Posted By:
Kevin CummingsI am reading a Honus Wagner biography and it says the following:
"In 1909, the company (ATC) offered John Gruber, a local sportswriter and the well-respected, longtime official scorekeeper of the Pirates, ten dollars to secure Wagner's written permission for the use of his likeness in this set of cards. Gruber sent the letter to Wagner, who wrote back that he didn't want his picture in cigarettes, but enclosed a check for ten dollars so Gruber would not miss out on the opportunity. Gruber saved the check and framed it.
There has been much speculation about what possessed Wagner to reject this offer when he had accepted many others. Some people assumed that he must have had a disdain for tobacco, but he was an avid cigar smoker and more often than not had a chaw in his mouth........
However, until World War I, cigarettes were held in much lower esteem than cigars, which were often viewed as a symbol of self-assured manhood. Dreyfuss (Pirate owner) and Clarke (Pirate manager) despised the use of cigarettes....Dreyfuss was even wary about procuring players who smoked and for that reason missed out on signing Hall of Famer Tris Speaker as a youngster.
At the time of Wagner's decision, many politicians were being asked to take action on smoking by minors. In 1910, Pennsylvania passed a law prohibiting the sale of cigarettes to boys under twenty-one.......He (Wagner) simply did not want these youths to be lured into purchasing cigarettes just to get his picture card."