"Smokes and Smoking : Something About the Cigar Trade of the City : The Number Manufactured and the Number Smoked – People Who Think They Are Judges – Some Knowing Talk”
About 10 o’clock last evening, a Spectator reporter stood in a King street cigar store chatting with the proprietor. A tall and lanky youth dressed dandishly and sporting an eye glass and cane, came in and asked for some good cigars. The proprietor showed him a couple of boxes. The labels were similar and the only perceptible difference in the tobacco spikes was that one lot of cigars had paper bands around them, and the other had not. The youth smelled them both and asked the proprietor what they were worth. That gentleman indicated that the amount of national currency required to purchase the ones with the bands was 15 cents each, and the other ten cents. The youth smelled them again, and remarked that the expensive ones smelled to be the nicest, bought half a dozen of them and went out. “Now there’s a man,” said the proprietor, “who
DON’T KNOW THE DIFFERENCE
Between a good cigar and a bad one – and there are hundreds of other constant cigar smokers who imagine themselves good judges of tobacco, and who don’t know anything more about it than he does. Now those cigars are exactly the same. They are part of the same lot, made from the same batch of leaf, only somehow the bands were not put on these. They are both ten cent cigars, at least that is the regular price. When I catch a man who don’t know what he’s buying though, I don’t see any objection to pulling his leg a little.”
“Does it take long to become a good judge of tobacco?”
“Yes, it does. A man who has never smoked anything but fine goods has generally the most correct judgment; but take a man who has become accustomed to smoking inferior lines and he can’t tell the difference between a ten cent cigar and a 25-er, or between a very fine one and a fair one. I have cigars in stock that I sell for 10 cents that are equal to lots that cost double the money. There are plenty of men about town, though, who will buy the expensive cigars in preference to the others every time, thinking, naturally enough, that the expensive ones are the best. I’m speaking, understand, of imported cigars. People buy imported cigars BECAUSE THEY ARE
Imported cigars, and not because they know the difference between them and non-imported goods. There are plenty of domestic cigars sold in the city for 5 cents that are equal, if not superior, to a big percentage of imported goods.”
“Have you any idea of the extent of the sale and manufacture in the city?”
“I have not. You will have to ask some manufacturer.”
The reporter hunted up a leading manufacturer and asked him as to the extent of the trade.
“Well, I can’t exactly say,” he said in answer. “I guess there are about twelve factories in the city, and they will give employment to say 100 – probably more – hands. By hands, I mean cigar makers, and don’t include office men, strippers, apprentices and others. These 100 men each make an average of 1,500 cigars a week, or 150,000 altogether. Multiply this by the number of weeks in the year and you have a grand total of
7,800, 000 CIGARS
manufactured in the city annually. How many of these are sold here? I guess about half of them, the balance going to Toronto, Montreal, London and lesser Canadian places. Lots of Hamilton cigars are shipped to Manitoba. I guess about two-thirds of the number made here are 5 cent cigars; the others are ten and a few fifteens. You know we Hamilton Manufacturers enjoy the reputation of making, as a rule, the best 5 cent cigars in the Dominion. There are very few cigars brought into the city from other Canadian places. Why? Well, you see the demand is all for local goods, and outsiders have no show. We buy the best tobacco we can get, purchasing from the wholesale leaf dealers through the States for the cheaper goods and getting finer qualities direct from Havana.”
“Are there many imported cigars sold in the city?”
“Yes, quite a number, but not so many as in other years. Home factories are now turning out better goods than formerly, and now they can make a far better domestic cigar for ten cents than can be imported for that money. The majority of those imported now are inferior goods, though there are still
A CONSIDERABLE IMPORTATION
of the very fine and expensive goods to meet the demands of people who will have nothing else.”
Another manufacturer estimated the total consumption of cigars during a year at upwards of the enormous number of 10,000,000, but others think that figure is too high. Speaking of cigars, he said : “It’s curious how the public taste runs. A while ago people would have nothing but cigars with light wrappers; now, the darker you get the wrappers the better you suit them. I must confess I like to see the dark wrappers myself. The color of it makes no difference in the quality of flavor of the cigar. The filling remains the same. The wrapper is made is made black by sweating. There are very few men who will smoke one brand constantly. They get tired of them, no matter how good they are and seek a change. The majority of the cigars are flavored, each dealer using his own particular flavor. Very few cigars are sold pure : that is, what I mean by that is, the original flavor of the tobacco is changed by the flavoring extract used. On account of the fickleness of the public taste, very few dealers keep their brands up to the original high standard. They let them drop and get out the cigar under another name. This has a run for a while and then is superseded by another brand of probably the same make and same quality. I can name you four different brands of cigars sold in the city today, all of which are exactly the same, yet I have heard men declare that they would not smoke the one and speak warmly in praise of the other.”
- Spectator August 7, 1884
- Spectator August 7, 1884
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