Mexico produces a tobacco, large as to leaf, dark in color, with heavy body and coarse veins. The tobacco is very strong in flavor. The best grades approach the Cuban tobacco in quality and are imported and used as substitutes for it. The U. S. importation is small. The annual production is about 34 million lbs. The best quality is produced in the neighborhood of Vera Cruz, and only a small portion is exported, principally to Cuba.
Brazilian tobacco leaf is brown in color, medium in size, and medium in body. It possesses fair qualities as a cigar tobacco, for which purpose it is generally used in South America, which is its principal market.
East Indian and Philippine Tobacco
The Dutch East Indies (Sumatra and the adjacent islands) produce yearly about 180 million lbs. of tobacco, all of which is used in the cigar business. Of this the United States takes about from 30,000 to 40,000 bales of Sumatran leaf, about 5½ million lbs. About 2 lbs. of this leaf wraps 1,000 cigars.
The Philippine Islands produce from 50 to 100 million lbs., of tobacco annually. The crop for 1913 was 101,544,736 lbs. The imports into the United States are principally as manufactured cigars by special arrangements which will be referred to later on in the chapter on cigars.
CHAPTER IV
PRODUCTION OF TOBACCO IN THE UNITED STATES