CIGARS ONCE AGAIN

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 29, 3 August 1921, Page 9

CIGARS ONCE AGAIN

A LONDON CELEBRATION.

Tbe -return.of the cigar w«« cefebmied at a dinner given by the Havana Importers' Committed on 30fch May.. Since Mr. Chamberlain imposed, in April, 1920, tb« additional ad. valorem duty, making importora pay in all a tax of £Z on each pound of imported Havana tobacco, two million cigars reached thfi country in plaoo of forty-two million for the corresponding six months of 1919, and these two millions c^it no further than tho bonded warehouses.

Tho dinner celebrated the removal of tho ad valorem dnty and the fall in prices to tho public of an ordinary Havana cigar to ono shilling and of the Havana cij»ar of the largest sine to haif-a-crown.

Mr. Robert Middlamas, speaking for the importers, -regretted that sinoe CaJyerley cigars had lacked a panegyrist But it was a romantic industry, and to his personal knowledge tho factory hands in Havana worked under pulpits from which liiied readers read out the contents of the two island newspapers, I/iboral and Conservative.

Mr. C. W. Bowernmn, M.P., told how when a boy ho was employed in the printing office of a morning newspaper, and was sent to Fleet-street each nifrht to buy two ninepenny cigars for the chief leaderwriter.

Mr. Hannan eaid he could not overestimate the influence of good cigars upon' public life. Tho present Chancellor of the Exohequor, Sar Robert Homo, did not amoke, and ho was thinking of formingl a deputation of smoking members to wait upon Sir Robert and urge him to remedy this defect. It might bo the best way of settling the coal dispute to see that the representatives of the miners and of the ocal-owners wore plentifully supplied with cigara

A letter was read from "Youis, enviously," H. G. Wolls, expressing regret that he could not attend since the doctor had recently forbidden him to emoke.