Cuba’s tobacco has a great advantage over her sugar in the facts that it can always command a good price and is beyond the reach of competition in the matter of quality. Every likely soil and climate in the world has been tried in the effort to produce a leaf similar to that grown in the fields of the celebrated Vuelta Abajo. Even though seeds from the best Cuban plants have been used, the results have never approached the object sought. What is commonly known as “Havana” tobacco stands alone without a rival or any satisfactory substitute. One of the peculiarities of the tobacco plant is that a very slight change in the conditions under which it is grown will effect a considerable change in the character of the leaf produced. Plants raised in soils composed of precisely the same chemical ingredients will yield quite different tobacco when those ingredients happen to be present in varying proportions.{186} In Cuba, as elsewhere, it is no uncommon thing to find tobacco of the highest grade upon a piece of land within a stone’s throw of another field where only the poorest quality of leaf can be produced. This is a fact that should be remembered by prospective purchasers of advertised Cuban lands. Promotion companies and agents frequently offer tobacco acreage at high prices, which they justify by statements of the production of adjacent vegas. Often the purchaser finds himself in possession of a worthless tract lying alongside of one which is yielding handsome profits to its owner. There is very little land in the tobacco districts of Pinar del Rio which has not been tried out and it is not safe to buy anything unless it is actually in cultivation. In Oriente there is plenty of good tobacco land available, but up to the present it has not been made to produce a grade of leaf equal to what is termed partidos.
Tobacco is raised in the most widely separated parts of the earth and in the most diversified climates. The world’s annual crop of the leaf approximates 2,000,000,000 pounds with a value in the raw state of about $225,000,000. Of this volume, Cuba produces no
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WELL-DEVELOPED TOBACCO PLANTS.
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more than 60,000,000 pounds in a good year, but receives for it about $20,000,000. These figures clearly indicate the comparatively high price which the Cuban leaf commands. Fully three-fourths of the total crop comes from Pinar del Rio, the remainder mainly from Habana and Santa Clara. Oriente is fast coming to the fore as a tobacco producing province.
A very small proportion of the product of Pinar del Rio, and probably none of the output of other parts of the Island, is true “Cuban tobacco.” After the Ten Years’ War, foreign seeds, chiefly that of Mexican tobacco, were used extensively to revive the ruined vegas. These exotic varieties throve and almost entirely usurped the place of the original plant. Greatly improved by the Cuban environment, the greater part of the Island’s output is, nevertheless, Mexican tobacco.
It is often claimed that the Cuban tobacco grower possesses some peculiar or mystical skill, but the truth doubtless is that his success is mainly due to the combination of soil, water, and air, that his plants enjoy. If it were otherwise the superiority in product which the Vuelta Abajo has maintained for three centuries would have been contested by other sec{188}tions. The famous “Lower Valley” lies in the shadow of the Organ Mountains, to the southwest of Habana. The district is about one hundred miles in length by ten in width. The earliest plantations of the Spaniards were set out in the Vuelta Abajo at the close of the sixteenth century. It is the flavor only of the leaf from this district that creates the extraordinary demand for it. The partidos varieties, as the best leaf from other parts of the Island is called, is larger and has a better texture.
An average year’s output of Vuelta Abajo leaf will be about 260,000 bales, or 28,600,000 pounds. Somewhat more than half of this is converted into first-class cigars and cigarettes by the manufacturers of Habana, and the remainder is exported to the United States and Europe. The Province of Habana produces about one-fourth as much as Pinar del Rio, say 65,000 bales. This is called partido leaf. About 15,000 bales of it are consumed in the Cuban factories and the rest shipped to Key West, New York, and Europe. Of the 125,000 bales of what is called Remedios leaf, which Santa Clara produces annually, one-fifth is used locally and the balance sent to the United States. Oriente has a production somewhat{189} less than that of Santa Clara, and consumes about the same proportion locally. This tobacco is generally termed Mayari. It is a coarse leaf, too low-grade for the American market, but acceptable at a low price to the smokers of Spain, Italy, and Austria, whither it is shipped. The Provinces of Matanzas and Puerto Principe do not produce enough tobacco to make an effect upon the market.
Tobacco factories are operated in most of the cities and large towns of Cuba. They give employment to a large number of men and women. A considerable proportion of this labor is skilled and high-priced. Many workmen receive five dollars or more as the daily wage. The best paid employes are those called “selectors,” who have the faculty of correctly grading tobacco leaves by a quick touch and rapid glance. In other branches of the manufacture, such as wrapping and sorting, experts will earn as much by piece work. The finished product of the factories amounts to upwards of 200,000,000 cigars and nearly 15,000,000 packages of cigarettes yearly.
Some of the finest buildings in Habana are devoted to the manufacture of tobacco. The factories are numerous and include many in{190} which no more than twenty hands are engaged, but the bulk of the business is centred in a few companies that each employ thousands of workmen. There has been considerable reorganization among the large manufacturing concerns in recent years, involving the introduction of a large amount of additional capital and the extension of American interests. More than 25,000 persons gain a livelihood in the tobacco business in Habana alone. Not less than ninety-five per cent. of the exports of manufactured tobacco are from Habana. A large proportion of the factory output of interior towns is accounted for by domestic consumption.
The Cuban veguero possesses a skill in tobacco growing which is the result of the accumulated experience and practice of generations. In his hands the cultivation of the narcotic plant is a highly developed art, but it has not been reduced to a science. The most successful Cuban planter can not tell you definitely how he produces his results, nor why certain processes insure desired consequences. He has no fixed formulas, and some of his most cherished practices are based on sheer superstition. As a rule, he is working ground that{191} his father and grandfather worked before him. Through their experience and his own he has gained an intimate knowledge of its needs, capacity, and peculiarities. He can produce results from it that Europeans and Americans have never succeeded in equalling without his aid. Nevertheless, it is doubtful if the Cuban is securing from his tobacco land the utmost yield in quality or quantity of which it is capable. In the cultivation he clings to many crudities; his irrigation is haphazard and often misjudged; he does not avail himself of the mechanical appliances at his command. Where the best leaf is grown, traditional methods are most firmly entrenched. There have, however, been introduced great improvements in the treatment of lands controlled by large corporations. The chief and most effective of these is the cultivation of the leaf under cover. In order to encourage this development of the industry, the duty on cheese cloth, which ranged from fifteen to fifty cents per kilogram, was repealed in 1902. Since then the area under cover has steadily increased and the results achieved justify the belief that Cuba will soon rival Sumatra in the production of fine wrappers.{192}
Tobacco seed is sown in carefully prepared beds during the month of September. About sixty days later the young plants are set out in the field with eighteen inches of space between each. Constant pruning and weeding are necessary in order to insure a healthy and vigorous growth. At the same time the tobacco worm and leaf slug must be picked off as fast as they appear on the plant.
In January the plants are cut and the leaves hung to dry. When thoroughly dried, the leaves are petuned, or sprinkled with a solution of tobacco water until fermentation has taken place. The leaves are then roughly sorted with regard to size and quality, assembled in bunches, or hands, and packed in bales, each weighing about 125 pounds.
It is estimated that over one hundred thousand persons in Cuba are engaged in the tobacco industry, and that eighty thousand of these are employed in the commercial cultivation of the leaf. One man is generally able to properly look after two............