The following Connecticut experi presentation is part of the ongoing partnersh between the Connecticut Humaniti and Connecticut Public Televisio Together, we're exploring Connec rich history and culture.

Straddling the Connecticut River sits a val and unassuming, a swath of land carved out by gl which left layers of rich soil in their wak This fertile region and its harv sustain Native Americans for cen Among the valley's wild vegetati was a weed like plant with large Local tribes used those leaves for their ancient tradition of p smoking.

Later, the plant also seduced the colonists who settled in the Eventually, the one of a kind Connecticut Ri Valley Tobacco would become highly cove This unique tobacco would be use for a new product known as the c Tobacco became one of the state' largest industries, shaping the economies and communities of central Conne The industry of growing and harvesting the valley's tobacco needed countless workers Local families toiled to cultivate the land.

European immigrants pitched in, and soon laborers ca as far away as the American Sout and the Caribbean.

The conditions they faced sometimes became an issue of con Many went on to settle major ethnic communities of the Hartfo and to provide much of the ethni diversity that marks Connecticut The Connecticut Valley Tobacco I almost disappeared as cigars gave way to Cigarets.

But a sudden increase in cigar smoking at the end of the 20th c has given the industry a new lif This is a story of the people an known as Connecticut's Tobacco V There's a 60 mile stretch of the Connecticut River from Portland, Connecticut, north to the lower tip of Vermon This broad flat bottomland was o the site of what archeologists c Lake Hitchcock, filled with the of the retreating glaciers.

Now it has the best farming soil in New England.

It was the first place in Connec where European settlers came in establishing the towns of Windso and Wethersfield.

Among the commercial farming products was Tobacco, a plant outlawed in the first le of the Connecticut colony in 165 A Puritan song proclaimed.

Tobacco was an Indian weed grows up at dawn, cut down at ea It reminds us of our decay.

We are but clay.

Think of this when you drink tob Despite those sentiments, the Indian tobacco used for pipe eventually became the state's to cash crop and an American instit In fact, among some colonists, it became the lifeblood of comme the center of trade and barter, a tradition that would become pa of the Connecticut River Valley This tobacco tradition produced much fuel for pipes.

But it wasn't until the late 18t that the idea of cigars descende upon Connecticut's Tobacco Valle Some traced the birth of the loc industry to Connecticut resident Israel Putnam, who returning from a military ex in Cuba, brought back with him a cachet of cigars.

Soon after, cigar production began in the Connecticut Valley.

The first cigars were made by a named Sally Prout, and back in 1 when they had just mostly the outdoor tobacco and they traded overseas.

They couldn't get the pipes that they imported from England and s So this lady, Sally Prout, would a tobacco in a leaf and sort of form the first cigar And her husband, who had a likin tinware and yard goods and sewin from door to door with a truck would also peddle these cigars.

So then all the women, a lot of the women's from the different farms got tog Enroll and make the first cigars Since the early 1800s, farmers in the Connecticut River Valley have grown tobacco for the outer layers of cigars.

The leaves were used for both binding and wrapping.

This valley was one of the few p in the world where Broadleaf used for binding tobacco was grown.

Connecticut Valley Broadleaf became a serious commercial prod By 1875, the popular Havana seed was intr and its leaves were used mostly as a wrapper to this day.

Connecticut wrapper is considere the best in the world.

Connecticut Tobacco was the resu of 100 years of trial and error, which produced the finest condit They don't seem to be able to re anywhere else.

There's something that they, in have not been able to identify that gives this unique region in the Connecticut River Valley from Hartford on northward a remarkable capacity to produce this quality product.

Wrapper tobacco is the most expe because it's what you see, and t it has to be in the best shape a it can't have holes in it can't It has to have a clean, clear co In order to do that, every leaf is handpicked by doing that.

It also has this incredible infl on the taste of a cigar.

Connecticut Shade has got the mo smoothest tasting tobacco, and it blends beautifully with lots of different tobaccos.

This late in the 19th century, on a large Indonesian island call, Sumatra, tobacco, characterized by its fine big leaves, began taking over the wrapper market c Connecticut farmers and scientis got some seeds to see if they could grow those leaves in the valley.

As it turned out, the Connecticut River soil was p but the leaves were burning up i unlike in tropical Sumatra, where the conditions were overca and humid.

