The Filth in Cigarette Making
SCAVENGERS go around to saloons and bar-rooms, picking up stubs of cigars and raking over the contents of spittoons for rejected quids of tobacco. These are thrown into a sack and carried to the manufactory, where they are cleansed (?), ground up, sprinkled with liquor, Havana flavoring and other chemicals added, and allowed to stand till the whole mass is permeated with the flavoring. It is then rolled up in its paper wrapping, and becomes the cigaret considered so dainty. The rolling introduces another element of filth, as in doing it the rollers continually moisten their fingers with their own spittle. This work is often done at home in the lowest and filthiest tenement houses, often in the very room with contagious diseases. Thus cigarettes often become the means of spreading the most loathsome disease. Leprosy has thus been disseminated from leprous hands engaged in rolling cigarettes.