Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

BRITAIN AT WORK. 36 enclosed in a “ strip,” and outside this is wrapped a spiral piece of selected leaf, the end of which is neatly twisted to form the point that is removed by the cigar cutter. The filler is deftly shaped by the operatives, and the art of the workpeople is proved by the celerity with which they select from their little hoard of leaf those pieces which will blend most naturally in texture and colour. After the cigars are finished, they are sorted, boxed, and stoved, in order to mature. This operation is performed in a stoving chamber lined with zinc and pro- tectecl by an asbestos ceiling, wherein as many as 5,000 boxes may be treated at one time. The most interest- ing branch of the industry in recent years is that con- cerned with the manufacture of the cigarette, which has ousted pipe tobacco from its proud pre- eminence of centuries. For this purpose two forms of tobacco are used, the Virginian and the Turkish, the latter being a more delicate leaf, whose value is several times that of the American when it reached the port of entry, although the addition of the same rate of duty reduces the relative disparity. Most smokers of the present generation can remember the time when it was the universal practice to roll one’s own cigarettes, and it was only when intricate machinery began to produce the finished article at a price scarcely higher than that of the tobacco itself, that the sale of made cigarettes assumed its present huge proportions. The highest forms of the cigarette are rolled one by one by hand MAKING ROLL TOBACCO.