ANNIVERSARY NUMBER 1919 



103 



Taking the Public into oar Confidence 



From small beginning a retail 

 Kiosko, almost as unpretentious as 

 a push-cart vender Walter E. Olsen 

 & Company, cigar merchants, have 

 grown by epochal stages to the largest 

 exclusive tobacco corporation in the 

 Philippine Islands. We came to 

 Manila with the troops in the ''Days 

 of the Empire", and it certainly is 

 a pardonable boast that we have kept 

 pace with the evolution of the country, 

 from a disease-ridden land and op- 

 pressed Oriental despotism to the 

 present sanitary community and free 

 democracy. For twenty years we 

 have been intimately associated with 

 the Philippine tobacco industry, and 

 we are now in a position to give the 

 public the whole benefit of our varied 

 experience. 



Walter E. Olsen & Company is a 

 corporation composed entirely of 

 citizens of the United States of 

 America. By recent purchases in Jan- 

 uary, 1919, the Company acquired 

 "EL ORIENTS", "HELIOS", and 

 "LA GIRALDA" cigar factories. 



The consolidation of these interests 

 with the original Olsen Company 

 makes the present corporation, the 

 largest cigar manufacturing entity 

 in the Philippine Islands. "EL 

 ORIENTE" and "HELIOS" cigar 

 factories were purchased from the 

 United States Alien Property Custo- 

 dian at public sales, and LA GIRAL- 

 DA cigar factory at private sale 

 from local interests. 



The main factories and warehouses 

 of the company are located in Manila 

 and cover an area of fifteen acres. 

 All of the buildings are constructed 

 along the most sanitary, modern and 

 up-to-date lines, making them the 

 best equipped cigar factories in the 

 Far East. Every operation is con- 

 ducted under the most rigid sanitary 

 arrangements, and every cigar comes 

 to you as sweet and wholesome as 

 Nature and human ingenuity can 

 make it. You smoke it without 

 misgiving, with keen relish and re- 

 plete satisfaction, and in the ashes of 

 consumption there remains nothing 







"KlOSKO H\B 



but the most pleasant recollection. 

 We confidently come before the pub- 

 lic with what we consider to be a 

 super-excellent product cigars to 

 meet the taste of every smoker, no 

 matter how critical. 



Cagayan and Isabela Provinces 

 constitute the tobacco centers of the 

 Philippine Islands, and it is in this 

 region that the best and choicest 

 Philippine tobacco is grown. It is 

 here that the company owns and 

 operates its own water and land 

 transportation and tobacco packing 

 warehouses, which are built of re- 

 inforced concrete, are modern in every 

 respect, and cover an area of sixteen 

 acres. In these warehouses, and in 

 those in Manila, we have tobacco 

 stocks, under-going the process of 

 ageing, of a total value of more than 

 f*3,000,000.00. This reserve alone 

 insures and guarantees to the con- 

 sumer a constant product of high 

 quality and certain value, as the 

 stocks are of the very best, culled 

 from past harvests. 



We are not content with having 

 on hand enormous quantities of raw 

 material. We do not permit the 

 acquirement of further stocks to be a 

 matter of haphazard purchase in 

 open markets that are uncertain by 

 reason of crop failures or poor in 

 leaf due to improper seed selection 

 or planting. The company main- 

 tains a corps of expert tobacco buyers 

 of many years experience, who keep 

 in close touch with- every tobacco- 

 raising section of any consequence. 

 They are constantly moving from 

 district to district, from planting 

 time to harvest, keeping a close record 

 of the growing crops at all stages, and 

 they are thus able, even before the 

 crop is harvested, to locate the choic- 

 est tobacco for purchase. We are 

 certain to acquire choice stocks, for 

 our experts are tried tobacco men, 

 who do not guess they know tobacco, 

 in the growing leaf and in the bare. 



With our raw material stocks as- 

 sured, we turn to our production 

 plants with the confident conviction 

 of certain results. The blending of 

 the tobacco used in our cigars is done 

 by experts employed in our factories 

 for many years, and their knowl- 

 edge of the qualities of the tobacco 

 grown in the different districts is the 

 result of many years experience. 

 The strictest attention is paid to 