By 1900, Connecticut researchers developed a unique technique to grow tobacco under shade tent designed to simulate the shade and humidity of Sumatra.

The first tents went up on River in Peconic section of Windsor.

They were very successful because tobacco was a wet plant and the sides of the tents held the moisture in the tops of protect them from the sun.

And so they got this same great, big, beautiful plant That ingenious process would make the Connecticut River one of the planet's finest areas for cigar wrapper.

The product was named Shade Toba It flourished during the heyday of cigar use.

In 19 for the war.

Cigar smoke cigarets I think abo And there were a thousand, 2000 cigar factories all over the cou There were no machines that could make cigars.

So they had to be all be made by So they had cigar factories all the United States, particularly Many factories were built right in Bridgeport, and they prospere In the beginning, it was done at They were made in people's basem as a sideline to their regular j And the demand was so great that they were being paid by pie so much for dozen cigars, whatever it may be.

And then they became unionized, and then it became a factory ope It was one of the first crops that was ever utilized in this c And then we were shipping our to to European ports, to various islands, and it became worldwide.

And as time went on, men enjoyed smoking cigars because it relaxe You know, you go for a lunch and or you're at a dinner and you have a brandy and a ciga and it's leisurely, it's sociabl So you think about it as sort of a cultural environmen of a particular kind of ritual.

I think in movies occasionally you would see the barons of indu with cigars during the workday.

At the end of the day, you retire to them, to the men's for a conversation, socializing.

Sam Renzulli of Bridgeport smoke cigars for 25 years and collected cigar bands, which represented historic figur Cigar factories as well as national heroes.

Many of them are all embossed with pictures of kings and queen and great opera singers and comp and what have you, and also poet Any people that have ever met found any recognition this would be a way of giving th the honor of being on a cigar ba So it was almost on the order of card.

You had two businessmen there working to make a deal together.

Everybody was saying, I'll do this and you'll do that and compromise along the way.

And when they are through with their conversations, they get to Shake can exchange cigars.

The popularity of cigars in the early 1920s helped establish both the Broadl and shade tobacco industries.

More than 30,000 acres were being harvested annually for tobacco in Connecti Tobacco farmers often passed the along from generation to generat My ancestors grew tobacco from t days, maybe even from the coloni Tobacco of one form or another.

And it was.

Following the civil War, I think, when it grew to be more and more of a real business vent rather than a backyard, you know, type of a craft.

And it was around the turn of th I think, around 1910, to be exac The first shade tobacco tents were put up here and in Windsor.

And I think that my family was a the first to put up shade tents.

All my uncles on both sides of t the thralls and the clerks, they all were in the tobacco bus These children, all of whom grew their own tobacco, just lov I mean, they they they took such And seeing that plant grow from little bits of seeds that you can hardly see with the until they became just nine foot, eight foot tall all in a period of about eight w you could almost see the things The tobacco farmers day was long and the living was simple.

They liked each other.

There was no sense of competitio I mean, not in a fierce type of competit we think of in terms of industry and they talked to each other.

They met with each other.

And about all they talked about Was was the farm and their tobac or problems that they had and they would share the good th if they discovered.

Something that would save.

A little favor or might make.

The leaf a little bit better.

They would share that with each And of course, many of them were related to each other in on I know that so many of these families went away back.

The one thing I remember was No.

One, it was spring because my fa would come home with these huge They look like pine pants to me, but they were filled with dark, rich soil and itty bitty seeds in those pa And those were the tobacco seeds he told me.

And he would take them in our ba and put them up on my hot water That was his homemade hothouse.

And then every night we would go down and check those little seeds to see if they were popping up.

And after they got to be a certa maybe an inch and a half, two in he would take them out to the fa and put them in his tobacco VAT.

He takes a great many of these s to start enough plants for the average farm.

Hundreds of glass top frames under which the tiny would be carefully nurtured until they are big enough to take their places in the fiel Not so very big now, are they just tiny green to barely visible to the eye.

But in a few short weeks the growing plants are already crowding each other in the bay.

Last days they still had horses and the man sat on the back and they planted the plants and the fields.

And the air was pointed out to m how straight they were.

No time to lose.

Now the tobacco must be set in t without delay.

Ingenious planning machines craw across the fields or experienced settlers right be and dropped the plants in the fu with a steady rhythm.

