Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce

by E. R. Billings

STRIPPING.

The leaves of the tobacco are easily affected by the humidity of the atmosphere and during damp weather every opportunity is improved by the grower for taking down the tobacco preparatory to stripping. After taking down from the poles the plants should be packed in order to keep moist until stripped. The tobacco should not be removed from the poles when it drips or the juice exudes from either the stalk or the leaves. If stripped in this condition the leaves are apt to stain and thus become unfit for wrappers. The operation of stripping consists in taking the leaves from the stalk and tying them in bundles or hands with a leaf around the base of the hand. Each "hand" or bunch should contain at least eight leaves and from that number to twelve. If the plants are large the leaves of one stalk will form a hand; a poor leaf is used for binding as it can not be used for the same purpose as the leaves around which it is bound.

Hands.

The old planters of tobacco in Virginia called this operation of taking off the leaves and tying them up "stripping and bundling" which is here described.

"When the plants of tobacco which are thus hanging upon the sticks in the house have gone through the several stages of process before the time of stripping, and are deemed to be in case for the next operation, a rainy day (which is the most suitable) is an opportunity which is generally taken advantage of when the hands cannot be so well employed out of doors. The sticks containing the tobacco which may be sufficiently cured, are then taken down and drawn out of the plants. They are then taken one by one respectively, and the leaves being stripped from the stalk of the plant are rolled round the butts or thick ends of the leaves with one of the smallest leaves as a bandage, and thus made up into little bundles fit for laying into the cask for final packing."

Hazard gives the following method of assorting and stripping tobacco in Cuba:—

"Among the Cubans, the leaves are divided into four classes: first, desecho, desecho limpio, which are those immediately at the top of the plant, and which constitute the best quality, from the fact that they get more equally the benefit of the sun's rays by day and the dew by night; second, desechito, which are the next to the above; third, the libra, the inferior or small leaves about the top of the plant; and fourth, the injuriado, or those nearest the root. Of the injuriado there are three qualities; the best is called injuriado de reposo, or 'the picked over,' and the other two, firsts and seconds (primeros, sequndos).

"Tobacco of the classes desechito and libra, of which the leaves are not perfect, is called injuriado bueno, while all the rest, of whatever quality, that is broken in such a manner as to be unfit for wrappers are called injuriado malo. Amongst the trade in place of the above names, the different qualities are simply designated by numbers."