The Waupaca Republican

June 16, 1893

 

SLAVES TO THE CIGARETTE.

We Spend Sixteen Millions a Year on Tobacco in This Form.

 

            The American Tobacco Company, otherwise the cigarette trust, ought to have a progressive rate of dividends if the growing consumption of cigarettes is any test.  The manufacture of these seductive little rolls of tobacco at the rate of about 10,000,000 a day, and the exportation, which was at one time practically nothing, now stands to the importation at the rate of 100 to 1.

            The figures of this branch of the tobacco trade become startling when taken out of the bald statistical tables and put in different shape.  The official reports of the cigarette manufacture, which are carefully taken by the Internal Revenue Department, give a total of 16,581,646,440 cigarettes as the output for the past eight years.  Taking the average length of each cigarette at three inches, this would make a total of 4,145,411,611 feet for the entire roll.  Dividing this by 5,280, the number of feet in a mile, would make a total of 785,116 miles, or a cigarette girdle extending over thirty-one times around the earth.

            The total number of cigarettes made in this country for a dozen or more years past stands:

1879        238,276,817

1880        408,768,365

1881        537,395,938

1882        554,544,186

1883        637,021,653

1884        908,090,723

1885        1,058,749,228

1886        1,310,961,350

1887        1,584,505,200

1888        1,862,726,400

1889        2,154,575,360

1890        2,426,515,380

1891        2,976,270,885

1892        3,210,402,937

 

Calculated at the lowest retail rate of 50 cents per 100, the cigarette smokers of the United States spend $16,052,019 a year on their hobby.