Automatically, this mechanical marvels, digs the furrow, supplies just enough water, and closes the trench around the roots of t at just the right depth.

to appear on a stalk are discard as the plant stretches upward.

The first leaves Two months after the transplanti the harvest begins as the plants yield a total of 18 leaves each.

This tobacco here, which has bea beautiful leaves here, these leaves are picked two or three at a time for the botto So they go through this field six or seven times to get all th all you snap a leaf off like tha and the leaf is ready to put put on the ground here with.

Now we have a much easier way.

We have a canvas that runs down through the through the lot, that puts the leaves on that can And we have a bicycle type of mo that pulls that whole canvas.

In the old days, we used to drag the basket through the field and then and brought it to the shed.

And the smell of the charcoal fi and the tobacco curing is something that's always staye And there's nothing else like it Any place I've ever been.

Tens of thousands of acres of gr tenting once spread across the valley's farms.

Hundreds of long wooden tobacco with special shuttered sides that can be opened or close to e Moisture and temperature for cur Dotted the landscape.

And the women from the surrounding villages and the school girls employed du the summer goes the work of stri the leaves on wooden left for ha Feminine hands are well at that just like a job with lightning l The needle in spring moved through the tobacco with all the of the professional seamstress.

The process has changed little in the last 60 years.

Once that the was moved from the in those trailers and in the bas As you can see, it is very important that it rea the table see is sound and clean as he left the field breakages is how it works any mi and that's something that we hav continue to look after.

done, they take it in small part and put it upside down Once that is while for the girls to sew it and they would take it like this pair at a time.

Yes.

Facing leave, facing each other.

And just the machine would do th And then it is hand ball and it's hanging all the way to right after the tobacco has been hanging the chair we use when the lady for a coupl and we feel that it becomes kind and is pliable meaning that the Marquis Wilton.

So by that time we should expect to see some sign like this that the pips of the leaf are getting yellowed up to one i And that's when we are calling t and say, okay, let's start the curing process, which is fig this head with a propane gas.

Now this is where the fun begins curing the tobacco, getting from that green color th in that prior shade and getting into that golden bro even in drying the veins properl so that when you actually wrap u a cigar is a cosmetic issue, you have to go with it.

But on top of that, it's a quali because if we dry too fast, we fix the green color.

So there will be not flavor that same flavor that we are loo and we couldn't process it.

So this is actually, as I said b the curing started right with th So two things have to happen.

There has to be a change in colo with color from green to lime, from lime to orange, from orange And they have to be in stages.

We cannot actually jump.

And the humidity here is high.

But we try at this time of the y and it goes to probably 90% and we need to keep that.

So that is a slow process of the Nothing here is to be right in o tobacco, everything else we go i You will never know the tobacco.

Let us know when to raise the ta to a when to open the windows.

As you can see, we have windows all at the botto And the reason is to create a chimney effect, to get fresh a heated it up and take it all the way through And by doing so, the air as you the tobacco very gently moving.

That air will go through the tob the hot air between the leaves.

And that's how the tobacco is to And this is yet the beginning.

But now you can see what happens The tobacco enters the green lea It's now been heated up with the is there down here on the ground with propane heat.

We used to do it, but with charcoal before that, w is much more efficient way of do The bonds get up to 100 degrees takes about five or six weeks in shed like this to cure the tobac And this tobacco is now turned c You can see the color now is bro and it from this time is then has to be taken down, put in piles and brought sent do to the Dominican Republic, where it's, again, heated up in bulks of about 30 £ where those and that turn three or four times those balls get up and 1015 degrees and add another five weeks in.

Those bulks is taken out, shaken and then sorted into about 15 different grades in about ten different sizes.

And after that is tied in hands and put into bales and then those bale bales are pu and two years later that tobacco to be put on us to go.

And with our market zero cigars, that tobacco sometimes g and four years because we think an important thing to cure that because age is the best thing.

Just like the older I get, the b I get.

The older tobacco is, the better I'm going to take a leaf off this lath where every all the tobacco is put on the la And then I can take that leaf and strip it.

So you put it on a cigar, goes out back in there and aroun Rest like that.

Take the rest of it out just lik And there's a better half of it.

They could take that leaf, put it on the cigar and the wrapper the cigar, and he could see how we can do t We can wrap that cigar around, a And it's got to go on the cigar.

