The True Cost of a Cigar
A local cigar salesman challenges Everett's 'boosters' to practice what they preach by supporting union-made, home-grown tobacco instead of shipping money East for trust-made goods.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
There isn't a business man in the city who won't whoop up for home industry. But we wonder how many of these same boosters who want us to spend our earnings at home, send their own money to Tampa or elsewhere. We hunted up Lew F. Gust, a local cigar salesman, to ask about the state of the industry. 'We have added five men in the factory,' Gust explained, 'but consumption of home-made cigars is away below what it ought to be. If proper patronage were given, Everett should have 50 or 60 men at work in the cigar industry. With every man earning fifteen to twenty dollars per week, we would have a monthly payroll of $3,600 to be distributed among home merchants. Why will people spend money for a child-labor, tenement-house, or trust-made cigar? Why help enrich the very institutions the entire nation is trying to abolish?'
“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush any time.”
Everett's 1911 struggle to foster a local manufacturing economy through the 'buy local' movement feels strikingly modern. It captures the tension between globalized supply chains—then represented by 'trust-made' cigars—and the desire to keep capital circulating within the community.
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