This is only a sample of nearly all the "grand" entrances in Havana. Our truckmen in New-York drive their draught-horses through better-looking entrances to stables than stylish ladies here go through to reach palatial interiors. The family carriage is nearly always kept in the court-yard, and the horses are generally tied there. The carriage is often left standing so close to the parlor door that you have to squeeze past it to get into the house. But carriages have nothing to do with cigarettes, although there were two or three of them standing in the court-yard of the Honradez factory.
This court-yard leads into the outer office of the factory. The office, like the rest of the building, and, indeed, like most of the city, is grand and not grand, magnificent and squalid, comfortable and uncomfortable. The windows (perhaps windows, but more exactly holes in the wall,) have no glass in them, but are guarded by iron bars. All Havana might be mistaken for a prison, for there are iron bars everywhere, iron bars on hinges serve for doors, other iron bars, not on hinges, serve for windows and shutters, and other iron bars still, only flattened out a little, serve, I regret to say, for beds, and keep crawling in between your ribs and trying to tickle your liver all night long, notwithstanding that a blanket is laid over them.
If you complain to the landlord about sleeping on these iron bars, he says, "Ah, but they are so cool." A nice big block of ice to sleep on would be cooler yet, and not much harder or more uncomfortable.
The doors are the most imposing part of this office. Any one of them is large enough to admit four men abreast. None of them are less than 10 feet high, (for the ceilings of these buildings are up in the air, often 15 feet or more,) and each door is surmounted by a semi-circle colored glass of the most gorgeous hues--bright yellow, and bright red, and bright blue--with great effect. The floor of the office is also of stone flags, and the entire building is as nearly fireproof as our Equitable Building, on a cheap scale, for there is little about it to burn.
Two gentlemen, evidently Cubans, with dark skins, and well dressed, in the cool style everywhere noticable in Havana, are lounging back in delightfully-comfortable rocking-chairs, that look as if they might have been made for half-grown elephants to doze away the warm afternoons in. The frame-work of the chairs is of timber almost as heavy as Americans build houses with, darkened with age, and the seats are of thick leather. Many generations, representing many tons, of cool, comfortable, and heavy Cubans, have pressed the leather into inverted domes, and given them a form and appearance of comfort that can be thoroughly appreciated only by the passenger who, entering from the stifling streets, dusty and perspiring, finds himself suddenly in the cool, refreshing office.
The two Cubans are talking in English with a man who is evidently a stranger, and just as evidently an American, for he smokes a cigar instead of the inevitable Havana cigarette, keeps his hat on in the house, which the Cubans never do, and spits all over the floor. The two Cubans smoke their cigarettes lazily, and show decidedly the effects of 40 or 50 years of life in an enervating climate. They are the owners of the establishment, and the old gentleman in and adjoining room (it is well he is in a room, for he is in nothing else but a very small shirt, very thin pantaloons, and very slipshod slippers,) refers to them when he is asked for permission to go through the factory.
They give their consent with great politeness, and the old gentleman produces a slip of paper and requests the visitor to write his name on it in large plain letters. The name written, the paper is sent up stairs, where it is soon followed by the visitor and a one-eyed and somewhat sepulchra guide, who appears mysteriously through a stone arch as from a tomb.
Scattered about promiscuously throughout the building are rooms where big pieces of wood are cut down into staves, shaped and smoothed, and put together into barrels and casks. In other rooms strong packing-boxes are made for exporting the cigarettes. After a brief tour through the place the first impression is that it is a vast barrel factory and printing-office, and that a lot of cigarettes are made incidentally to fill up the barrels.
One of the largest rooms on the second story, with a brick floor, like all the other upper rooms, is the printing-office. This is as well fitted and provided with types and machinery as the average New-York printing office, if there is such a thing as an average printing-office. It looks like home to get into it. Among all those dark Cuban faces and these odd-looking houses and the unreadable signs, here are the stands and cases, the sticks and rules, and chases, and quoins, and presses, and ink kegs, and galleys, and racks that printers are familiar with.
The name that figures most prominently in the press-room is R. Hoe & Co. The type is from Bruce's foundry. Nearly everything in use is American, except the engine that drives the machinery, and that came from Paris. They can turn out fine cigarettes, these copper-colored smokers, that sell well, and induce many imitators; but they have to call upon New-York when they want to print their labels, and the paper for the labels is imported from the United States. Even the machines in which the cigarettes are rolled are from America, and nearly all the tools in use.
But because this is a nest of American exportations it must not be supposed that such is generally the case throughout the city. There are very few American goods here. Nearly everything is imported from Spain, France, and England, Spain having a heavy preponderance. Barcelona is a popular place for exports. Half the things sold here that have any special names at all have "Barcelona" worked somehow into the title. There is a Barcelona-street, and there are "La Barcelona" business houses without number.
The cigarette machines are simple enough. There is a reservoir filled with tobacco, like the fountain of a printing-press; the operator puts in a piece of paper, and it comes out a cigarette. There is such a heavy rotary movement, and everything is so rounded off, that I think if a tenpenny nail should be dropped in it would come out a lead-pencil.
There are 15 or 20 of these machines, and they make many thousands of cigarettes every day, but fully as many more are made by hand inside and outside of the factory. In one of the rooms on the ground floor 40 or 50 boys are at work, some rolling cigarettes, others counting them rapidly into bundles, and still others putting the papers around them with great dexterity. These boys are bright and cheerful, and seem comfortable enough; but it is not a pleasant idea to contemplate that they are slaves, and have their tasks to perform.
