Cigar store

“ From five hundred to fifteen hundred cigars are made in a day, according to the expertness of the manipulator and the kind of tobacco. Machines have not as yet been found to work well. The machine cigars are finished at the end by hand. He remarked that machines never can succeed so well as men, until they have the brains of men. A very nice widow, who kept a cigar store in New York, told me that many more women are employed in making cigars in Philadelphia than in New York; but the cigars made and sold there are mostly of the cheap kind, selling for two or three cents apiece. ”

“ It is a custom of the manufacturers to keep a supply of the best qualities always on hand from year to year, in order that, should the tobacco crop, in any one year, be bad, the reputation of the house can be maintained by using the good tobacco in the store. The factory is a large stone building, opposite the Canipo de Moste, in which all the operations connected with cigar making are carried on (excepting the manufacture of boxes) by over five hundred operatives, all males. ”

“ An old man with long white chin whiskers and a derby hat two sizes small, dropped into a Main Street drug store yesterday and beckoned a clerk over into a corner. He was about sixty-five years old, but he wore a bright red necktie, and was trying to smoke a very bad and strong cigar in as offhand a style as possible.
“Young man,” he said, “you lemme ask you a few questions, and I’ll send you a big watermelon up from the farm next summer. I came to Houston to see this here carnival, and do some tradin’. Right now, before I go any further, have you got any hair dye?” ”

“ A very convenient and cheap emergency contrivance is the flint and steel pocket cigar lighter to be had at most cigar stores. With it as a reserve you are sure of a fire no matter how wet the catastrophe. ”

“ Nevertheless, it was an ordeal to walk up the two blocks from Market Street, particularly at night when the noise of juke boxes dinned from the garish bars, when the sidewalks spilled over with soldiers and sailors, with peroxided, blowsy-looking women and the furtive gamblers who haunted the back rooms of the innocent-appearing cigar stores that lined the street. ”

“ Many of the 5-cent cigars sold so extensively, contain a large proportion of Havana tobacco, and make a fairly fragrant and pleasant smoke. It is said that there are upwards of 100,000 open and proprietary brands of cigars on the market.
Cigarettes.—The sale of these little paper tubes filled with tobacco, has grown enormously within a few years and is still increasing. It is whispered that the ladies even, sometimes seek to find in them a whiff of the solace and comfort their brothers and 53husbands find in the pipe or cigar. There are many favorite brands on the market. ”

“ Besides this, there is another warehouse of nearly equal size, where finer kinds of tobacco are deposited, many of them in packages of buffalo-hide, marked "Giron," and Manilla for cheroots, in packages of sacking lined with palmetto leaves. There is still another warehouse for cigars, called the Cigar Floor, in which there are frequently one thousand five hundred chests, valued at one hundred pounds each, at an average, or one hundred and fifty thousand pounds in cigars alone. ”

“ Whether you, as a smoker, buy one cigar, five cigars, five hundred or five thousand, you pay the same price per stuck, and there is no choice as to shops, so far as quality is concerned. Whether you buy in the Graben or the Taberstrasse of Vienna, or in an obscure shop in an obscure village a hundred miles from the capitol, you get the same quality of cigar for five, seven, nine, ten, or twelve kreutzers, in the one place as in the other. All come from one factory, and their goodness or badness never varies. ”

“ During the early years of the nineteenth century women on the farms made practically all the domestic cigars then consumed in this country, and in many places the home-made cigar was a favorite medium of exchange. The earliest cigar factory in America was established in West Suffield, Conn., in 1810 and employed only women. ”

“ If they smoke at all in the tobacco-laden atmosphere of the factories, they are far more apt to be addicted to the cigarette than to the product of their own handicraft. The smoker, by the way, who visits Key West is doomed to disappointment; cigars are no cheaper there than in the most northwestern corner of our land. Nor should he bring with him the hope of sampling for once the brands beyond his means. The factories treat their swarms of visitors with every courtesy—except that of tucking a cigar, either of the five-cent or the dollar variety, into a receptive vest pocket. ”