And I can tell you, any of you in the audience want to try this It'd be very good idea for you t but I don't think it be a very s Take me 50 years, know how to do joint.

Broadleaf and especially shade f made substantial capital investm in order to set up all the proce needed to cultivate tobacco.

You're not going to get rich, but you will make make a living.

The only thing you've got to have a good partne I mean your wife, you've got to understand that when you're poor or don't get a good crop, you don't spend any money.

When you get a good crop and then you spend money.

It was a gamble.

Because it depends so much on th You know, if you.

Had a play.

It was growing.

Up and it had taken care.

Of and nurtured, you know, like you would almost and in a long would come a hails But hail stones right through th that was in that leaf.

And sometimes at the end of the whole crop.

Now, the worry farmer keeps an e watchful eye on the weather.

So far, he has controlled, made it work for it.

But New England weather, it can a tricky enemy too, especially i The biggest worry now is a furio wind or hailstorm, which can wipe out his entire ye work in a single hour.

One more risk which must be take in the growing of shade grown to This looks like a bad one.

Clouds piling up fast, the first gust of heavy wind and And here it come.

Make your on the ramp.

$1 million debt.

One of my uncles who used to rai back in 27, 28, 29.

That's the year the big hailstor then he went broke.

Much of the work to do all over Luckily the plants for the most part are unharmed.

But the tests are in, right.

What does the tobacco farmer do after a catastrophe like this?

Start over again on the farm?

As a matter of fact, he considers himself lucky.

If the plants had been larger, the hail would have torn them to Sometimes as good and sometimes No man above makes it.

There's no way you can irrigate.

You stand on your head.

But if he decides we're not going to have a good y or good growing season, that's.

It's very labor oriented and tobacco leaf I don't know how many times, maybe a dozen or more times before it's finally ready for or ultima The tobacco industry required far more labor than farmers in their families could provide.

At different times, it was provi by local youth, European immigra black and white students from th and workers from the Caribbean.

Conditions for tobacco workers have often been a subject of con Growers seeking to attract worke and cultivate public opinion have frequently portrayed condit as healthful and bucolic.

Critics seeking to organize work and force changes in working and living conditions have often a grim picture of tobacco worker Among the first field hands to b recruited were European immigran But on the eve of World War One, these immigrants, many of w Polish, began to leave the tobacco fields for their hom or for better paying jobs in war, industry, factories desperate for labor, the tobacco farmers asked the National Urban League, an organization established to aid black migrants, to help find black workers for the tobacco fields.

In 1915 alone, the Urban League recruited more than 1400 young students to Connecticut fr in Virginia, North Carolina, Flo and Georgia.

In the decades after World War O local youth took to the fields, became one of the major contribu groups in the tobacco labor forc And I went to work at 14 and I went to work in the fields as almost every young man boy did in this area in the summerti simply because it was the only type of work we could d And you could begin to work in agriculture.

When you were 14.

Everyone in town worked tobacco.

When they were a boy, there was no such thing as not w and every boy was looking for a They got a job either hand in tobacco, spare and tobacco, or hanging to I have never been laid off for the work of work and I never looked for another j When local recruits ran low, the tobacco farmers brought in young workers from other states for seasonal l This excerpt from a promotional narrated by Lowell Thomas portra the tobacco plantation as akin to a summer camp midsumm And with a harvest just around t the high school and college girls from out of st are arriving at the camp.

They work in the clearing, but for the most part, they consider their stay on Conn tobacco farm.

An interesting vacation work exp Some of the camps are on lakes, in the rolling Connecticut count But wherever they are, they provide the opportunity to and learn the basic principles of getting along with people.

Without the help of these young the local workers could never ha the crop at the speed at which it must be harvested.

This promotional film portrayed the importation of foreign worke as a contribution to international social welfare.

A migration of workers like this the problems for our farmer.

Living quarters must be provided Ample provision must be made for good recreation and supervision must be carefully planned.

The folks from other states and other lands will make the to their summer home and clean, comfortable dormitori make their stay pleasant and enj North and South work together in peaceful harmony.

People of other states and other put in on a common problem.

The Connecticut farmer solution to his labor problem represents a triumph in social relations of and international significance.

During World War Two.

