In connection with the manufacture of cigarettes, nothing strikes one with more astonishment than the many industries which form accessories to a factory. The printing and lithographic work, a large quantity of which is required for the paper bundles or tasteful pasteboard boxes in which the various packages are put up, is all done by the employees, and even a photograph gallery is at hand for such persons as may desire their own likeness to accompany each package. So cleverly is all this work executed, that until very recently the bank notes and lottery tickets, both of which are largely circulated, were here printed. Rather odd to our American ideas, it must be confessed, is the spectacle of bank notes and lottery tickets being printed side by side—that too in a cigarette factory.
Boxes of tin, of wood, of all shapes and sizes, as well as kegs for exportation to distant points, are made within these same walls, where moulders, machinists, blacksmiths, tinmen, printers, lithographers, engravers, painters, and carpenters, are all furnished with work. Two hundred out of the twenty-five hundred employees are Chinese, and for them is provided a separate dormitory, kitchen, and even bathrooms.
THE HARD TIMES.
WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR CHEAP LABOR?
"Wanted.—
Work for a thousand starving Immigrants!"
Such is our advertisement. Cheap labor! that is the boon our "society" seeks. We wish to "develop our resources"; and as rapidly as possible, for in that lies all blessedness—real "sweetness and light."
Has not this delightful gospel been preached to us from pulpit and forum now full fifty good years, and does any one doubt its divine origin? Yes; I fear there is now and then to be found one of those antiquated infidels who scorns our "cheap cotton" and holds fast to manhood; who sniffs at our great new factory and says, "Give me a man!"