Part 115

The Shade-growing Method.

The shade-growing method is one of the institutions of modern tobacco cultivation. The principle is this: The sun, shining on the tobacco plants, draws the nutrition from the earth, and the plant ripens quickly, the leaves having a tendency to be heavy-bodied and not very large. To defeat these results and produce large, thin, silky leaves for cigar-wrapper purposes, the grower sometimes covers his field with a tent of cheesecloth or with a lattice-work of lathing which protects the growing tobacco from the direct rays of the sun. Thus the ripening process is slower, causing the leaves to grow larger and thinner and less gummy; and being thinner and less gummy, they are of a lighter color when finally cured. This method is employed by some growers in cigar-leaf districts, such as Cuba, Florida and Connecticut.

How Are Cigars Made?

While many labor-saving devices have been introduced in all branches of tobacco manufacture, it is a curious fact that in the production of the best grade of cigars, namely, the clear Havana, the work is done entirely by hand. In fact, it may be said that in the process of manufacturing fine cigars exactly the same principles are followed as those of two centuries ago. There has been much improvement in the artisanship of the worker, of course, but no rudimentary change in method. In the manufacture of snuff, chewing and pipe tobacco, cigarettes and all-tobacco cigarettes, machinery plays an important part; and mechanical devices are also used extensively in the production of five-cent cigars and in the still higher priced grades of part-domestic cigars, such as the seed and Havana. Some of these appliances are almost human in their ingenuity. But in fashioning the tobacco of Cuba into cigars that are perfect in shape, in formation and in all the qualities that go to make a good cigar, there is no substitute for the human hand.

Upon opening a bale of tobacco the workman takes each carrot out separately, shakes it gently to separate the leaves, and then moistens it, either by dipping it into a tub of water from which it is quickly removed and shaken to throw off the surplus water or else by spraying it with a blower. It is left in this condition over night, so that the leaves may absorb the moisture and become uniformly damp and pliable.

The tobacco is then turned over to the strippers, who remove the midrib from each leaf, at the same time separating the wrapper from the filler. From this point on the treatment of the wrappers and fillers is different.

The half leaves suitable for fillers are spread out and placed one on top of the other, making what are called books. These books are placed side by side, closely together, on a board, and a similar board is placed on top of the tobacco to hold it in position. Later, it is packed into barrels, the tops of which are covered with burlap, and there it undergoes a fermentation. It is usually allowed to remain in this condition for ten days or two weeks, when it is rehandled and inspected, and if found to be in the right condition, it is placed on racks, where it remains until it is in just the proper state of dryness to be ready for working.

~THE GREAT CARE NECESSARY IN SELECTION~

The wrapper leaves, after leaving the hands of the stripper, are taken by the wrapper selector, who sits, usually, at a barrel, and spreads out each leaf, one on top of the other, over the edge of the barrel, assorting them as to size, color, etc., into several different piles or books. Each of these piles is divided into packs of twenty-five each, and each lot of twenty-five is folded over into what is called a “pad” and tied with a stem. It is in this form that they go to the cigarmaker.

Every morning the stock is distributed among the cigarmakers. Each workman is given enough tobacco to make a certain number of cigars, and when his work is finished he must return either the full number of cigars or the equivalent in unused leaves.

The tools of the cigarmaker consist merely of a square piece of hardwood board, a knife and a pot of gum tragacanth. He sits at a table upon which rests the board, and at which there is also a gauge on which the different lengths are indicated. Fastened to the front of each table is a sack or pocket of burlap into which the cuttings that accumulate on the table are brushed. The operator deftly cuts his wrapper from the leaf, fashions the filler into proper form and size in the palm of his hand (this is known as the “bunch”) and rolls the tobacco into cigar form, In winding the wrapper around the “bunch” the operator begins at the “lighting end” of the cigar, called the “tuck,” and finishes at the end that goes into the mouth, which is called the “head.” A bit of gum tragacanth is used to fasten the leaf securely at the “head.” The cigar is then held to the gauge and is trimmed smoothly off to the proper length by a stroke of the knife at the “tuck.” The cigars are taken up in bundles of fifty each. They next pass into the hands of the selectors, who separate them into different piles, according to the color of the wrappers, and who also reject any cigars that may be of faulty construction. Broken wrappers, bad colors or any other defects are sufficient to cause the rejection of a cigar. The rejected cigars are known as resagos (“throwouts”) or secundos.

