CONSIDERATIONS OF CIGAR LEAF. 385 



boarding themselves. With a plow and two pair of buf- 

 falo, about half an acre per day is plowed, after the cane 

 brake and tropical growth has been cut away. Expert 

 plowmen are paid $8 per month, and board themselves. 



However high the tariff may be to exclude wrapper 

 leaf from Sumatra, Mexico, or Cuba, another influence 

 is at work that is destined to profoundly affect our 

 domestic cigar-leaf industry. We refer to the experi- 

 ments in cigar-leaf culture at the South and West and 

 on the Pacific coast, to which a subsequent chapter is 

 devoted. Unless all signs fail, leaf from those sections 

 is destined to compete in the home market with crops 

 grown in the old seedleaf States. It is too early to say 

 whether the wrapper leaf industry will ever be driven 

 out of the East, as the Eastern grower of wheat, broom 

 corn, etc., has been obliged to give up these crops by 

 Western competition. 



But it is true that the demand for quality in cigar 

 leaf is becoming more and more exacting. It is more true 

 of cigar leaf than of manufacturing tobacco, that qual- 

 ity governs prices and profits. In many respects, also, 

 cigar leaf is a more delicate plant than any of the man- 

 ufacturing tobaccos that is, its quality is more easily 

 affected by soils, fertilizers, climate, culture and curing. 

 Even after the crop is safely harvested, or properly 

 cured, the cigar-leaf grower labors under another great 

 disadvantage in having no regularly established market 

 prices for his crop, owing to the illogical and unsys- 

 tematic method of selling it, as described in Chap- 

 ter XII. 



The cost of producing cigar tobacco varies widely, 

 even in the same sections. In the Connecticut valley, 

 the most careful growers have arrived at the conclusion, 

 that, taking one year with another, the actual cost of 

 producing the crop ranges from 8 to 12 cents per pound, 

 according to its quality and yield per acre. On the 

 25 



