With the 31st annual Gilroy Garlic Festival coming up next
weekend, I can’t help but ponder how many folks might trek to
Gilroy’s Christmas Hill Park if the South Valley had a yearly gala
celebrating smelly tobacco instead of the stinking rose.
With the 31st annual Gilroy Garlic Festival coming up next weekend, I can’t help but ponder how many folks might trek to Gilroy’s Christmas Hill Park if the South Valley had a yearly gala celebrating smelly tobacco instead of the stinking rose.
Long before Gilroy gained world-wide fame for its aromatic herb, the town was internationally renowned for another odorous flora. The community once marketed itself as “The Tobacco Capitol of the World.” And if it were not for the extreme prejudice 19th-century Californians showed toward Asians, vast tobacco plantations might still be surrounding Gilroy.
The Gilroy History Museum has an excellent exhibit describing the story of James D. Culp who came to California from New York State in 1865 and began planting tobacco in the San Felipe farm fields south of Gilroy. Soon after Culp’s arrival, the village became a depot stop along the recently built railroad passing through the region. The savvy Culp merged the American and Pacific tobacco companies (both based in San Francisco) and thus created the Consolidated Tobacco Company of Gilroy. The businessman then built the world’s largest cigar factory on Monterey Street near Gilroy’s railroad yard. From there, he shipped his tobacco products by train to the rest of America via the Transcontinental Railroad completed in 1869.
The enterprising Culp personally picked more than 900 Chinese men and women to do the drudgery of rolling one million cigars a month. In 1873, he received a patent for a process that more effectively cured the tobacco leaves. Although some of his weed harvest was sold to pipe-tobacco shops and as cut-plug chew, most went into producing cheroot (or stogie) cigars. Gilroy’s tobacco had a world-wide reputation for its high quality and good flavor. No doubt author Mark Twain, famous for smoking cheap cigars, enjoyed many stogies from Gilroy.
Culp’s cigar factory dramatically changed Gilroy. With hundreds of Asians working in the community, a Chinatown quickly developed in a two-block section of the village along Monterey Street. Its residents kept busy running or patronizing such businesses as laundries, restaurants, saloons, and opium and gambling dens.
Culp’s tobacco business continued expanding. Unfortunately, with the Panic of 1873, an economic depression hit America that lasted until March 1879. Tobacco products became a luxury item many Americans couldn’t afford.
The depression depleted the job market. Many out-of-work Californians felt frustrated and took their anger out on the hard-toiling Asian population. In 1878, the California legislature passed a law banning Chinese labor from virtually all businesses licensed in the state.
Without cheap labor, Culp’s Gilroy cigar factory was doomed. In 1882, it closed down. Culp continued growing tobacco in the San Felipe region until 1926. Ironically, around that time, a Japanese farmer named Jimmy Hirasaki bought South Valley farmland to grow garlic commercially. Hirasaki’s farm made Gilroy the “Garlic Capitol of the World.”
It’s highly unlikely that if 21st century Gilroy was famous for its tobacco industry instead of garlic, there would be an annual festival celebrating the noxious weed. Such an event isn’t exactly what you might call a “family-friendly” attraction. The only thing tobacco and garlic seem to have in common is that they both produce an unpleasant breath smell.
Garlic also might possess health benefits that tobacco certainly can’t claim. People suggest that garlic’s enzyme allicin might ward of cardiovascular diseases. It also might combat cancer. And allicin is not a highly addictive drug like the nicotine in tobacco.
More than 443,600 people in the United States die each year from illnesses related to the consumption of tobacco products. That equals about 18 percent of all American deaths. In fact, “cigarettes kill more Americans than alcohol, car accidents, suicide, AIDS, homicide and illegal drugs combined,” according to the American Cancer Society. Tobacco also costs the nation $193 billion in health care costs and lost productivity every year.
Despite the human and financial costs, one in five Americans smokes, thus giving the tobacco industry considerable political leverage – enough to receives millions of dollars in annual subsidies from taxpayers. With its powerful lobby and political allies in Washington, D.C., big tobacco has for decades blown a lot of smoke to hide the problems caused by its health-damaging products.
Fortunately, that smoke is starting to dissipate. Last month, President Obama, a smoker himself, signed into law a measure giving the Food and Drug Administration regulatory powers over tobacco products.
No doubt the more than 100,000 people expected to attend the Gilroy Garlic Festival next weekend possess an insatiable habit for the herb. But it could be worse. Compare their craving for healthy garlic to a chemical dependence on the death-inducing weed that once made Gilroy “the Tobacco Capitol of the World,” and garlic looks like a pretty damn good addiction to have to deal with.