The local workforce was depleted at young men, left their tractors for military tanks and battleshi Once again, the tobacco industry was forced to find labor elsewhe They first looked to the America reviving the tradition of black students on Connecticut tobacco farms.

We had housing for them and a dormitory for both girls a The girls to the sewing and the shed and the men and the boys did the picking of the tobacco.

They were wonderful workers.

We had really were very proud of what we did with them.

We had camps to build a swimming for them.

Among the migrants was a 15 year old student heading to Morehouse College in Atlanta by the name of Martin Luther Kin In his letters to his mother.

King would talk about his experi in the Hartford area.

Dear father, I'm very sorry I'm so long about but I've been working most of th We're really having a fine time here, and the work is very easy.

We have to get up every day at s We have very good food and I'm working kitchen.

So you see, I get better food.

We have service here every Sunda about 8:00 and I'm the religious We have a boys choir here and we're going to sing on the a Sunday I went to church in Simsb It was a white church.

I could not get to Hartford, but I'm going next week.

The white people here are very n We go to any place we want and s anywhere we want to tell everybo I said hello and I'm still think church and reading my Bible.

And I'm not doing anything that I would not do in front of Your son.

Black students like King, greatly assisted the tobacco wor But with the war raging on, more help was needed.

The local industry required as many as 13,000 seasonal worke so farmers also look to poverty stricken Ja Many of the men looked upon them as soldiers, as though they were This was their war effort.

They were making a contribution to the war.

And they they were looked upon t even when they were working on the back of farms because they lived in camps.

And there are similar situations as though you were at war, you were actually fighting the w And also they had a lot of pride The warm weather migrants often had a difficult time adjusting to New England culture as well as the weather.

Sometimes living conditions and made the experience even more di Jamaicans tried to adapt to their new surroundings after Often, they made more than they could a The next wave of migrant workers came from Puerto Rico.

The island already had an especially strong connect with the Connecticut River Valley Tobacco Industry.

Three of the largest Connecticut tobacco companies owned or lease plants in Puerto Rico's tobacco region and more than a thousand contrac to Connecticut came from this re In 1947, the Department of Labor of Puert created a migration division and recruiting workers for mainland including thousands for Connecticut tobacco fields.

In 1955, it opened an office in Because of the end of the Second World War, there was a lot of opportunities in the United States of work.

Many of the people in Puerto Ric that were unemployed and that used to live in the cou went to the United States to find better employment there than here in Puerto Rico.

What once was a trickle of migra to the United States became a fl As the Puerto Rican government actively recruited workers for several states, including Co The Department of Labor in Puert Rico would go around in sound tr encouraging people to meet at a specific place and then would literally send th in the next day to Bradley or to LaGuardia or to Logan Airport, where they would be picked out b representing the Department of L in that specific state and would bring them to the farm The Shade Tobacco Growers Associ was looking for Puerto Ricans who were strong, h and willing to work on arrival.

Thousands of laborers were house in northern Connecticut and Mass camps.

Many of the men left extended fa to come and do backbreaking work in apple orchards and tobacco fa Workers often learn that contracts might save one th But the reality was quite differ They have no privacy in the camp especially as people have to live above the other.

And then he had no separate door can have their privacy there or And also inside of the system that almost completely hurts.

Condition was terrible a large time and people used to Some people used to get sick out They have the kind of small kind of sardine slice of bread a I just came from up to here was $0.75 an hour.

A hundred.

Yeah.

Those.

Well how the same type of chemic That's why you saw a lot of peop especially for people with skin files in the Puerto Rican archiv in San Juan, many of the recruit According to were misunderstood, labeled as d and shipped to farms across the Among the recruits was Artemio Borges Lopez contract Si Dash 5886 of San Lorenzo, who arrived at Camp Bradley, Connecticut, in 1954.

In his letters to the Department of Labor, Lope I suffer from ulcers and I feel a lot of pain all ove And I have an itch that's destro when I go to the bathroom, my body drains blood and I'm without a penny to return to Pue I don't want to die here.

And I have nine orphan children second wife who I can't send any So please do something for me because my company does nothing Connecticut because my father wa as a chaplain for the migrant wo We came to My dad would take all of us to t when he went to the to the camps he would take the whole family, the five of us, because the men were so lonely and those camps were so barren.

They were awful, you know.

