What Was The World Coming To?!!

Lest we forget the moral visionaries that came before us, I offer this editorial from an 1890 edition of the New York Sun:

"The habit has reached such a stage now that makes it impossible for a New Yorker to go to the theater or the church, or enter the street cars or the railway train, or walk on a fashionable promenade without meeting men and women whose jaws are working with the activity of the gum chewing victim. And the spectacle is maintained in the face of frequent reminders that gum-chewing, especially in public, is an essentially vulgar indulgence that not only shows bad breeding, but spoils a pretty countenance and detracts from the dignity of those who practice the habit."

There must a huge number ironic closing statements I could insert here, but none that I can think of truly captures the gut-level response I want to elicit. Let me chew on it awhile.