be allowed to smoke in the tramcars or not. The traction company is defying the new city ordinance permitting smoking, and the officials instructed the conductors and drivers of the trams to argue with everybody smoking, and keep the car at a standstill as long as smoking is going on. The company has adopted this attitude because, it is declared, a vote taken among its patrons showed a majority of two to one against the permission of smoking. As a result of the tram company’s attitude, the city trams for some days early in June were the centre of lively scenes. Ladies in most cases refused to sit in a car when the weed was being puffed, and before indignantly alighting the offending male generally received a sound box on the ears or a smart slap on the face as a protest. Cars were at a standstill all over the city, the conductors refusing to proceed until there was no signs of smoke. These stoppages caused free fights among the passengers, and men were to be seen popping out of the trams like corks out of bottles. The smokers have the law on their side, and at every opportunity (hey hurl defiance at the traction company by lighting up in the trams. The battle raged most fiercely on the night of June 12, when gangs of men and boys, their pockets stuffed with cigars, cigarettes, pipes, and tobacco, supplied to them by the Tobacco Trust, boarded every car leaving every terminal, and thereby tied up the entire system. The conductors themselves dared not eject the smokers, but fights between smokers and non-smokers were fast and furious.