And I remember packaging, like, care packages with toothbrushes and towels and toothpaste and just the most basic needs.

And we filled his old station wagon up with stuff, and and we' most of our evenings just kind o to the migrant workers in the tobacco camps.

In this advocate documentary, Puerto Rican activist came to Wi to check out the conditions on t This film portrayed conditions i scenes depict one of the most sh and least talked about aspects These of the American way of life the migrant workers camps.

Each year, more than 50,000 Puer join the ranks of these workers right in the heart of the United subject to inhumane exploitation The owners of these work camps don't want the people to know th As this film crew.

Found out, and we are asking if we should come in and visit t To see where our comrades live and the conditions and permissio management of the camp.

I cannot let you on the.

Ground right now easily accessib I don't know where he comes righ We came to visit our comrades outside today and we wanted to.

Know if we could visit the.

Grou Know they is no problem.

Why?

We can't know the executive director of the Tobacco Growers Agricultural Association.

We need large numbers of people, first of all.

And Puerto Rico is the most avai Supply of large numbers of.

Workers, not only for the grower here in Connecticut, but also the northeast in the back with the immigrant.

the Haitian and American.

Well, as a poor guy gets into tr in Puerto Rico or the local business.

Okay.

And yet they.

Drawing such an immense and diverse workforce.

The tobacco industry often face laborers rights issues as long ago as the end of World War One, black women who worked in the industry organized a union in the 1960s.

A number of religious and politi help Puerto Rican migrants to or and improve working and living c in the tobacco farms.

And farmworkers because they saw softening and o and creating an organization that would respond to the needs of all for services, for all the that they had at the time.

So basically, you know, employment, as we have the transition from the farms to So this office throughout New England was very effective and helping them to make that tr by helping them to get jobs in t and going into years of programs like English as a second languag and all these other health situa where they needed services.

Throughout the 1960s and seventi Agencies and growers cooperated to improve conditions on the far An early 1990 television program by the Connecticut State Labor D portrayed conditions on tobacco as habitable.

Workers as satisfying an employers as be One glimpse I feel of buying you from moment to a moment ago more a lot of people see.

That being said, that there is o and they have been in trouble because they were not.

No, I did have a little problem with the Donagh look out there that unbelievable that all of these facilities mostly are on our own funds.

And we had them build and the bu very properly.

Naturally a happy person is going to give you a lot more that's not happy.

Me.

When you walk down the cente corridor, what we have is cubicl where four men are in a cubicle and it's bunk beds on each side.

The people that come up and work as far as we're concerned, are almost like family.

We work with them all day.

They work with us all day, and h you go home after a hard day's w You want to have a nice place to go, relax.

Just like you own your own home.

Over the course of the century, the influx of migrant tobacco wo profoundly affected the demograp of the Connecticut Valley popula Many of the most important ethnic communities in the Hartfo got their start from pioneers who went to work in the Connecticut Valley Tobacc fields, for example.

In 1915, letters from Southern black students, as well as newspaper reports trumpeted opportunities on Conne farms, stimulating one of the fi of the Great Migration.

These migrants often came from the same communities in the as they established themselves in the North.

They started churches and other organizations that would become key institutio in Hartford's black community.

A lot of the people who came to in this area picking tobacco and in the nurseries and in the farms, often ended up in Hartfor and taking over the neighborhood that had belonged to the French- to the Irish.

As they moved out of the out of the cities.

Along with the new black neighbo Puerto Rican and Jamaican commun were born.

West Indian social clubs were st providing them a sense of identi Today, those communities are evi on Albany Avenue in Hartford, as well as in the town of Bloomf It's very noticeable if you go through those areas to see the West Indian flavor of They brought with them their cul so they brought with them their foods, the kinds of music, and then they brought their fami to live here.

And of course.

The.

Families gradually exploded into what they think now is abou Most of the men now do not have related to tobacco.

Most of them there are lots of entrepreneurs.

They start their own businesses.

So if you go up Albany Avenue, g Blue Hills Avenue, you'll find the Scotts Bakery.

You'll find the Sami's beauty ma You'll find barbers and, you know, food stores.

And then there are this first, second generation kids.

They became very professional.

So you'll find another whole, yo accountants, attorneys, physicia It's it's a wide cross-section of professi that you'll find in the area.

Have you ever noticed the smooth brown outside wrapper of a fine cigar?

