The development has been described as a reclamation 

 program that salvages up to 40 percent of natural leaf 

 which was formerly partly converted to non-binder use 

 or partly wasted. When leaves are cut into binder size, 

 the unused part goes into a commercial product less 

 profitable than cigars, known as "scrap." ("Scrap," which 

 also includes cuttings during cigar manufacture, is a 

 standard official term for leaf fragments that are used for 

 some chewing tobacco and filler.) 



Lengthy research finally resulted in the creation of a 

 man-made binder. Through this process sound tobacco 

 is pulverized, bound with a cohesive, and then rolled 

 into small sheets of binder width. Almost all of the leaf 

 weight is thus utilized and provides a binder of uniform 

 thickness and quality. Not only have the taste and aroma 

 of natural binder been preserved in this manufactured 

 leaf; tests have shown improvement in combustibility. 



The sheets are automatically fed from a spool into 

 cigar-making machines. Reconstituted tobacco has thus 

 substantially reduced labor costs formerly required by 

 hand stamping and hand feeding binders into cigar- 

 making machines. Classified as "manufactured binder 

 sheet," this product is accepted by the responsible fed- 

 eral departments for what it actually is: tobacco. A por- 

 tion of reconstituted leaf is being used as wrappers on 

 small cigars. 



Wr 



rappers and reapers 



During the period of declining binder production, the 

 Connecticut-grown, shade-grown type generally showed 

 crop stability. The harvest total in 1970 was about the 