From the selectors the cigars go to the packers, whose duty it is to place them in the boxes, and to see that the colors in each box are uniform, marking the temporary color classification on each box in lead pencil. After being packed, the filled boxes are put into a press and so left for twelve hours or until the cigars conform somewhat to the shape of the box which contains them. On being removed from the press, if to be banded, the cigars are carefully removed in layers from the box, the bands affixed, and the cigars replaced. The goods are then placed in an air-tight vault to await shipment.

When the cigarmaker ties up his bundle of fifty cigars, he attaches to it a slip of paper upon which is marked his number. This enables the manufacturer to keep an accurate account of the number of cigars made by each workman and also to place the responsibility for any defects in the workmanship. Cigarmakers are paid by the piece, the scale of wages ranging from $16 to $100 per thousand. In nearly every factory there may be found advanced apprentices or old men working at the rate of $14 per thousand and also there may be found skilled artisans making exceptionally large odd sizes at more than $100 per thousand, but these are not generally considered in the regulation scale of prices. In averages, the workmen earn about $18 a week and make about 150 cigars a day.

Just a Few Figures About Tobacco.

The internal revenue from tobacco for one year would build fourteen battleships of the first-class; or it would pay the salary of the President of the United States for nearly a thousand years. It would pay the interest on the public debt for three years, and there would be enough left over to add a dollar to the account of every savings bank depositor in the United States.

The money spent by smokers for cigars only, not counting cigarettes, smoking and chewing tobacco and snuff would more than pay for the building of the Panama Canal, besides taking care of the $50,000,000 paid to the new French Canal Co., and the Republic of Panama for property and franchises. And in addition to this it would cover the cost of fortifying the Canal.

Or it would build a fleet of thirty-five trans-Atlantic liners, each exactly like the lost Titanic, coal them, provision them and keep them running between New York and Liverpool with a full complement of passengers and crew, almost indefinitely.

There are 21,718,448 cigars burned up in the United States every twenty-four hours; and 904,935 every hour; and 15,082 every minute; and 251 every second.

The annual per capita consumption of cigars in the United States, counting men, women and children, is eighty-six cigars.

If all the cigars smoked in the United States in one year were put together, end to end, they would girdle the earth, at its largest circumference, twenty-two times.

AS TO THE CIGARETTES, there are 23,736,190 of them consumed in the United States every day; and 989,007 every hour; and 16,482 every minute. With every tick of your watch, night and day, the year around, the butts of 275 smoked-up cigarettes are dropped into the ash tray.

Cigarette smokers in the United States, not counting those who roll their own smokes from tobacco, spend $60,645,966.36 for the little paper-covered rolls.

If all the cigarettes smoked in the United States in one year were placed end to end and stood up vertically they would make a slender shaft rising 512,766 miles into the heavens.

If strung on a wire they would make a cable that would reach from the earth to the moon and back again, with enough left over to circle one-and-a-half times around the globe.

If this quantity of tobacco could be placed on one side of a huge balancing scale it would take the combined weight of four vast armies, each army consisting of 1,000,000 men, to pull down the other side of the scale.

The weight of the tobacco consumed in the United States in a year is equal to the weight of the entire and combined population of Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama.

ARCH: IN THIS PATTERN RIDGES RUN FROM ONE SIDE TO ANOTHER, MAKING NO BACKWARD TURN.]

The Story in a Finger Print