Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

34 BRITAIN AT WORK. The cut heap is now transferred to a canvas frame, through which steam is gently driven, with the object of securing an even distribution of the moisture, being thence placed upon a hot plate that drives off the excess of moisture, and brings out the full aroma of the leaf. The final process consists in the removal of the shag to another canvas rack, through which a current of air passes, and the tobacco is then ready for the packers. The cutting and drying processes are highly paid. The wage often reaches 45s. a week, and the work demands a good deal of experience and deftness. Some power cutters get through nearly a ton of tobacco per diem, but the highest grades of tobacco are sometimes “hand-cut,” in order to pre- serve the finer qualities of fragrance in the leaf. Much tobacco is nowadays packed into tins, but there is a large industry concerned with the packeting of pipe tobacco in papers containing oz. and upwards. I he machines which accomplish this task are ingenious contrivances, which seize the papers into which the tobacco, after being weighed out by quick-fingered girls, is dropped out of a long line of elevator buckets. One turn of a roller twists the paper into a roll, another drives two lateral cylinders on to the ends of it in order to bring the packet into shape, another folds in the ends of the paper, and another deposits it carefully in the tray, wherein it is removed to the store. 1 he machine does all this at the rate of a packet every second, and four weighers run a race with it by weighing out their quantities with marvellous exactness at the rate of fifteen weighing's per minute. Two other forms of pipe tobacco remain to be described. The navvy and the seaman have a fancy for roll or pigtail, which is spun direct from the uncut leaf in spinning machines that do not differ in action from ropemaking. The roller is a trained work- man, whose cleverness comes out in the manner in which he instinctively selects from a row of leaves upon the table those which will join most readily with the “wrapper” and “filler” already in the groove. He thinks nothing of passing a good half-mile of roll through his machine between morning and night, and from the bobbins upon which the roll is wound another workman cuts off the lengths that make up the coils in which the twist is made ready for the consumer, after being stored and then pressed for several weeks, an operation which gives to it the black colour beloved of the British workman. Another process consists in rolling the leaves into tight cylindrical masses, which are then reduced to a square form under cold pressure. These bars are then cut into flakes of greater or less thick- ness, in imitation of the time when the smoker cut off his smoke from a solid plug by means of his jack knife. This is the form of tobacco known as “ navy cut,” and there are variations of it produced by different manufacturers, such as “golden bar,” to suit the taste of the connoisseur. Cavendish or negro-head is a form of tobacco, used for smoking or chewing, the essential feature of which is that it is sweet- ened by the addition of molasses. It is usually manufactured in bonded warehouses. The cake or plug is produced under pressure, and may be shredded in a cutting machine so as to form “ cut cavendish.” The manufacture of cigars in this country is larger than the general public might sup- pose, although there are no available statistics as to the percentage of imported tobacco that is turned into pipe tobacco, cigars, and cigar- ettes. The preparation of the cigar begins at the very cutset in the stripping room, where the pliant leaves are straightened out and rolled into pads, the broken leaves, or the tobacco imported in that form under the name of “ filler,” being used as the inner foundation of the cigar. The operative is given so much leaf, out of which he or she is expected to produce a certain number of cigars. In the early days of British cigar making—and the industry does not date seriously from before the Crimean War—the cigar makers of the Isast-encl of London weic almost all aliens, and many of them Dutch- men. To-day the industry is largely in the hands of English or alien Jews, who develop marvellous skill in the fabrication of cigars, which are recognised as being more carefully and neatly made than many famous brands imported from the country of growth. The filler is arranged with the grain in one direc- tion, or it would give a ragged smoke. It is