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The cultivation of tobacco has been one of the most uncertain branches of industry in Cuba. Trammeled by restrictions and exactions, it was confined almost entirely to the poorer classes of the population, who were enabled to raise a scanty and uncertain crop through the advances of capital made them by the "Factoria."
The good intentions displayed by the government in abolishing, within six years, the Factoria de tabacos, have not been attended by the improvement which was expected in that branch of industry. The cultivators want capital, the farms have become extremely dear, and the predilection for the cultivation of coffee is prejudicial to that of tobacco.
Prior to 1791 the crop was sent to the national factories in Spain, by the "Commercial Company of Havana," under government contract, but during that year the "Factoria de Tobacco" was established in Havana by the government. The tobacco was classified as superior, medium and inferior, and was received from the growers at fixed prices.
In good years, when the crop amounted to 350,000 arrobes of leaf, 128,000 arrobes were manufactured for Spain, 80,000 for Havana, 9,200 for Peru, 6,000 for Buenos Ayres, 2,240 for Mexico, and 1,100 for Caracas and Campeachy. The maintenance of 120 slaves and the expenses of manufacture did not exceed $12,000 yearly; but the salaries of the officers of the "Factoria" amounted to $541,000.
By comparing the different prices with the quantity of each class of tobacco produced, we find that the "Factoria" paid an average price of $16 per hundred pounds for the leaf tobacco. With the expense of manufacture, the cigars cost the government seventy- five cents per pound; snuff, fine grain and good color, forty- three cents, and common soft, or Seville, nineteen cents a pound in Havana.
The maintenance of 120 slaves and the expense of the manufacture amounted only to 12,000 piastres annually; the persons employed in the factoria cost 54,100 piastres. Although the tobacco of the Vuelta de abaxo is the most famous, a considerable exportation takes place in the eastern part of the island.
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