The Indianapolis Journal

CIGARS AND TOBACCO.

The Money Spent in Indianapolis on Chewing and Smoking-Does It End in Smoke?

The money puffed away in Indianapolis every year in tobacco smoke and represented by wasted saliva in the common nuisance known as the spittoon, would more than pay the annual expenses of the city government. The aggregate sum is larger than the surplus cash in any of the city banks, and if applied to benevolent uses the money spent in the indulgence of the tobacco habit would be sufficient to buy 50,000 loaves of bread every day, or nearly 20,000,000 a year. There are eighty-nine retail tobacco stores in the city, which have an average sale of from one to four or five hundred cigars a day. There are many other places where the sale of cigars is an incidental feature of business. These include 383 grocery stores, 90 drug stores, 49 hotels, 52 restaurants and 296 saloons. If the sales should average the number generally claimed by dealers, the trade would indicate that there are 75,000 cigars smoked in the city every day. Making an allowance of one-third in this calculation, however, it may be safely estimated that the smokers of Indianapolis daily consume 50,000 cigars, or, in the aggregate, 18,250,000 a year. Estimating that the average cost of these cigars is 5 cents each, the indulgence of the tobacco habit represents an expenditure of $2,500 a day, or $912,500 a year, which would buy every woman and girl in the city a new dress costing $20, each year. The various other uses to which this immense sum of money could be applied is a subject for the domestic economist to ponder over and dwell upon.

Does the history of your trade indicate an increase or a decrease in the number of persons who use tobacco? inquired a Journal reporter of a down-town dealer yesterday, as he invested in his customary after-dinner 25-cent Havana.

It has been my observation that the trade grows every year. There is not as much profit in the business as formerly, but there are more smokers and chewers. It's shameful, sir, but it's true, that little boys, who can hardly reach up to the counter to put down their money, come in here every day to buy tobacco or cigarettes. Many of them chew, but these generally belong to the class known as street Arabs-the bootblacks and newsboys. There isn't a day in the year hardly that boys in knee-pants don't come in here and put down a cent for a cigarette. I refuse to sell to them, because there is no money in such trade, and it's likely to make trouble for one in some cases with their parents, and, then, besides its wrong; but there are lots of places where they can buy, and they usually tell me so when I refuse one of them. That the number of chewers and smokers is increasing is shown by the growth in the trade. The effect of hard times is felt in this business just as in all other branches of trade, but notwithstanding the depression I sell more now than I did two or three years ago, although the profits are not so large, because smokers buy cheaper cigars. Men who used to smoke ten-cent cigars now buy the cheapest quality of goods. They don't want to give up smoking entirely and instead of quitting they buy either five-cent cigars or cheroots. The largest part of the trade now is in these cheap goods. We sell a very large number of these three-for-five and five-for-ten now to men who two or three years ago bought Havanas. It would surprise you, I know, to see how many merchants and business men buy these three-for-five cheroots.

What class of men are your best customers?

The men who buy the best cigars and spend the most money with us belong to the middle class--those who get salaries of from $15 to $25 a week. The business men, in depressing times, either buy cheaper cigars or quit smoking, but they never spend as much as the men who work on salary. Workingmen, who only get $10 a week, are better customers as a class than merchants.

I supposed the dudes were your best customers.

I wouldn't give a continental for the dude trade. They are the cigarette smokers, and while some of them spend a great deal of money in that way, the large majority of them buy only one, two or three at a time, so you see its a penny trade. Still a great many cigarettes are smoked now. It is the most slavish habit that a smoker can contract. When one becomes an accomplished cigarette-smoker, and acquires the habit of exhaling the smoke through the nose, it is almost impossible to quit. We have customers who smoke as many as twenty and thirty cigarettes a day, and the habit has grown upon them until they cannot break it. One young man smokes continuously. He goes to bed with a cigarette in his mouth and smokes one in the morning before he gets up, and during the time he is awake there is not an hour that he is without one.

What part of the tobacco trade is most profitable?

A larger profit is made on middle-grade goods than on any other kind. There is not enough demand now for twenty-five cent cigars to make it profitable to make them at $175 a thousand. The demand is for five-cent cigars, and for a good quality of these the dealer pays $33 a thousand. On cheaper goods the margin is proportionately very much closer. It is generally supposed that the dealers get the benefit of the reduction in the tax on tobacco, but it is not so. The consumer gets all the benefit. Where they formerly got only four pounds of Havana in a thousand 5-cent cigars, they now get seven and eight pounds, while the manufacturers get $1 a thousand more for their work than they did before the reduction. The men who make the largest profit on cigars are the saloon-keepers. They never pay more than from $18 to $23 a thousand for five-cent cigars, while the dealer who must build up a trade, cannot afford to put out a cigar costing less than $33 or $35 a thousand.