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A Segar Factory In Spain

A Segar Factory In Spain image
Parent Issue
Day
11
Month
February
Year
1876
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

The segar factory presenta a most animated and intoresting sight. Imagino four thousand tive hnndred - snch is the number at present employod - girls and woman, of agos varying f rom about fourteen or fifteen, up to forty, but most of them young and pretty, women aJl dresaed in the gay coatume of their provinoes, their rieh black hair being their only head-dress, the superintendents (most of them very pretty and lady-like young women) moving about among them in a vain attempt to keep an amount of bílenoe and order. Imagine such a gay, chattering crowd, their nimble fingers working with the regularity, the swif tness, the whirr and whirl of maohinery, all crammed close together, their little baskets of food hanging over their heada, occupied in making cigurettea, puros, or government segars of various classes, and paper bags f or the cigarettes. They sit in long corridors, vrith open Windows ; the air is oppreaaive, but laden with tobáceo dust like snuff, the Spanish tobáceo being the friturated leaf, not the birds-eye and shag, which are unknown to Spanish smokers ; as you pass along, joke after joke ia leveled at you ; half a hundred baskets of salt Üsh, bread and fruit are proffered to you ; peals of langhter go up around you as you venture to inquire whether the close atmosphere ia not prejudicial to health. Vain ai'e the matron's remonstrancea ; the good-humored, light-hearted, vivacioua crew will not como to a halt until stranger, matron and all are fairly convulaed with laughter. These girls, if skillful workers, can earn even as much as fifty cents per diem, but this is rare. About forty cents perhaps would be the average. The women are paid, of course by the amount of work done - i. e,, the number of segars or cigarettes turned out per diem. To convey a further idea of the magnitude of the trade, it may be ed that 400 barrels of tobáceo leaf from Havana lay in the court-yard, each barrel weighing, we were told, 600 kilogrammes - i. e., about 1500 or 1600 pounds. The sheds below, where 24 men, naked to tl) e walst, their skin, beard, hair of a brown color, begrimmed with sweat and tobáceo dnst, chop up and run through iron sieves the leaf, earning thereby froi four pesetas to $1 per diem, are a study of themselves. One man had worlsed liere for 24 years, and said that lie found the work healthy and that the atmouphere had no elïect on the lungs as a rule. These men, owing to the severe nature of the labor, work short hours.

Article

Subjects
Old News
Michigan Argus