framed, colored posters promoting various brands of 

 smoking tobacco and "costing $100 each." These were, 

 the firm proudly announced, pasted on the Great Wall of 

 China, the Pyramids and other monuments in lands 

 where English was not a native tongue. That may have 

 been only a romantic fancy, but it captured public 

 interest. 



_Llie feminiiie role in cigarette factories 



Together with other cigarette manufacturers, Allen 

 & Ginter had a social problem to meet. A good part of 

 their factory staff was composed of young females. Ciga- 

 rettes were still regarded as a foreign novelty and the 

 employment of young, white women to roll them was, 

 in some quarters, thought not quite proper. 



These girls, who had been taught their art by im- 

 ported Greek, Russian and Polish craftsmen, were earn- 

 ing $4.50 to $9 a week. Their wages depended upon 

 production volume. Experts among them were wrapping 

 shredded tobacco in paper, pasting the paper edges, and 

 clipping the ends with shears at the rate of four or five 

 a minute-about 15,000 to 18,000 in a full week. 



A reporter from Frank Leslies Illustrated Newspaper, 

 then a widely read periodical, visited Richmond ciga- 

 rette plants in 1883. Leslie's man commented with 

 pleasure on the nearly 500 girls in the Allen & Ginter 

 factory who rolled cigarettes. They packed them dex- 

 terously, picking up 20 of the Httle rolls at a time without 

 counting them. The girls were "intelligent and comely 



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