Day's Work Day's Work

As a professor of history, I do not know where subscribers got the idea that in the 19th Century there was no difference between chewing and smoking tobacco. It is true that some late 19th Century tobacco manufacturers sold their smoking tobacco in small cans that were marked "For smoking or chewing" but these were not really considered chewing tobaccos by the average person. They were just an "emergency" source. Plug tobaccos were always intended solely for chewing and the process to make them goes back to the 1500's. The Days O Work brand is one of the oldest brands of plug tobacco, having its origin in the 1700's. Plugs were intended to fit in a man's vest pocket and were consumed by Eastern gentlemen cutting off a small piece at a time with a tiny tobacco knife. Pioneers carried the tradition westward where the common pocket knife took the place of the specialty pocket knife. The inner tobacco has always been Grade B but included smaller leaf stems, while the outer wrapper (described as paper here) was made from the finest cigar wrapper leaf. Original manufacture was by stacking leaves in a door sized form and covering it with a flat board. Weights were then added to press the tobacco over several weeks time, where it could then be cut into plugs with a roller knife before wrapping in the finer grade leaf. Today they use hydraulic pressing to speed up production but the remainder of the process remains the same as in the 1700's.