There are still a large number of slaves in Cuba, those in Havana being owned principally by wealthy old families, who send them out by the day, like horses from a livery stable. The recollection of the old flag goes up several per cent. when it is remembered that, could one of these boys make his way to the neighboring coast of Florida, he would thenceforth be free.
The number of people outside the factory who make cigarettes is enormous. Every one of the big houses has its porter at the door, and each porter has a brood of children about his heels. It is the perquisite of these porters to be allowed to utilize their unemployed time in making cigarettes, and as their time is pretty much all otherwise unemployed, they make a great many cigarettes. Their children are taught the business as soon as they are knee-high, and the male members of the porter's family sit in the big doors, around a little stand, and make cigarettes unceasingly. The cigarette business, in the porter's mind, is of much greater importance than any business connected with his employer, and the visitor has to wait till the little cigar on the stocks has been launched.
A small circle of tin is worn on the forefinger of the right hand, sharpened to a point like a huge pen, and with this the ends are neatly tucked in after ther rolling is done.
A light yellow paper is in great demand by smokers, and the yellow cigarettes are seen everywhere. It is thought that this paper is less hurtful to the lungs than the white. Gentlemen have constantly a roll of the cigarettes in their pockets, and the laborers are hardly ever seen without one in their mouth, and another, rolled ready for use, behind one of their ears.
Ask one of the natives about the ladies' smoking, and he will tell you that cigarettes are used only by the lower classes of women; but this is a little Spanish prevarication. A native woman who does not smoke, whether she be of high or low degree, is a rare exception. The better classes of women do not often smoke in public places, while the lower classes do; but the former may be seen smoking often enough to settle any doubts on the matter.
The cigarettes smoked by the ladies are made especially for them, a trifle smaller than the others, and are sent out of the factory all ready for smoking, without any additional rolling.
There are more small boys in Havana than in New-York, and I say this with a full knowledge of the capacities of Mott-street and Second-avenue. Every third live creature met in the streets here is a small boy, and every fourth is a donkey. The donkeys have rather the more clothes, for their bodies are nearly hidden beneath their burdens.
There is a constant stream (and it might be said a rather muddy and dirty stream,) of these small boys pouring into the Honradez factory, carrying rolls of cigarettes that have been made in their families, and are to be paid for. These (the cigarettes, not the boys,) are usually done up in circular bundles of a thousand or more, like wheels, fastened up with a strap, or sometimes with a woolen band.
The best quality of cigarettes sell at retail in Havana for 3 cents a package, silver. Upon leaving the Honradez factory the visitor is always presented with a bundle of cigarettes, on the wrapper of which is handsomely printed, in Spanish, "Compliments of Honradez Brothers, to Señor San Francisco de Fiddlesticks," or whatever the visitor's name is, and the visitor puts the bundle away in his very safest pocket, to be kept as a souvenir forever, or till the next time he happens to be out of cigars.
A little cigarette, planted in fertile soil, I suppose, would grow into a big cigar, if you gave it time enough; so going through a cigarette factory leads inevitably to the great and inspiring subject of cigars. A little piece of information that I got this morning stern duty compels me to lay before the smokers of New-York. It is often said that "the Havana cigars are not originally so much better than American cigars, but that they are greatly improved by the ocean voyage, the sea air giving them a pleasant flavor." When cigars are put up in Havana for exportation, they are first put in the ordinary boxes, and then in a strong and almost air-tight wooden packing-case. A tin box is then soldered around this packing-case, and the package is as air-tight as a box of canned fruit. By the time the cigars reach New-York they have as much sea air about them as a clam has of mountain dew.
The sad truth is, there are just as bad cigars in Havana as anywhere else, and the only one I have smoked here that was better than the average of good cigars in New-York I had to pay 15 cents in silver for.
W. D. [WILLIAM DRYSDALE]
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TIME Magazine, August 31, 1962 p.31:
THE HEMISPHERE: CUBA: Russian Ships Arrive
...As if a trickling tap had been suddenly turned full on, Soviet bloc aid is pouring into Cuba. Since July 26, some 20 Soviet ships have embarked from Black Sea, Baltic and Siberian ports; by Aug. 8 at least eight vessels had docked at Cuban ports to unload military goods and 5,000 "technicians."
Rocket-Size Crates. Cuba's Communist government tried to keep a security lid on the shipments. Casual citizens were cleared from dockside areas; uloading was confined to after midnight. The result was to proliferate rumors that most of the 5,000 new arrivals were Russian combat troops in helmets and short-sleeved uniforms; 18,000 RUSSIAN TROOPS IN CUBA, headlined the New York Daily News, going a step further...
U.S. intelligence identified the first cargoes as communications trucks, radar vans, general purpose trucks, mobile generator units--and, apparently, rockets. All the equipment pointed to large-scale coastal surveillance and air-defense systems. In other nations where similar Soviet help has been received, the contents of crates like the ones landed in Cuba turned out to be ground-to-air rockets, similar to the U.S. Nike-Ajax...
Technicians, Yes. At last week's press conference, President Kennedy was asked about Communist-bloc troops or supplies entering Cuba, and replied: "New supplies, definitely, in large quantities. Troops? We do not have any information but an increased number of technicians..."
The coast and air defenses should help ease Castro's fear of a new invasion... Last week he proclaimed that "enemy ships" standing a few hundred yards offshore had pumped 20-mm. cannon shells into a suburb of Havana... Actually the bombardment was an unopposed nighttime firing on a waterfront Havana hotel housing Iron Curtain technicians, and the nearby Chaplin Theater, from a surplus PT boat and a fast cruiser manned by 20 members of the underground Revolutionary Student Directorate...
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