“ Prior to 1901 the American and Continental Tobacco Companies manufactured, sold, and distributed cigars, stogies, and cheroots. In the year stated the companies determined to engage in the business upon a larger scale. Under agreement with Powell, Smith, & Company, large manufacturers and dealers in cigars, they caused the incorporation in New Jersey of the American Cigar Company 'for trading and manufacturing,' etc., to which all three conveyed their said business, and it has since carried on the same. ”

“ The large number of establishments is due to the fact that cigar making is still to a large extent a hand-making industry. About 135,000 persons are directly employed in the manufacture, nearly half of whom are women. The capital engaged [Pg 98] in the business is reported as 150 millions and the value of the product 200 million dollars annually. The actual consumer pays about 300 million dollars for the cigars smoked, the difference between the cost of the product and the latter figure being the expense and profit of the retail handlers. ”

“ The remaining laborers are employed in assorting and packing the cigars for market. Only the choicest tobacco is used in this factory—each first-class cigar made here being warranted equal to any Havana brand. Thirty-five thousand cigars are manufactured daily, consuming thirty thousand pounds of tobacco monthly. The most amusing sight of all is to see these workmen drink water: it is contained in a kind of earthenware vessel which they call a “monkey-jug,” made from a porous earth obtained in Cuba, and shaped something like our American gallon-jug, only the orifice is on the side. ”

“ From the fine gentlemen, who buy their cigars at Delmonico's, or get them direct from the importers, down to the little barefoot boys in the streets, who buy theirs from the Chinamen at the corners or pick up the stumps that are thrown away, all smoke. In some countries pipes and cigarettes are made to do duty by the poorer classes, but in New York cigars seem to be almost invariably preferred. Now, while there is nothing better, in the way of something to smoke, than a first-class Havana cigar, there is nothing nastier than some of the cheap abominations made in that shape in New York. ”

“ And the cigar need not consist entirely of Havana tobacco. A cigar of choice flavor is made of a mixture of tobaccos—Havana “filler” and “binder,” with, say, a “Connecticut seed” or Sumatra wrapper.
The manufacture of cigars has without doubt aided largely in building up the business of Key West. One authority says that there are two hundred factories, employing five thousand operatives, and transacting a business amounting to seven millions of dollars annually. ”

“ In the basement of the Hotel Porcellian, prize hostelry of the Middle-West city to which Sammy came, there is a grill room ornate and expensive. Outside, in the palm strewn corridor, stands a cigar counter. Its case is filled with Havanas ranging in color from ebony all the way to birds-eye maple, and up to that case men frequently bring their friends with the smiling invitation to have a cigar. As they stand studying the price tags the smile dies suddenly. ”

“ During the trip from Nashville to Atlanta I went into the smoking-compartment of the car to smoke a cigar. I was traveling in a Pullman, not because of an abundance of funds, but because through my experience with my millionaire a certain amount of comfort and luxury had become a necessity to me whenever it was obtainable. When I entered the car, I found only a couple of men there; but in a half-hour there were half a dozen or more. From the general conversation I learned that a fat Jewish-looking man was a cigar manufacturer, and was experimenting in growing Havana tobacco in Florida ”

“ The growing popularity of the cigar made smoking less unfashionable than it had been among the upper classes of society; but among humbler folk pipe-smoking had never "gone out." Every public-house did its regular trade in clays, known as churchwardens and Broseleys, and by other names either of familiarity or descriptive of the place of manufacture; and on the mantelpiece or table of inn or ale-house stood the tobacco-box. Miss Jekyll, in her delightful book on "Old West Surrey," figures an example of these old public-house tobacco-boxes which is made of lead. ”

