Robert Mullen
Catalog Number: 1985.011.04
Charles Pavek (1869-1944) was a well-known La Crosse musician.
He played in many local orchestras and brass bands since he learned to play the cornet as a youth.
In the 1910 U.S. census, he declared his occupation to be a musician. Like most musical performers, Charles needed a day job to make ends meet.
His day-to-day work was making cigars. Over the years, Pavek worked for several of La Crosse’s numerous cigar manufacturers, and he may also have made and sold cigars independently from his home.
The only tools Charles needed to make cigars were his skilled hands, a knife and the cigar mold pictured here.
In the early 20th century, all cigars were hand rolled. Rolling was a craft that took several years to master. Charles began learning the trade in 1885 at the age of 16 while working at the Pamperin and Wiggenhorn Company on Main Street. He worked there until the turn of the century, when he switched employers to the cigar factory of John Dengler. Years later, he worked for Albert Major’s much smaller cigar factory.
The process of cigar-making involved several steps, each requiring learned skills.
It began by cutting the stem from the tobacco leaves. The cigar maker then rolled up the proper amount of those leaves into a cylindrical shape, called the filler. The filler was wrapped tightly inside another leaf to bind the pieces together. These bound leaves were placed into the mold and put under pressure to shape the cigar.
After an hour in the mold, they were taken out to receive a wrapping of a finely textured tobacco leaf to finish the cigar.
While music was his passion and cigar-making his occupation, Charles Pavek’s place in the cigar industry was changing by the 1920s.
After World War I, demand for cigars was losing ground to the growing popularity of cigarettes. The cigar industry was now switching to mechanization, reducing the need for people of Pavek’s skill at cutting, rolling, binding and finishing the hand-made product.
With a smaller market for cigars and increased use of technology, employment in the trade was declining. Manufacturers began hiring lower-skilled workers who could be trained to work the machines and would work for lower salaries, often young women.
By 1930, Pavek left the cigar trade and was working as a laborer for the Northern Engraving Company in La Crosse. He stayed there the rest of his working life into the 1940s. And, he continued to play the cornet in old-time bands.
This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on March 28, 2020.
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