CIGAR FACTORIES IN 1885

[El Presidente]

 

Great read 

CIGAR FACTORIES IN 1885

Where They Were; What They Looked Like

A National Cigar History Museum Exclusive 

© Tony Hyman

        In 1885, there were 24 cigar factories in the United States that employed 500 or more rollers; three of those establishments had 1,000 rollers, giving them an output of a quarter million cigars a day, more than 50,000,000 cigars a year.  Giant factories tended to make their own brands as well as offer private labels to wholesalers, jobbers, retailers, anyone who wanted them. Straiton & Storm (below) is perhaps most famous for creating OWL and ROBT. BURNS, but it’s 1,000 rollers filled boxes for hundreds of brands offered nationwide. Boxes with an ID reading Fact. 11, 3rd Dist. NY are Straiton & Storm brands. 

 

        Museum visitors are frequently shocked when I tell them the United States was home to a quarter million cigar factories and produced approximately 2,000,000 different brands of cigar, more factories and more brands than any other branded product in history. In this exhibit, you will learn where those figures came from.

        The year 1885 is the perfect choice to begin the Cigar History Museum’s series of exhibits about cigar factories. The Golden Age of the America Cigar had begun only five years earlier. It’s an important time in the industry...a very good time.

        In the late 1870s new high quality domestic cigar tobaccos had come to market and Sumatran wrapper, the world’s best, began to be imported. As if that weren’t enough, in 1878, the IRS loosed what had been highly constrictive regulations defining what cigar boxes should look like, thus opening the way for inventive and appealing novelty packaging. Not only were fancier boxes and better tobacco available, but Civil war tobacco taxes had been substantially reduced in 1883, which meant the new higher quality cigars cost less. Cigar smoking caught on with men of all classes. The number of cigar factories rose dramatically.

        Across America, across states, across time, this photo perfectly represents the statistically typical pre 1920 cigar factory: what they looked like, the people who worked in them, and the tools and supplies they used. About 70% of the entire quarter million U.S. cigar factories looked something like this, although pictorial evidence suggests this is cleaner and neater than average. Vastly more numerous than medium or large companies, these small factories, disdainfully called “buckeyes” or chinchalles (cockroaches) by larger factories, combined to account for only about 15% of annual production. Small factories were located in sheds, lofts, storefronts, apartment houses, and private homes. One in three small factories failed to last three years.

 

 

 

http://cigarhistory.info/Cigarmaking/Cigar_factories_1885_I_files/factoryout18.jpg

      

 

CONTINUED

[westg]

Wouldn't it be so great to go back in time and wander through. 

[tjkoala]

I’m curious to how good of quality the cigars in 1885 were. I have a hunch they were more likely machine rolls than what we get now from the local B&M’s humi.