ADULTERATIONS AND SUBSTITUTES.
It is said that in Thuringia, over 1000 tons yearly of dried
beetroot-leaves are passed off as tobacco. These leaves, and those of
chicory and cabbage, are similarly employed in Magdeburg and the
Palatinate. Many of the _Vevey_ cigars of S. Germany are entirely
composed of cabbage- and beetroot-leaves which have been steeped in
tobacco-water for a long time. Other leaves, such as rhubarb, dock,
burdock, and coltsfoot are also used. These are all principally for
cigars. For smoking-tobacco, chamomile flowers, exhausted in water, then
dyed and sweetened with logwood and liquorice, and dried, have been
mixed with tobacco in such proportions as 70–80 per cent. In America, a
specially-prepared brown paper, saturated with the juice expressed from
tobacco-stems and other refuse, is most extensively used, not only for
the “wrappers” of cigars, but also for “filling.” Various ground woods,
starches, meals, and pigments are introduced into snuff.
A New York paper mentions that a great quantity of brown straw paper
lately reached Havana, which was to be employed in the manufacture of
Havana cigars. Straw paper impregnated with the juice of tobacco stalks
is wound up with the leaf in such a way that it is often impossible to
detect the adulteration. Dr. Jacobson, writing in the _Industrie
Blätter_, remarks that there is no difficulty in escaping detection, if
the paper be specially prepared for the purpose out of suitable raw
materials. It has long been known that cigar paper soaked in a solution
of soluble glass gives forth no smell of paper on being burnt.
Patent No. 210,538, issued from the United States Patent Office,
December 3, 1878, states the ingredients of a “substitute” to
be—spikenard, red clover, hyssop, hops, slippery-elm bark, tarred rope,
pennyroyal, mullein leaves, kinnikinic, wild cherry bark, and ginseng.
This is an ingenious combination intended to approach in effect,
appearance, and aroma, tobacco; and in so far it might be said to be a
success: as mullein leaves are reputed to be feebly narcotic, hops are
known to possess anodyne properties, clover and hyssop are pectoral in
effect, and slippery-elm febrifuge. Ginseng is aromatic and pungent, and
has a great reputation among the Chinese as a stimulant and restorative.
The tarred rope, we presume, is intended to add to the pyrognostic value
of the mixture. The great point in selecting material for the
fabrication of a mixture of this description is to get leaves containing
a fair percentage of nitrate of potass, as does tobacco; on this depends
its pyrognostic value, and that, next to aroma, is everything.
“Tobacco, like those who smoke it, is credited with many sins of which
it is guiltless. The ‘loss of health’ so often laid at its door is
probably due in many instances not to tobacco itself, but to some
villainous compound bearing its name. A story told by the principal of
the laboratory of the Inland Revenue Department in his report for the
past year shows how easily this may happen. The supervisor at
Birmingham, observing that an article was being sold at a very cheap
rate in packets, under the name of ‘smoking mixture,’ sent a sample to
the Inland Revenue laboratory for examination, and it being found to
contain a large proportion of vegetable matter resembling the broken-up
heads of camomile flowers, further inquiry led to the discovery of the
manufactory. The process of manufacture consisted in exhausting the
bitter principle of camomile flower-heads with water, and then dyeing
and sweetening them with a solution of logwood and liquorice, which
brought them, when dried, somewhat to the colour of tobacco. The heads,
when broken up, were then mixed with from 20 to 30 per cent. of cut
tobacco, according to the price at which the mixture was to be sold. The
mixture was supplied to retailers in packets labelled ‘The New Smoking
Mixture, Analysed and Approved,’ and as agencies had already been
established in several towns, an extensive trade would no doubt soon
have arisen had the manufactory not been suppressed at an early stage of
its existence.”
The United States Consul at Smyrna puts the following statement in his
report of January 15, 1883.
Since the establishment of the tobacco monopoly in Turkey, snuff may be
said to be one of the several articles that undergo the most
unscrupulous adulteration. Owing to the high amount of duties imposed on
tobacco by the Turkish Government, and the large profits licensed
manufacturers expect to make on the same, the poorer classes cannot
afford to use the products of doubtful purity coming from the factories,
and so are altogether at the mercy of the clandestine manufacturer and
retailer, who, in order to make the most he can of his vile industry,
adulterates his snuff to such an extent that it can be safely said that
his products contain on an average from 60 to 70 per cent. of inferior
Persian tobacco (tumbeki), fragments of country tobacco leaf, and
tobacco of cigarettes picked up in the streets by beggars, the 30 to 40
per cent. consisting of walnut sawdust, terra umbra, fine sifted sand,
and scum of lead (lead oxide), covered with inferior black writing-ink.
The snuff is manufactured in Smyrna, as follows:
The conscientious manufacturer uses Persian hookah tobacco (tumbeki) and
the fragments of country tobacco-leaf coloured with black ink. These
tobaccos, ground as fine as possible and mixed with grape molasses, are
put in a covered barrel to ferment. Two or three days later the snuff is
taken out and spread in the sun to dry partly, and then rubbed with the
hands and passed through iron wire sieves to be granulated.
The product is afterwards scented with powdered orris root, tonka beans,
and geranium oil; the superior qualities are scented with essences of
roses and jessamine and put up in packages.
The adulterated article is manufactured in the same manner with the
addition of the above-named substances.
The only persons using genuine snuff in this city are the Catholic
priests, who import it directly from France, Italy, Spain and Holland,
and enjoy the privilege of paying no custom-house duties.