Last cigar factory shuttered in Red Lion, Pa.

The town's cigar factories employed most of its people, and they sold more than 10 percent of the cigars manufactured in the United States, according to local historian Shirley Keeports.

She said most current Red Lion residents can still say they know someone who once worked in a Red Lion cigar factory.

But unless they know Jacobs or his receptionist, they don't know anyone who presently works in one.

Van Slyke & Horton Inc. was the last remaining factory from the industry that built the town – and it closed production about six weeks ago, said Jacobs, who manages the place.

He and his secretary are all that remain. After an auction of most of the manufacturer's possessions, they'll be gone, too.

“It certainly is the end of an era,” said Jacobs, whose father, Clark Jacobs, owns the factory. “There were a lot of people who lived a very good life because of it. The industry was responsible for Red Lion being such a flourishing community at that time, and there was a time when most men had a cigar in their mouth. We just always thought people would smoke.”

He said Van Slyke & Horton, 49 S. Pine St. in Red Lion, was also the last operational cigar factory in York County.

The Van Slyke building began manufacturing cigars in 1910 under then-owner J.C. Winters, Jacobs said.

It had about 60 employees in the height of cigar popularity and was producing millions of cigars per year.

Things had been “rolling downhill” for cigar manufacturers for decades, but the passage of a new tobacco tax a few years ago and the economic recession “pushed us over the cliff,” Jacobs said.

The factory made nearly a million cigars last year, selling them to locations all over the world. Workers would condition the loose tobacco and feed it into 20 machines that rolled cigars, and then they'd pack and ship them. But orders slowed and the handful of remaining employees were let go around two months ago, Jacobs said.

The machines were sold to an operation in Nicaragua and, on Thursday morning an auction was conducted to disperse decades worth of equipment and memorabilia, Jacobs said.

Items sold included labels and bands, antique hand-rolling items such as cutting boards and knives, cigar molds and 250-capacity trunks in which cigars were packed, he said.

The building is not for sale, and Jacobs said he's not sure what will come of it.

The cigar industry was so strong in Red Lion by the 1920s that the town was the richest place, per-capita, in the nation, said Keeports, who directs the Red Lion Historical Society's museum.

“I don't think there were many households that didn't do some kind of cigar manufacturing,” she said. “You could start stripping tobacco in your own home, and you were called a stripper. Most of the women were strippers, stripping the stem from the leaf.”

The town's opera house and theater were built on cigar profits. So were the lives of the townspeople.

Workers wrote songs and poems about the factories, and they treasured their jobs enough to fight for them. In 1934, cigar workers afraid of losing work to machines went on strike. State police were called to control rioters. Women lay down in front of delivery trucks. One Red Lion man was blinded by tear gas, and, according to Keeports, had to make brooms for the rest of his life.

Keeports said she's “greatly upset” by the last factory's closure. She planned to attend the auction and use Historical Society funds to buy and preserve as much of the memorabilia as possible.

Things might be tight, she said, because she recently “spent a lot” at the closing of Loyer's Pharmacy, another of the town's institutions.

“It's our history,” she said. “I don't like to see these things leave the town.”

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Information from: The York Dispatch, http://www.yorkdispatch.com

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AP-WF-05-25-11 1926GMT