THE TOBACCONIST.
1. It is the business of the tobacconist to convert the leaves of the tobacco plant into snuff, cigars, and smoking and chewing tobacco.
2. Although there may seem to be a great variety of snuffs, yet they may be all reduced to three kinds, viz., Scotch, rappee, and maccouba. These are variously modified by the quality of the tobacco, by some little variation in the manufacture, and by the articles employed in communicating the desired flavour.
3. In manufacturing snuff, the tobacco is ground in a mill of a peculiar construction. Before the weed is submitted to this operation, it is reduced to a certain degree of fineness, by means of a cutting machine; and then spread in a heap, one or two feet thick, and sprinkled with water, that it may heat and sweat. The time required in this preparation depends upon the state of the weather, and the kind of snuff for which the tobacco is designed.
4. Scotch snuff is made of the strongest sort of tobacco, and is put up in bladders and bottles without being scented. Rappee and maccouba are put up in jars and bottles; and the former is generally scented with bergamot, and the latter with the ottar of roses. Sometimes, several ingredients, agreeable to the olfactory nerves, are employed.
5. Cigars are composed of two parts, called the wrapper and the filling. The former is made of pieces of thin leaves, cut to a proper shape, and the latter of those which are more broken. In all cases, the leaves used in the manufacture of cigars are deprived of the stems, which are reserved, either to be converted into inferior kinds of snuff, or for exportation to Holland, where they are usually flattened between rollers, and afterwards cut fine for smoking tobacco, to be sold to the poorer class of people.
6. The value of cigars depends chiefly on the quality of the tobacco. The best kind for this purpose, grows on the island of Cuba, near Havana. Tobacco from this seed is raised in many other places; and such, among tobacconists, is called seed; but it passes, among smokers of limited experience, for the real Havana. A very fine silky tobacco of this sort, is cultivated in Connecticut, which is much esteemed.
7. An expert hand will make five or six hundred Spanish cigars in a day, or from one thousand to fifteen hundred of those composed of Maryland or Kentucky tobacco. Making cigars, being light work, is well adapted to females, of whom great numbers are regularly employed in this branch of business. Tobacco intended for the pipe, is cut in a machine; and, after having been properly dried, it is put up in papers of different sizes.
8. Chewing tobacco is almost exclusively prepared from the species of this plant which is cultivated in Virginia, chiefly in the vicinity of James river. It is better adapted to this purpose than any other, on account of its superior strength, and the great amount of resinous matter which it contains.
9. The first operation in preparing chewing tobacco, is that of depriving the leaves of the stems. The former are then twisted by hand into plugs of different sizes, or spun into a continued thread by the aid of the tobacco-wheel, which is a simple machine moved by a crank. The thread thus produced is formed into bunches, or twists, containing a definite amount of tobacco.