Factory Elocutionists

In a factory where cigars are made by hand, the journeyman cigarmaker sits at a smooth bench, a mold board of many grooves close at hand. An apprentice brings up a bundle of tobacco leaves from the cool, dark storage basement. The journeyman, with quick, accurate slashes, cuts a broad leaf on the bias into strips adequate for the cigar wrapper. Then some long filler, a slide of the flattened palm, and the cigar is made. He fastens the loose wrapper end with some glue, places the cigar in a mold groove. Later comes trimming, boxing, and finally sealing with the internal revenue stamp.

There is in the cigarmaker's trade a monotony which he tries to vary by whistling, by singing, by talking, above all by thinking. Last week an anonymous correspondent at Tampa, Fla., reported as a news feature that local cigar-makers had hired elocutionists to read to them and distract them from thinking while at work. Tampa cigarmakers had such readers before their strike of 1920.

Reading to operators is an old practice in the trade, for the late Samuel Gompers was a shop reader in the 1850's. Indeed he learned his philosophy of labor from the books he read aloud to his fellows.