The Land of Cigars

1895

NEARLY EVERYBODY IN CUBA MAKES OR SMOKES THEM.

Interesting Facts About the Big Factories In Havana — The Real Thing at 2 Cents Apiece and Others at $2 — Cigarettes Are Also Very Popular

I have never seen a Havana man smoking in church. It's about the only place where he does not smoke. He smokes in the street cars, he smokes at the public dining table, he smokes everywhere. The presence of women is not considered at all. When coffee is brought on the table, the Spaniard or Cuban lights his cigar or cigarette and begins to send up clouds of smoke. He never even thinks of saying to the ladies, "By your leave," for the custom of the country is to smoke everywhere. On the railway trains there is no smoking compartment, for a man is privileged, and, in fact, expected to smoke everywhere. If he is not smoking, his neighbor will offer him a cigarette. The driver of your coach will smoke and very likely offer you a cheroot.

At the opera the men will walk and smoke between the acts in the spaces behind the boxes and balconies. You will see finely dressed, seemingly well bred men, with ladies in full evening toilet, entering the theater and smoking as they go. You never see a pipe in Cuba. It is the country of the cigar and the cigarette. One of the odd sights to a stranger is that afforded by the negro women, who smoke big, long and black cigars in the street. It was here that the smoking habit, which has spread around the world, had its start, and the Cubans are still more devoted to their cigars than any other people. The cigar industry and the tobacco trade give employment to a large portion of the population of Havana. In every quarter one will run across small establishments where from two to ten men are employed making cigars and some children and women engaged in stripping tobacco.

There are many large factories, employing, some of them, several hundred men and women. Some of these factories make cigarettes as well as cigars. The cigarettes are made out of strong Cuban tobacco, but have the negative virtue of being pure, untinctured tobacco. In every house or office building the porter, who sits in the entresol, is engaged all day long in rolling cigarettes. He has a little table in front of him, where the tobacco and paper are spread out, and he is constantly at work. In this way the porter adds to his income. A vast quantity of cigarettes are smoked here as well as cigars. When the Cuban is not smoking cigars, he is smoking cigarettes.

It is not to be supposed that all the cigars made or smoked in Havana are fine cigars. The best tobacco comes from one district near Havana known as Vuelto Abajo, and the quality of that often varies on different plantations and in different seasons. Much tobacco is raised in other districts which is not of a superior kind and has not the rich flavor that makes fine Havana cigars sought after in all parts of the world. A good deal, probably most of the very highest grade tobacco, is secured for the makers of famous brands of cigars in Havana.

Some of the owners of big cigar factories have plantations of their own and options on the product of other plantations famed for the quality of their leaf, but many of the cigars sold here at a low price are just as rank as any ever produced in the United States, and worse, because they are stronger. One cannot get a very pleasant impression from a visit to a cigar factory. In the large factories the plumbing and sanitary arrangements are unusually bad, and the buildings are filled with had odors, which, mingling with that of the tobacco, have anything but a pleasing effect. Two or three hundred men will be at work in a poorly ventilated room that does not afford proper breathing space for more than a hundred. Neatness and cleanliness are not conspicuous characteristics, either of the men at work rolling cigars or of the hundreds of girls and children engaged in stripping tobacco. If one wants to thoroughly enjoy a fine Havana cigar, if he has over visited one of the factories he will have to obliterate the memory of the visit from his mind.

The fine grades of cigars sell at retail in Havana for less than half the price one would have to pay in the United States — that is, one will buy for 10 cents a cigar that would cost him in Washington 20 or 25 cents, and for 5 cents a cigar he would pay 10 or 15 cents for at home. Then there are cigars or cheroots sold for 1 or 2 cents. The ordinary retail price for a package of cigarettes is 5 cents. The cigars affected here are of the largest sizes, 6 or 8 inches in length, and some of them an inch in diameter.

The very finest cigars made here go to England. Some of them cost $1 each here at wholesale. The men who make these cigars are paid 30 cents each for the making of them. They are made with the greatest care, every bit of leaf in them being selected and especially treated and the rolling and wrapping being done by the most skillful of cigar makers. One of these men engaged in making those $1 cigars will not make more than 20 or 30 in a day. He is supplied with a certain amount of tobacco when he begins work in the morning, and when he turns in the product of his day's labor at night must account for all the tobacco. The cigars are carefully inspected, and if any defect, the slightest crack or a variation in color, is discovered in a cigar it is rejected. The cigar maker is paid only for the perfect cigars. In the best factories the rejected cigars are smoked up by the employees.

