THE MANUFACTURE OF TOBACCO. 469 



on his business, he finds the contents very dry and 

 breakable. This dry tobacco has to be carefully taken 

 out, as needed, piece by piece, shaken gently to separate 

 the leaves, dipped thoroughly in a tub of water and re- 

 moved, or well drenched with a sprinkling pot, and left 

 to "draw" over night. It is then moist and pliable, 

 and ready for stripping. 



Stripping. This is done mostly by girls and women, 

 and consists in stemming and booking. The worker is 

 given a quantity of tobacco, and she first takes the stem 

 out of each leaf and puts the divided leaf in a little pile. 

 Then, when she thinks she has enough stemmed tobacco, 

 say for a pad, she smooths out over her knee, or books, 

 each piece, and when she has enough for a pad (the 

 weight may or may not be defined), she doubles the 

 smoothed-out pile over once and ties it up, and this 

 tied-up bunch is the pad. Of course, the wrapper strip- 

 per is given the finest and most costly tobacco, that 

 which is to be used for the outside of the cigar, and as 

 even this contains a good deal of inferior leaf, she must 

 throw aside such into the binder pile, and it is included 

 by the binder stripper in the binder-leaf tobacco that 

 has been given her to strip. Sometimes there is a leaf 

 selector, who does nothing but sort out the inferior leaf 

 from the unstemmed wrappers, and then the wrapper 

 stripper does not have to stop to do any sorting herself. 

 It is only the expert stripper, she who has the best and 

 most practical understanding of the kind of leaf requi- 

 site for wrapping cigars, and who has the delicacy of 

 touch and the trained eye for color to enable her to 

 make a quick decision of the unsuitability for wrappers 

 of the leaf she handles, who is accepted as a wrapper 

 stripper, and she, of course, is given higher wages than 

 the handler of binders and fillers. The fillers are partly 

 stemmed and thrown carelessly into a pile, except the 

 finer grades, which are more often booked. The fillers 



