TOBACCO LEAVES 



smilingly exchanging, for the gold of the 

 nations, the leaf divine. 



The industry is more than a trade; it 

 is a chapter of history to him who can 

 read between the h'nes. It is marked by 

 a democratic spirit which tells of the time 

 when employer and employed worked side 

 by side at the same bench. The shop 

 union is a relic of days when all the mem- 

 bers of the family worked together, each 

 for all and all for each. The reader who 

 sits or stands descanting the news of the 

 day from the morning paper, or who re- 

 lates the master fancies of Cervantes, Cal- 

 deron, or Lope de Vega to the listening 

 workers in the cigar-room is eloquent tes- 

 timony of the period when books and pa- 

 pers were rare, and of the ambition of the 

 Spanish race to move upward in the scale 

 of being. The politeness and decorum 

 which mark the shops are not habits of 

 the trade, but customs older than Colum- 



23 