In some factories where cigars not of the very finest quality are made the rejected cigars are boxed and sold as "seconds." In all the factories the cigar makers are privileged to smoke all they want of their own product and to take a pocketful of cigars with them when they go out at night. Of course this is in part at their own expense, for they are paid for the cigars they turn in. One will see cigars for sale at the stands here for as much as 80 cents or $1. Some of them are packed separately in glass tubes, so as to preserve their elusive Cuban flavor. A cigar costing $1 here would cost $2 in the United States, and a man who smoked half a dozen of them a day ought to pay a pretty good income tax. — Havana Cor. Washington Star.

Flames Put Out by Hand Extinguishers

Syracuse, NY, 1912

In an awning fire at the Snowdon apartment house Saturday evening hand extinguishers used in the building put out the flames before the arrival of the Fire department. The blaze was started by a lighted cigarette thrown from a window. The damage was slight.

--The Syracuse Herald, Syracuse, NY, June 10, 1912, p. 7.

Funnygraphs — "He Fell Unconscientious"

1900

McAisy — I do be seein' that Misther Hardin' has quit findin' out things. O'Deer — But whin did he ever begin?

It was the colored pugilist who said: "It on'y lasted one roun'. I landed on he chin and he fell unconscientious."

"What's the difference between wrath and a woman who wants you to subscribe for something?" "I dunno." "A soft answer turneth away wrath."

"Would you call a cat herbivorous, carnivorous or ominvorous?" asked the man who is learned, but tedious. "Neither," answered the man who yawns; "merely vociferous."

"You've got your linen suit on a trifle early, Hopkins," "Yes; but my folks are interested in a rummage sale; and when I carry my clothes around with me I know where they are."

A man smoking a cigarette boarded a Union traction car, and a woman handed him an anti-cigarette tract. "Thank you, ma'am," said he. "I'll take it home to my son." — Muncie Star.

He — A live donkey, you know, is better than a dead lion. She — Yes. He — Why are you looking around in that way? She — I'm looking for the dead lion that made the comparison pop into your mind.

Thompson — Jones was around early this morning to borrow my snow shovel. Robinson — Great Scott! What does he want with it this time of the year? Thompson — He doesn't want to use it now. Brown borrowed it last fall, and Jones didn't get a shot at it the whole winter, and he is determined Brown should not get ahead of him this year.

She Stops Traffic To Light Her "Fag"

March 1920

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — Street car traffic on a busy street was tied up while a young woman smoked a cigarette. It wouldn't have been so bad if she hadn't chosen to sit down on the street car track and light her "fag." She made matters worse when, after an argument with an angry motorman, she blandly asked him for a match to light a second cigarette.

Dick Allen, former policeman, removed the young woman from the track and escorted her to the police station.

"You're stewed," remarked the booking clerk.

"You tell 'em; I stutter," she said, as she was led away to the matron's room to sober up.


Inmates of Jail Escape

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio — Sheriff W. T. Baker woke on a recent morning to find the county jail empty. Some time after midnight the eight prisoners sawed and cut their way to liberty.


New Electric Dental Engine

A new electric dental engine runs on either direct or alternating current or on that supplied by dry batteries where no other supple of electricity is available.

London Women Rolling Cigarettes for Soldiers

1915

They Abandon Knitting for a New Fad for Relief of Men

London. — Rolling cigarettes for relatives, sweethearts, and friends in the fighting line is just now the occupation of many women here, who believe tobacco in this form will be more appreciated than packages of cigarettes manufactured in the ordinary way.

It is not an uncommon sight to see women rolling cigarettes in the lobbies of some well-known hotels, and many have temporarily given up knitting to make cigarettes. Symmetry, of course, is not much in evidence in these productions, which often swell toward the center like cigars, but Tommy Atkins will probably be able to smoke them despite their shortcomings.


Piquet War in Trenches

Soldiers Have Regular Championship Matches Along the Battle Lines

Paris. — Piquet, says the Figaro, is the favorite diversion of the French troops in the trenches along the battle lines. Some remarkable games are played between the crack players of the different companies.

Many of the contests are broken off suddenly by the bursting of shrapnel in or near the trenches. Not infrequently a game ends in a "dead" hand when some unfortunate player "passes out" forever while holding the winning cards.

My Lady Nicotine — Curious Meditations on Smoking

1903

My Lady Nicotine

Curious Meditations Upon the Smoking Habit

There must be a great army of men who smoke an ounce of tobacco a day. Such worthy smokers are, of course, men of a philosophic and reflecting disposition, although they do not always care to favor the world with the results of the high meditations due to the influence of the soothing weed.

It will be new, even to many of these, to know that it would take no less than 9S years to dispose of a ton of tobacco at this rate of consumption, says Tit-Bits, and it will be still more surprising to consider the magnitude of this amount under various aspects.

