| Reviews / Comptes Rendus | Labour/Le Travail, 61

REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS

Jarrett Rudy, The Freedom to Smoke: Tobacco Consumption and Identity (Montréal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 2005)

THIS BOOK TELLS the intriguing story of smoking's history in Montréal from the late 19th century until World War II. Montrealers, Jarrett Rudy reveals, once perceived smoking as a middle-class male activity. Yet by 1940 smoking had lost some of its masculine, bourgeois connotations and had become the preserve of male and female working- and middleclass residents alike.

Central to Rudy's inquiries are the gendered, classed, ethnic, and racialized meanings of smoking. Prior to World War I, bourgeois men believed smoking was one of the rights of genteel manhood. It was a homosocial activity that encouraged male camaraderie and accompanied serious political and economic discussion. Connoisseurs idealized two mediums of tobacco consumption: Cuban cigars and Greek meerschaum pipes. Both were considered to provide the best taste and smell. The best, that is, for men. It was widely believed that tobacco smoke was offensive to respectable women.

White bourgeois men ostracized the smoking practices of women, non-whites, workers, and rural francophones. Those who smoked le tabac canadien were especially criticized. Quebec farmers had long produced, cured, and sold their own tobacco. Le tabac canadien was cheaper than imported tobacco; and when smoked in a clay pipe, it carried connotations of Quebec's habitant heritage. Yet in the late 19th century, connoisseurs began disparaging homegrown tobacco. They saw it as uncivilized, unpredictable, and harsh. Canada's largest tobacco manufacturer thus promoted American tobacco over Canadian homegrown.

In the early 20th century domestic tobacco crops became more important. Laurier's second National Policy included high tariffs on imported tobacco, causing Canadian tobacco production to expand. The government regulated tobacco crops, and Ontario and Quebec farmers began selling standardized products to manufacturers. By World War I such leading manufacturers as the Hudson's Bay Company and the American Tobacco Company of Canada were using domestic tobacco. Le tabac canadien also continued appearing on retailers' shelves, but its presence was on the wane. In 1940 the federal government applied an excise tax on raw leaf tobacco. Unlike taxes on manufactured tobacco, retailers were responsible for paying this tax. They stopped stocking homegrown leaf and le tabac canadien nearly disappeared from urban markets.

If pipes were the tobacco medium of choice in the 19th century, cigarettes became that of the 20th. The 1881 invention of the Bonsack cigarette machine revolutionized cigarette production. Whereas cigarettes used to be rolled by hand, in the late 19th century manufacturers began producing them in large amounts. Cigarette prices dropped and this form of tobacco consumption became more socially acceptable, particularly among young men and workers. The speed by which cigarettes could be consumed added to their popularity: people waiting for streetcars and taking breaks at work could more easily smoke cigarettes than pipes. The Great War cemented cigarettes' place in 20th century life. Overseas, Canadian soldiers who did not already smoke cigarettes soon picked up the habit. At home and abroad, it was believed that cigarettes enabled soldiers to keep their sanity while waiting for combat, being shelled, and convalescing in hospital. Domestic campaigns that sent cigarettes overseas enhanced the growing connection between masculine militarism and cigarette consumption.

The early 20th century also marked an increase in female smokers. A few feminists noticed the connection between smoking and male privilege, and began asserting their right to smoke. Despite opposition from the Catholic Church and the Women's Christian Temperance Union to women's tobacco consumption, by the interwar years female cigarette smokers had become more publicly visible. Rudy attributes women's new smoking habits not only to increased feminist consciousness, but to the rise of women in the workforce, the expansion of commercialized leisure, and the presence of women smokers in Hollywood movies.

Smoking's gendered, classed, racialized, and ethnic meanings form the core of The Freedom to Smoke. Superimposed onto this base is an argument about liberalism. According to Rudy, smoking offers an example of the changing cultural construction of the liberal individual. In the late 19th century, tobacco helped white, bourgeois male smokers demonstrate their adherence to liberalism. When they puffed their expensive pipes and cigars, they demonstrated rational individuality. This growing connection between smoking and liberalism turned tobacco consumption into a badge of political inclusion. Thus when women started smoking publicly in the early 20th century, they were laying claim to the world of civil thought and liberal citizenship.

Some historians might find the link Rudy draws between smoking and liberalism unconvincing. Women smoking in public may have demonstrated this social group's claim to liberalism and its privileges, but it does not immediately follow that non-white and working-class tobacco consumption represented these groups' claims to the rational public sphere. Rudy is nonetheless right to point out that smoking has been since the late 19th century embroiled in liberal politics. Defining who has and who does not have the right to smoke – and where – is the subject of an ongoing public debate.

This book's strongest contribution is its in-depth exploration of the history of a particular commodity. In this sense, it is a case study in the rise of consumer capitalism. Revealing the cultural, political, and economic decisions that shaped the production, distribution, and consumption of tobacco in Montréal, Rudy provides an engaging and broad-minded inquiry into a specific area within the history of mass consumption. Given the need for more such works, especially within Canadian scholarship, it is hoped that The Freedom to Smoke will encourage further research into this important field.


DONICA BELISLE University of British Columbia

Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.