San Martin and Leon cigar factory
The brick factory was built sometime before 1910. Originally, the El Grifo factory which was owned by the P. San Martin Cigar Company was on this same plot of land. A wooden building, it probably suffered damage by fire like so many of the other wooden cigar factories. At some point the company name was changed to San Martin and Leon Cigar Company.
There was very little information available on this particular company. The one thing I did keep finding over and over was the fact that P. San Martin and Company used child labor back in the early 1900's. They also apparently paid them very little or nothing at all. Obviously, this was before the United States enacted child labor laws. I did not find any reference to child labor with other factories so I do not know if this was an isolated case or if the hiring of child labor was more prevalent in the cigar industry of Ybor City.
Other companies that used this factory building were the C.M. Gil Cigar Co (1927), the Gallo and Baer Company (1945) and the Adrian Cigar Company (1949).
The factory building is currently used as office space for MaintenX Total Facilities Repair Experts.
Comments
Great info!
Great History Lesson!
cool pics
Good golly, how many of these factories were there?
:-)
Good info!
Having just finished reading about the early 1900's I can tell you that they used child labor everywhere for everything. They were small, they were submissive, and they had fast little fingers. (Also, I bet they didn't smoke the profits. ;)
This was owned by my great-uncle, Wilfred C. Clarkson.
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