The smoker of an ounce a day is almost invariably a faithful disciple of the pipe. He may submit to a cigar or a cigaret to please the ladies, but the pipe remains his true love. Hence we will first suppose that our ton of tobacco is to be sacrificed to My Lady Nicotine in the homely pipe. If the ordinary ounce packets in which the tobacco is probably bought were piled in a single column they would tower to a height of 2,700 feet. Arranged in a solid block they would form a cube of packed "shag" measuring 13 feet in every direction, or more than twice the height of a man.

We might conceive a pipe specially built to consume this mass. Such a pipe, if built on the plan of the familiar briar would be 100 feet long, and the bowl would be 20 feet in diameter. This bowl could accommodate 700 men. Should the smoker of such a huge pipeful prefer the "church warden" he would obtain a graceful clay 500 feet long.

On a low average two matches are used to each pipe of tobacco. After his 750,000 pipes the smoker would have used as many matches as would stretch from London to Coventry, or Bath or Gloucester, if placed end to end. The timber would be barely contained in a grove of 20 stalwart trees each 40 feet high. The heat energy represented, and which is largely water, would serve to run a locomotive a considerable distance.

We must not forgot that there are many who prefer the mild cigaret. Let us consider our ton of tobacco in this form. There will be a considerable difference in the actual number of cigarets consumed if the smoker makes his own in preference to buying them ready made. In the former case he will burn no fewer than 1,000,000 in fragrant smoke; a quantity which is placed in order would make a thin white line from London to Brighton, and in the latter case they would stretch for 37 miles. Placed side by side, they would pave a small pathway five miles long.

Could we make these cigarets into one huge whole, we should obtain a cigaret 10 feet in diameter and nearly 100 feet long. A man built in proportion to enjoy this little smoke would be a mere 2,220 feet high. The consumer of this tobacco may, like Svengali, be a lover of the big cigar of the Havana. If so, he must be prepared to spend at least £3,000, of which 500 pounds will be wasted in fag-ends.

Insane Man Threatened to Kill Restaurant Keeper

Lincoln, Nebraska, 1920

Threatened to Kill Restaurant Keeper

Man Under Arrest Knew How to Use Gun

Told a Physician That He Intended Shooting Up the Place During the Evening Meal Hour

When two deputy sheriffs and a deputy United States marshal dropped into a South Tenth restaurant during the supper hour Tuesday evening and gazed curiously around and then consulted in whispers with the proprietor, cashier and other attaches, interest upon the part of everyone in the place became quickly apparent. The patron who had been but a moment before busily engaged in the mastication of a chop turned quickly upon his high stool and gazed with suspicion upon his neighbors on either side. Soon everyone in the long room as well as those in the kitchen to the rear had been apprised of the fact that an insane man had threatened to appear and shoot up the place and that the officers were looking for him.

The crazy man failed to reach the restaurant, but had he arrived it is thought he would have found it necessary to content himself with shattering dishes and coffee urns with his bullets, as it became speedily apparent there would have been no human targets in sight. As a wise general has at all times a line of retreat available, so has the long headed proprietor of a bean bureau who has been warned that armed invasion is imminent. So everyone from the boss to the dishwasher was prepared to duck and decamp at the first indication of hostilities. One well known lawyer gulped down what was in his mouth, slid from his altitudinous perch and throwing a bill at the alert cashier, vanished through the front door. He is said to have reached his office in record time.

But the madman came not. Deputy Sheriffs Anderson and Moore and Deputy United States Marshal Carroll went from the restaurant to the room which he had been occupying at 1448 0 street and there found him. He is named in the insanity complaint which had been lodged against him in the office of the clerk of the district court as M. L. Munger and during the afternoon he had called at the office of a physician and announced his intention of shooting up the restaurant.

He assured the doctor that the people at the place had been taking his meals, were determined to kill him, and had been putting poison in his coffee. It was his intention to go there at supper time, and upon the slightest indication that there was anything wrong he would kill everyone in the place. As soon as the man had left his office the physician reported the matter to the proper officers and steps were taken to place Munger under restraint. The deputies first visited the restaurant and after ascertaining that the slaughter had not as yet taken place, they went to the room of the demented man.

A knock at the door was responded to by Munger, who was at once taken charge of. The man had in his possession a large automatic revolver with a box of shells, and in his room was also a rifle with ammunition. He was very friendly with the officers, but insisted upon forcing cigarets upon Deputy "Bob" Anderson. He frankly assured that officer that the "pills" would lull him, that being the end avowedly aimed at. He was convinced that Anderson had a large family and carried life insurance and he thought that "he would be worth more dead than alive." Munger was locked up in the county jail and it was thought he would be given a hearing before the insanity commission some time during the day.

Nothing was learned by the officers of the family or antecedents of the unfortunate man, who claims to be a mechanic and an inventor. He had in his room a suit case, lined with sheet iron and fastened with five locks, and it was stated his patent is kept in this receptacle.

—The Evening State Journal and Lincoln Daily News, Lincoln, Nebraska, February 25, 1920, page 3.