Cigarettes in the 1870s

Cigarettes in the 1870s were still a novelty to most smokers, less than 2% of people who smoked used cigarettes. The most common method of tobacco consumption is not even smoking at all, but it was chewing what was called plug tobacco. A man named James Buchanan Duke stepped into this world and this market in the 19 or in the 1880s. He watched in 1873 as a powerful depression hit the United States and temporarily cigarettes swelled in popularity because the urban poor could afford them.