Cigar Makers for a Century
In grandfather’s day, stogie factories of varying capacity dotten southeaster Ohio, but now they’re almost as rare as the wooded Indians that once beckoned customers in smoke houses and tobacco shops all over the country.
The small manufacturers have mostly given way to big tobacco syndicates with fancy equipment and mass production methods, but down the river at McConnelsville there’s a little firm which has been in the business almost a hundred years and is still going strong.
You can throw a stone into the Muskingum from the weathered frame building where H. M. Cochran established the business. It’s growth was so rapid that the company was recognized as the biggest manufacturer of plug tobacco north of the Mason and Dixon line when the Civil War broke out in 1861.
In those days the firm manufactured plug in the summer and cigars (or stogies) in winter. The chief form of transportation was by boat and in winter, when the river was blocked with ice for days at a time, the plant’s production was seriously curtailed.
The son of the founder, F. W. Cochran, who now operates the factory recalls that one of his father’s consignments of cigars and plug was aboard the ill fated Buckeye Belle which blew up at Beverly in November, 1852.
At the time H. M. Cochran established his plant at McConnelsville it was customary for manufacturers in this area to travel to Louisville, Ky., where they would buy tobacco at auctions held in the sprawling warehouse district known as “The Brakes”. Tobacco sales were usually held in the morning and later in the day rich Southerners were bid for slaves at the same auction blocks.
Much of the work at the Cochran plant is still done by hand, not the push button system which one is likely to associate with the tobacco industry today. Cigars are made by binding a number of short or long pieces of leaf (filler) and covering them with a fine piece of leaf, stripped of the stalk, called the wrapper. About all of this work is done by women, many of whom have had years of experience in cigar making.
F. W. Cochran has been in the business 40 years or more and there isn’t much he doesn’t know about the art of making “ropes”.
“Tobacco which is less than two years old is not fit to use,” he remarked. “In that time it will cure itself by sweating out the moisture, although this period may be reduced now by a mechanical drying process. Tobacco is cured in wooden boxes which weigh 400 pounds. This process of dehydration raises the temperature of the warehouse or storeroom until it sometimes reaches 190 degrees.
The wrapper tobacco (fine leaf) which Cochran uses comes from Florida and Connecticut, depending on which area happens to have the best crop. The filler may be Puerto Rican or domestic tobacco. Some of the best domestic is grown right here in Ohio, in the Miami Valley.
In fact Mr. Cochran said the village of Versailles, which is northwest of Piqua, was at one time the world’s center of cigar ____ tobacco. Two banks there used to pay $8,000,000 to tobacco farmers in the area.
The cigar business has been hobbled to a certain extent by high federal taxes, which in many cases, have forced small manufacturers to close their doors. The tax on the grade of cigar which Mr. Cochran is now making amounts to $4 per thousand. One of the big tobacco companies buys federal tax stamps values at $150,000 every _____. In any case it cuts sharply into the slim margin of profit requiring heavy sales volume to keep from going in the red.
The next time you light up a cigar or stogie ponder a moment ___ its color. Sorting cigars for shade is an exacting job requiring a lot of practice. The shades run from light to dark including the reds, greens, yellows, browns, and blacks. Cigars are matched before packing so that they will present a uniform appearance on display. In Cuba, where some of the most expensive cigars are made, skilled workers sort over 100 shades!
Once in a while a fad will hit the industry like “crooks”, the cigar with the permanent wave, and those slick ropes with wooden and plastic tips.
When business gets dull some manufacturers will revive one of those sales promoting gags and before long it is sweeping the market. When crooks were first introduced about 15 years ago, the Cochran firm passed them up, but the trend was heavy, and in a few years this century old plant joined the ranks of cigar crimpers.
Since then, Mr. Cochran mused, the McConnelsville plant has probably made more crooks than any other factory in the country.
And here’s news for cigar smokers, good five centers appear to be on the way back. That is, if the cold war with Russia doesn’t reach the shooting stage and cause another tobacco panic.
Zanesville TimesSignal 24 August 1948