Chances are it was made from the and delicately flavored tobacco grown right here in Tobacco Vall which wrap eight of every ten cigars smoked America today.

That was until 1953, when a new made it possible to produce bind and wrapper out of finely ground tobacco mixed with an adhesive.

The synthetic wrapper hurt shade The special qualities of the Con Valley Tobacco became less impor and the decline of the industry accelerated.

In World War Two.

I think the ration kits actually always included a pack of cigare So it became really the common f of consumption.

In fact, it was in the early 1930s that c began to consume more than 50% of the tobacco cro there is this transition towards the cigarets So that that goes, that goes on, that has to do with lifestyl It has to do with cultural perce it has to do with marketing.

I think of the fifties, you know, as the Ozzie and Harri where socialization probably too a great deal more in people's ho dinner parties and so on.

So you don't have the same kind for cigars.

Meanwhile, the tobacco industry was steadily shrinking due to automation, the movement of production elsew and above all, the decline of the cigar in Eventually, manufacturing indust moved into the Connecticut Valley area and farmers got good money for t Tobacco acreage in Connecticut d from a high of 31,000 in 1921 to 2000 acres in the early 1990s In 1993, cigar consumption fell the lowest annual total since the Cigar Association of America began keeping records on the sale of premium cigars, hand rolled and more than $2.50 made a turnaround and started to with the return of affluence.

Well, actually, I think probably was the period in which we are we validate it, are getting rich As the economy has recovered, as people have gotten better off you begin to replicate the kind of environment of the late 19th with these specialty establishme single malt whiskeys and special It also became a form of conspicuous consumption because a single cigar can be quite expensive.

The cigar had again become an American icon.

It becomes the ritual of sociali You know, we don't dance anymore You know what?

What do we do to socialize?

There's been a tremendous declin in home entertainment to career Perceptions.

All the pressures.

You don't invite people over to anymore.

You know, you go out.

And if you think about it, it's a social environment.

It's leisurely.

You don't smoke it at home.

You go to a special place, not confined to two men.

Now, men and women.

Magazine ads and TV shows like the general cigar promotion promoted cigar smoking as pleasurable and class It isn't until they talk about or until people are seen in maga posing with their little cigars that the rest of the country sta thinking, That's cool.

And it's all about a trend.

Everything about the entertainment industry and everything about this business is about what's trendy, who's trend and w and what's hot and what's not.

Cigars and a cigar separately.

A seemingly is one of the great in my whole life.

Well, we only pass this way one time, It should be a pleasurable journ Something like a good cigar ever a while makes the trip that much You know, sort of stuff that bothered you during the day And something important kind of away.

Society's changed a lot, and it's very technological and you feel like you have to keep u with the changes and with your P And you have to and your modem and your mobile p and all that stuff.

And I guess cigars.

It's just a nice way to relax and feel a connection to the pas Babe Ruth was a cigar smoking.

And he was a homerun hitter.

In 1990, the sale of premium cig nearly tripled from their 1987 l In 1996 alone, premium cigar sales rose We call it the Renaissance, and it really occurred about 199 It came out of nowhere.

I think it has its real in the e of course.

A whole generation of of young p grew up without cigars as a refe Cigars have always been a part of the United States and part of A whole generation of cigar smok actually adopted cigars history.

as if they discovered them all o And it became very, very popular And today it is still very power It isn't quite the same extraord enthusiasm that was there before There were a lot of people that were caught up in it as a f But we we are now have a busines of the cigar industry for premium cigars is three time larger than it was before 1994.

Despite all the growing of tobac all over the world, the most sought after wrapper is Connecticut Shade Tobacco.

It's quite a remarkable thing.

You think about it, that people and they look for it and spend more money to get a go cigar.

In mid 1997, National Public Rad reported that cigar consumption by 45% over the previous four ye and tobacco prices were at histo They also reported that tobacco in Connecticut had doubled since not to mention the creation of cigar bars and tobacco shops.

1746.

First, I'm going to show you a v popular type of cigar, an Aston It's made in the Dominican Repub and it has a Connecticut shade w That's a lighter style wrap that you'll see.

Certainly show you a difference.

This is a CEO anniversary of cig You'll notice It gives it a little bit more of a punch to it.

Then I'll show you a 100% Connecticut cigar.

