26 



THE CUBA REVIEW 



THE MAKING OF CIGARS AND CIGARETTES 



The factories of Havana employ thou- 

 sands of persons — one alone giving work 

 to three thousand cigar makers. The rooms 

 where these men work are especially in- 

 teresting, for rolling a cigar properly re- 

 quires no little skill, says the Nezv York 

 Sun. In this room are men who as boys 

 served a long apprenticeship to learn the 

 rudiments and fundamentals of cigar mak- 

 ing and who have steadily improved and 

 gained in skill in making the same size 

 and shape cigars all the time. A number 

 of the workers have made the same type 

 of cigar every working day for twenty 

 years. Some of these men are really 

 artists in their work. The cigar maker is 

 given his filler and wrappers (the former 

 weighed and the latter counted) and under 

 his expert hands the material is made to 

 assume one of the hundred shapes in which 

 Havana cigars are put on the market. His 

 only tool is a sharp cigar maker's knife, 

 with which he trims the wrapper to_ meet 

 his requirements, and he selects by his eye 

 and his cultivated sense of touch just 

 enough material to make the cigar exactly 

 the proper length, and, more difficult still, 

 the right amount to preserve the absolutely 

 uniform thickness of the particular size 

 on which he is working. Since the color 

 and texture of wrapper leaves cannot be 

 controlled by the grower to any appreciable 

 extent, it is impossible to supply the mod- 

 ern demand for light color wrappers — a 

 demand based entirely upon the erroneous 

 idea that the color of the wrapper is an 

 index of the strength of the cigar. While 

 it is true to a limited extent that the color 

 of the wrapper afifects the strength, repre- 

 senting as it does only a small part of the 

 whole cigar, it is only reasonable to state 

 that this factor is of minor importance, 

 the real strength depending upon the class 

 of tobacco used in the filler. If, for ex- 

 ample, a cigar carrying the blend intended 

 for the United States market, where heavy- 

 bodied cigars are not in demand, should 

 be given a dark wrapper the strength 

 would not be noticeably affected, although 

 so great is the power of suggestion that 

 the cigar would not sell, consequently, as 

 far as possible, the cigars shipped to the 

 United States have light colored wrappers. 



The cigarette factories, too, are interest- 

 ing from the fact that hundreds of girls 

 make their living in the manufacture of 

 millions of Cuban cigarettes consumed 

 each year. These workers vary from chil- 

 dren of twelve to women of fifty. Some 

 of them are exceedingly pretty, although 

 there are few who bear any resemblance 

 to Carmen as she is pictured by our op- 

 eratic stars. Others are slovenly and are 



incessant smokers. The tobacco used for 

 cigarettes is stored on the top floor of the 

 factory, and its odor is so strong that the 

 visitor can only remain in the rooms there 

 for a few moments. Several floors are 

 given over to the different processes of 

 cigarette making. The machine has prac- 

 tically superseded hand labor, although 

 certain branches of the trade still demand 

 hand-made cigarettes. Nearly all the work 

 in these factories is done by women, who 

 roll, tip and pack the cigarettes. They 

 usually come to work in their gayest 

 clothes, especially during the carnival sea- 

 son. The Queen of Havana's Carnival is 

 always from these workers, being selected 

 by popular vote of the cigarette girls of 

 the city. 



The whole process of cigar and cigarette 

 making from the growth of the tobacco 

 until it comes out a finished product is in- 

 teresting anywhere, but especially so in 

 Cuba on account of its vastness and the 

 great number of people employed in the 

 industry. 



FIVE MONTHS TOBACCO RECEIPTS 



Receipts of tobacco at Havana from 

 January 1st to May 2'2nd figure as follows : 



Bales 



Vuelta Abajo 24,055 



Semi Vueha 2,876 



Patido 1,511 



Matanzas 79 



Santa Clara 2,358 



Camaguey 2 



Santiago de Cuba 876 



Total 31,757 



FIVE MONTHS TOBACCO EXPORTATION 



The exportation of tobacco from January 

 1st to May 15th compares as follows: 



1913 

 Leaf Tobacco— Bales 123,497 



Cigars 65,762,853 



Cigarettes— Packs .. 7,775,814 

 Cut Tobacco — Kilos. 107,059 



1912 



104,059 



67,722,234 



6,106,295 



169,609 



TOBACCO PRODUCTS WANTS FACTORY 



The Tobacco Products Corporation is 

 reported to have been negotiating for the 

 Hoyo de Monterey cigar factory at Ha- 

 vana. It is asserted that an ofifer of 

 $1,000,000 cash and $1,000,000 stock of the 

 Tobacco Products Corporation was offered 

 but was decHned. 



