From handcrafted tobacco rolls to machine-made cigarettes: the transformation and Americanization of Puerto Rican tobacco, 1847-1903

The Puerto Rican tobacco industry experienced a profound transformation between the middle of the nineteenth century and the U.S. invasion in 1898; its change can be explained according to three factors. First, growers started to harvest a leaf that more resembled Cuban leaf for cigars than the one used for cut tobacco or handcrafted into rolls to be consumed by chewing. Second, factories relying on wage labor replaced small artisanal shops operated by independent cigar or cigarette makers. This industrial capacity was not export oriented, thus contributing to the substitution of Havana cigars and Cuban cigarettes with domestic ones. Third, the development of an entrepreneurial class in tobacco manufacture came to a halt as a consequence of the invasion. At the turn of the century, the American Tobacco Company, the trust, bought into the most technologically sophisticated tobacco manufacturing sector, machine-made cigarettes, and, soon after, independent cigar manufacturers faced stiff competition when the trust attempted to monopolize the trade.