Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 March 1884 — TOBACCO PAPER PULP. [ARTICLE]

TOBACCO PAPER PULP.

A Peculiar Kind or Cigars. A correspondent from New York writes: While seeking information among retail tobacconists, a peculiar preparation of tobacco used for tho pmnnfacture of a certain inferior class of Havana was spoken of, and with some difficulty it was learned that a German merchant, who is not in that line of trade, had a box of peculiar cigars sent to liim some time ago from Germany as a sample, with a purpose of inducing liim to undertake putting them on this market. “Take a cigar,” he said, hospitably, offering a box half full of the “weeds,” and lighting one of them himself. “Yes, I did have some, such cigars sent me awhile ago, but I declined to have anything to do with them, as there was no profit in them. They could not pay duty aud compete with the class of cigars they would be expected to run against here. ‘Peculiar manufacture ?’ Yes, rather. The richest, oiliest, rankest tobacco brought from some of the West Indian Islands is first put througha process exactly like that of making paper pulp. Wbile it is in that state chemistry’s aid is invoked to entirely change its character. The elements that render it rank and offensive are eliminated from it; other essential oils and ethers are added to it. It can he made to. exactly counterfeit any tobacco iri the world, even the finest from the Yuelta de Abajo. “When it is just right, it is run out in a film, that gradually grows in thickness to a sheet, just as paper is made. Upon this sheet certain acids are lightly sprinkled in minute drops here and there, to simulate upon the perfected sheet the little spots and blotehr-s that you see in the genuine tobacco leaf. The color has already been attended to and regulated so that it will come out just right for any shade of cigar, from a Claro to an Oseuro, but now other essential oils are touched to the sheet in the most delicate way, to give the rich, oily gloss of sub-cutane-ous color, so to speak, that will he observed on the finest dark leaf. Finally the sheet goes between powerful steel rollers, upon tlie carefully matched surface of which are deeply engraved exact reproductions in the most delicate detail of markings of genuine tobacco leaves. When those leaves are cut out of the sheet, it requires the skill of an expert to • determine that they are not real. The remnants go back into the vat, and the leaves are, according to their quality, made into* cigars or chopped up into filling for cigarettes. By the way, how do you like that cigar you are smoking now?” “Very well.” “Good flavor? Burns well?—Holds well its tine white ash?” “To all your queries—yes.” “Well, that is one of the cigars 1 have described to you the making of. Take this knife and cut it open. Examine its wrappers and the filler carefully. I am not surprised to hear you say that it looks like natural leaf, and that you can trace the lines of the veins and fine stems in it. Of course you can. But tear a bit in two and look at its edge with this magnifying glass. Do you observe that its fibers are irregularly disposed of, criss-cross, just like this bit of paper that I tear aud put under the glass? A natural leaf does not tear in that way. Scrape it, and you will see that its fibers separate from their hold in different directions. Boahc it in water and it will become soft and pull apart like paper. It is simply tobacco paper. No, Ido not know that there are in the country any more of these cigars than the few I have left. Ido not think that-there are. But I know that great quantities of them are sold all over Europe, and that the exportations to South America are quite large. People there smoke them in preference to the genuine and good real leaf cigars, grown and made in their own countries. Well, perhaps they don’t know how the imported ones are made. A dealer need not feel it compulsory upon him to tell, and there’s a great deal of virtue in a label to the average smoker.”