160 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



ditions, — the things which the trade demands, which are 

 necessary to the life of a cigar-making trade that must turn 

 out tilings called cigars at the lowest j^ossible cost of manu- 

 facture, or must perish. 



Every district has some small factory, whose owner, old in 

 the business, has a small select trade which stands by him ; 

 he is a good judge of wrapper and filler, and he makes a fair 

 living by making good sound cigars. He knows that a well- 

 grown and well-sweated Broad-leaf wrapper and l^inder with 

 a good Vuelta filler is the best thing possible to smoke ; and 

 his patrons know it, and buy his rough-looking, homelj^ 

 cigars in preference to the sleek-looking things with giddy 

 paper bands about them which are too often full of all un- 

 cleanness. This cigar maker will roll up about 20,000 cigars 

 from a case of Broad-leaf, 375 pounds ; that is, he uses about 

 18 pounds to 1,000 cigars, gets his binders out of it, and 

 sells a lot of cuttings for from 10 to 20 cents per pound. lie 

 sorts the case himself, to pick his wrappers and binders ; he 

 resweats the case linings ; and he must spend some time in 

 handling and sorting the cigars to make the colors even in 

 each box. From such a man and such a factory some of us 

 like to bu}^ 



But such men as these do not make the " cigar trade," any 

 more than old-fashioned, careful shoemakers, Avho regard the 

 individual shape of your foot, and take pride in their work- 

 manship, constitute the shoe trade. Such cigar makers as I 

 have described cut no figure at all in the demand for wrapper 

 leaf. The men whose demands the grower must meet are 

 owners of large factories, who make cigars by the tens of 

 millions, — cigars which are good-looking and cheap, which 

 will burn and will not smell or taste too badly in a saloon, 

 a smoking car or in the open air; and to these men and 

 these aggi-egations of capital all business is tending. 



Now, this is a Fast-day rather than a Thanksgiving-day 

 discourse, and mine is the unwelcome task of asking you to 

 consider the faults of our tobacco, and not its excellencies. 



First, then, as it leaves the dealers' hands it is not nearly 

 as uniform in colors, shape or even in size as either Florida 

 or Sumatra leaf. It is sorted before sweating, and never 



