six companies. The manufacture of cigarettes had its beginning in this coun- 
try 1/ in 1872, when the first cigarette machine was invented, and by 1890, 
annual production had reached 2 1/2 billion. In these earlier years, ciga- 
rettes were made almost entirely of one kind of tobacco -- flue-cured, burley, 
or Oriental, but around the beginning of the twentieth century (1913), the 
blended cigarette appeared on the market, and this product, in which several 
kinds of American-grown tobaccos were combined with small amounts of Oriental, 
became immediately popular with consumers. Flue - cured and burley are the 
principal kinds used in making cigarettes. Also, most of the Maryland used in 
this country goes into blends, along with imported "Turkish" or Oriental kinds. 
The following figures show the percentages and amounts of these kinds of 
leaf used in American cigarettes, as a whole (fiscal year 1964): 
Percentages 
Type contained in blends Leaf used 
Percent Million pounds 
Flue- cured Ze (35 
Burley 35,6 495 
Maryland a2 16 
Oriental TOS 146 
Total 100.0 1,390 
In the factory, after aging, the first step in the chain of manufacture 
is the blending process (if the leaf has not been stemmed this is done first). 
Different grades of flue-cured, burley, and Maryland are combined, and a cer- 
tain amount of Turkish or Oriental is added to improve the taste and aroma; 
and in order to keep the product consistent in taste, leaf from several crops 
of both the domestic and imported types are used in the blends. Each manufac- 
turing company has its own special blend, which is a carefully-guarded secret, 
so that it is not generally known what proportions of certain tobaccos go into 
a particular brand of cigarettes. When the leaf is blended and ready to go 
into the cigarettes, it has a moisture content of 11 1/2 to 12 percent. 
Cigarette manufacturers have developed a kind of reconstituted form of 
tobacco which uses fine particles and scrap and part of the stems to make a 
sheet which can be shredded with natural leaf for cigarettes. Most of the to- 
bacco, however, is in the natural leaf form. 
The blended tobacco is pressed into a solid cake and is then ready for 
slicing by large whirling rotary knives. It is then cut into slender shreds 
of the right consistency to be rolled firmly and smoothly into cigarettes. 
Some companies blend by slicing from the contents of hogsheads of each type 
and grade onto a moving conveyor belt. 
Although the leaf used in manufacture is fully flavored itself, other 
flavors are sometimes sprayed over the shredded tobacco, principally as sweet- 
eners or "casing compounds," and as an aid in preventing the smoke from being 
1/ Cigarettes in their first primitive form are said to have been intro- 
duced by the Turks around 1855; but at that time, although they were paper- 
wrapped, they were known as "cigars." 
ey i Le 
