CIGARS. HISTORICAL AND GENERAL FACTS
History. Statistical information regarding the cigar business in the United States.
CIGARS. HISTORICAL AND GENERAL FACTS
When the Spaniards landed for the first time on American soil they found the natives smoking the rolled-up tobacco leaves, that is a cigar. For a cigar is nothing more, four centuries having made little change in the Cuban cigar. The word cigar is most probably derived from the Spanish word cigarer—to roll. Other derivations are given, but this seems etymologically the correct one; and we will rest content with it. In Spanish America to the present day the custom of smoking tobacco in the rolled form, either as cigars or cigarettes, prevails, rather than the custom of smoking in pipes which was the method of the northern aborigines from whom the English colonists adopted it. Smoking was introduced into Spain in the cigar form and into England in the pipe form. Cigars, however, at the present time, both in North and South America, form the principal item in the tobacco account of the people; we shall therefore enter somewhat fully into matters concerning their manufacture, etc.
Although, as stated, it is in the cigar form that smoking was introduced into Spain, it was not till about 1790 that cigars were used generally in Europe. A factory for the manufacture of cigars was established at Hamburg in 1796. The custom did not spread rapidly and did not reach any considerable proportion in England till about 1830 when the high duties were considerably reduced.
Cigar making has always been a staple industry in Cuba. It was there when the Europeans landed and it is there still. Its record is unbroken. There was always a greater or lesser exportation to Europe and elsewhere.
The cigar business of the U. S.
Of the various manufactured products of tobacco leaf, the cigar trade is the most important in the U. S., its value being greater than that of all other tobacco products combined.