“ Indeed, women were the sole manufacturers of cigars in the United States until skilled male immigrants, first from Cuba and then from European countries, able to produce a better cigar than the homemade product, began to displace them. Until 1860 men dominated in the tobacco industry. Since then that same industrial transformation, founded on improved machinery and the division of labor, that brought back the woman shoemaker, has also brought back the woman cigar-maker. In 1860 women formed 9 per cent, of all persons employed in the making of cigars and cigarettes. ”

“ But bless my soul,” he went on after a pause, “what a refining influence a cigar has.”
“If it’s a good one,” suggested a boy porter.
“They’re all good,” declared the new man with enthusiasm. “They’re like the ladies in that respect. Some are better’n others, but they’re all good.”
“Not a married man, then?” asked a foreman.
“I’m a bloomin’ bachelor,” said the new chum. “And what a thing it is on your Sunday off, when you’re waiting at the end of her road, to light up a cigar with a fine aroma to it. ”

“ Oh, joyous sight! a cigar appeared between his fingers, and the re-assuring words came forth—"A light, sir, if you please." I never gave one more readily in my life. Gradually, passenger after passenger produced cigars; the aroma filled the coach, and the fragrance of the weed triumphed over the foetor of the polecat. Six insides out of nine hard at it, and four of them with knock-me-down Virginia tobacco, the single human odour could not contend against such powerful odds; as well might a musquito sneeze against thunder. ”

“ There are very few Spanish or American cigarmakers in Key West; the majority are Cubans, with a very small sprinkling of negroes. There are so many factories and so many operatives that, although it is a cigar-producing place, very few cigars indeed are sold at retail. Everybody smokes, every one invites you to smoke; cigars are almost as free as the air. It would be a paradise for a young dude who has a slender purse and who is addicted to the weed. ”

“ Wines and spirits are now, since the imposition of a Duty only a trifle lower in price than in England, but perhaps of inferior quality. Tobacco and cigars are ridiculously cheap, but not always nasty, because of their cheapness. Anyone content to smoke a cigar of fair quality may do so at a price about fifty per cent. ”

“ British cigars, like all other varieties, may be good, bad, or indifferent. By British we mean cigars manufactured in this country from the imported leaf; and as English capital can command the markets, there is no reason why the best tobacco should not be obtainable for importation. Using the same quality of leaf, a cigar can be produced in this country at a much lower cost than if imported ready made. We venture to think, notwithstanding popular prejudice, that a good British cigar is preferable to an inferior foreign make. ”

“ But the most of them are young women, a class by themselves, known as cigareras, or cigar-girls. Smart at their business in the factory, they are wild as hawks and gay as larks at the bull-fight on Sundays, or the dance on the green. This is the largest establishment 72of the kind in Spain, and produces as good an article as any other, but the cigars made in Spain are not as popular with good judges as those brought directly from Cuba. The manufacturers there prefer sending the best to London, New York, or Paris, where they find a readier market for the high-priced article. ”

“ We all want cigars, and we might as well confess what is an open secret, that none of us dares to call for a cigar for himself alone, nor feels like footing the bill for the whole party. Well, let the sutler set out a few boxes of cigars on the counter, so as to have them handy when they are needed, and you follow my lead, and we'll see whether we can't somehow or other make the chaplain yonder pay the reckoning. ”

“ It may be larger, and the large Havana leaves, free from veins and suitable for use as wrappers for fine, large cigars are so scarce and high, as to enhance their cost out of all proportion to that of an equally well flavored, though smaller cigar. In fact, 10 or 15 cents should procure as good a medium sized cigar as average people care to smoke. The dude’s dollar cigar is not much, if any better, except as fancy makes it so. ”

“ A bundler is paid the best price, as she receives six cents a hundred. It is very dirty work. A cigar dealer told me he pays from $2 up to $6 per thousand. A man can make two hundred per day, and so earn from 40 cents to $1.20. He thinks it not unhealthy, where there is a circulation of air. The rapidity in making cigars depends much on the quality of the tobacco. Some leaves are not so well dried, nor so fine and perfect, as others. ”