Cigar

a cylindrical roll of tobacco for smoking. It is made of tobacco leaf divested of stems and rolled tightly in a strong leaf or wrapper. One end is pointed for lighting, the other for insertion in the mouth. A similar roll of tobacco, not pointed at the ends, is called a cheroot. Broken tobacco rolled in a piece of corn husk or rice paper is called a cigarette or little cigar. The name cigar was given originally by the Spanish to a kind of tobacco grown in Cuba. The most expensive cigars are those produced in a favored district of this island. They sell at wholesale at a dollar apiece. The leaf of the tobacco raised in Sumatra is much used for wrappers. Cigarettes and cheap cigars are made by machinery. The more expensive are rolled by hand. There were 14,539 cigar factories in the United States in 1900; in 1905 there were 16,395. The total output for the year 1905 was approximately 7,376,000,000 cigars; and 3,500,000,000 cigarettes. The manufacture of cigarettes is decreasing; that of cigars is increasing. An excellent authority claims that at the beginning of the present decade, 8,000,000,000 cigars were produced annually in the United States, costing smokers not less than $420,000,000. In addition to this we import 200,000,000 cigars from Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines, bringing the total consumption of cigars and cigarettes up to 13,000,000,000--an average of 160 for each man, woman, and child in the Union, with a corresponding increase in the number of consumers. According to these figures the American smoker pays out not less than $900,000,000 a year for cigars and cigarettes. This seems very large in comparison with $25,000,000 a year for books, and $80,000,000 a year for papers and magazines. In fact, the cost of books, newspapers, magazines, libraries, churches, schools, and colleges, in other words the amount spent for mental improvement, is but a fraction of the cost of cigars and cigarettes. See Tobacco