Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 August 1885 — Frauds in. Cigars. [ARTICLE]

Frauds in. Cigars.

“Now, there’s a cigar,” said a tobacco merchant whose firm handled more than a million dollars’ worth of cigars a year, “that has made a great reputation within the past year, and which is eagerly smoked by all good judges of cigars, and yet there is so much cheating done in this particular brand that fully two-thirds of the smokers are swindled. lam not surprised, either, that they do not find it out, as the cheating is very adroitly done. The price of the cigar to dealers is 22} cents, and yet you can buy the cigar, or what they pretend is the cigar, all over town for 25 cents. We will not retail them for less than 28 cents, because that gives us little enough profit. ” “Are all that are' sold for 25 cents bogus ?” “They are not the true imported brand, as a rule. Of course, there are occasional big hotels and restaurants that are content to handle them at a margin of two and a half cents. The fraud is effected in this way: Clerks or boys in the hotels or restaurants where the genuine brand is sold keep the boxes when they become empty and supply them at a fair cost—-say 50 cents apiece—to the small dealers. A domestic cigar is manufactured of the exact shape and color of the imported brand, and the box is filled with these domestic cigars. The box is genuine, and the cigars very much like the real thing. The dealer, by this little game, clears about thirteen cents on a cigar—a pretty tidy profit, and well worth the ruse even if it is a state prison offense.” “How can one detect the spurious one ?” "Only an expert can tell the difference in the make of the cigar at a glance, but if you look carefully at the date on the box it might give you a dew. For instance, I saw some cigars that were not over a week old the other day that were in a box labeled Oct; 12. The manufacturers on the other side are endeavoring to throw difficulties in the way of these fraudulent dealers by putting a peculiar glaze on their boxes. But the cigar thieves soon get a hold of the boxes, so what are they going to do about it ?”— New York Sun.