This is an old time topper.

Cigar made from 100% Connecticut Broadleaf.

We have probably the best of bot You come in and we have a great of cigars for people to choose f Dominican cigars.

Nicaragua and They come in and buy a cigar and either they leave in the smoker wherever they want or they actually can come back.

And we have the Havana Lounge in which is a full liquor license c So you go back and it's a real enjoyable, mello to hang out and enjoy a cigar.

There's cigars that are 12 inche long and over an inch wide.

The that are flavored for women and very petite cigars for women There are very strong cigars for in the smoking cigars for a long There's mild cigars for the first time, guy.

So whatever your particular tast is in tobacco, there's certainly a cigar for yo I get this.

The cigar industry estimates that more than 10 million Americ the overwhelming majority of the regularly smoke cigars.

A 1998 study found that the number of cigar smokers had 50% since 1993.

Despite the Renaissance, tobacco is still risky business.

In the last few years, the most important disease of both broadleaf and shade tobacco has been blue 1997, we had a pretty large epidemic of this fungus, which is an obligate parasite.

It only attacks living.

Tobacco plants can cause lesions, so death, which makes it unsuitable for cigar wrapper production.

The summer of 2000 brought a fun called Brown Spots, which knocked out much of the Connecticut Broadlea All of Stanley Waldron's crop wa and had to be buried, leaving no but dry, dusty soil and an insur which will cover only some of his costs.

Is it a perfectly good way?

When we started out with it, the now you can see the spots here, here, here, here.

Then when it's finished, cure, it will look like look like this and be some holes and some not.

And then it gets real, real bad.

It turns into this.

That's what when it gets really Real bad, which is the beginning of the spots after it's carried That can you can't it, for a rap you won't be able to use it for And you can use.

So it's a very big problem because they want they want to be able to produce cigar wrapper leaves and like blue mold, these lesion make it unsuitable for wrapper when when these leaves are cured they have to be elastic to stretch around this cigar.

And the lesions not only are uns but they don't stretch, they tear so that they would mak and they can't be used.

Health concerns are also affecti consumption.

A 1998 report by the National Ca Institute found that regular cig can cause cancers of the mouth l esophagus and lungs, depending on the frequency of us In June 2000, the nation's large companies agreed with federal re to place health warning labels on cigar packaging and ad controversies over tobacco's impact on health.

Despite the The effect of the weed on the Co River Valley is undeniable.

We were able to employ people and give a lot of benefit to the of buying our our fertilizer, buying our tract all the cars we need to have all bought from the local distributors here So we we put a lot of money into the community here.

And I think that has been a help to Hartford.

Today's labor force includes many Central Americans, as well as Africans, Haitians, M and a few remaining Puerto Rican Some say they are fortunate to have the opportunity.

Sammy Tobia, a mexican worker and a father of four, has a general cigar for three ye I love when they travel and we focus on the thing.

The truth is, there were few job and you don't make much.

It takes ten Mexican pesos to make one American dollar.

The work I do here is pretty goo The jobs are good and easier than in Mexico and they treat yo The don't know what I do want to We make more hourly and $6.30 an hour.

They tell us that what we have is that the farmers are reaching out for undocumente from Florida and they are replac a lot of the workers that have been in the camp or were coming from the city to go to camp on the seasonal wo And that's presenting a problem because it presents a problem because our only concern is to p for those that are there, but because they and they can't come forward, they cannot be eligible by by the mandate of the federal go Then they're out there and we ca The tobacco industry served as a for a succession of ethnic and racial groups who have becom a permanent part of Connecticut and who have given the Hartford a diversity of population and culture unusual in the New England region.

We need the success of the indus Ah, the cigar lovers, men and wo who enjoy the flavor feel an aro cigars like Hartford celebrity M who on his 70th birthday quipped I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time.

But beyond the cigar aficionado, Connecticut tobacco success has depended on a multitude of people working and toiling behind the s The laborers and farmers who have earned their living in the rich soil of Connecticut Tobacco Valley.

I do it all over again.

Well, it's just something that you like to do in your movi Just even if you know, may not make any money if you make a What's the difference when you're on this earth?

That's all you go to end up.

Is it with an unknown?

The preceding program was part of the Connecticut Experience series, co-produced by Connecticut Public Television and the Connecticut Humanities C