U.S. Vice President Thomas R. Marshall once quipped, “What America really needs is a good 5-cent cigar.” In 1909, that cheap smoke said a lot about America. A flip through an issue of the American Tobacco Journal from around that time shows an obsession with the 5-cent cigar. “Remember, all successful manufacturers are using SUMATRA TOBACCO in their nickel cigars!” one ad warns. There are reports of how many inches of rain fell on the tobacco fields of Kentucky, an article about three St. Louis cigar factories merging. And sprinkled among the obits for august tobacco men and ads for Riz Tam-Tam cigarette papers are news stories about antitrust legislation and cheap women workers who don’t demand their three-cigar quota at the end of the day. Of course, a 5-cent cigar’s never really a 5-cent cigar; the cost is exacted somewhere. Workers in St. Louis knew that. One of the first union labels in U.S. history was a red one, pasted on boxes of cigars. These may not be a nickel apiece, it said, but the hands that made them belong to people who worked an eight-hour day, people who can feed their kids, people who can afford to smoke the cigars tomorrow that they rolled today.