antique CONGRESS CIGAR CO glass tobacco HUMIDOR jar Sam Paley LaPalina CBS Pres

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16-sided glass humidor from 1920sBOTTOM INFORMATION MOLDED INTO THE GLASS:"CONGRESS CIGAR CO1st DIST. PENNA. FACT C 52"HISTORY OF FAMILY FROM CREATION OF CIGAR CO. TO CHAIRMAN OF CBS(information from )Samuel Paley immigrated to Chicago and began what would be a long and profitable career in the cigar business. At the time, there were some 50,000 cigar manufacturers in America and Paley became a “lector” at one of them. Rolling cigars is a tedious, repetitive, boring task. It took place in a gallery with anywhere between 10 and 100 rollers, depending on the size of the company. To relieve the boredom, there was a lector in the front of the gallery that read to the rollers from books or newspapers. This was the position in which Samuel Paley began his career in the cigar industry.Eventually Paley moved on to become a roller, and then graduated into the role of blender. Paley had a nose (or a palate) for tobacco and he honed and developed his technique and his knowledge.Like so many immigrants, he yearned to have his own business and be his own boss. AsPaley opened a cigar shop with a small factory. In 1896, he introduced La Palina, a play on the Paley name - a feminization of it, figuratively “Paley Woman.” And, for the band, he chose an elegant black and white etching of his wife, Goldie Drell Paley. It is the proto-Art Nouveau image of a beautifully coifed, regal woman.Shortly therafter, Paley’s company - now dubbed Congress Cigar Company - moved to Philadelphia. It wound up with factories in Allentown, Pa. and Camden, N.J., in addition to the Philadelphia headquarters. All of the plants were owned by the company and were the epitome of modern, well-equipped cigar manufacturing facilities. To obtain and provide tobaccos for his operation, Paley’s company maintained offices in Havana, Cuba as well as Puerto Rico, which at the time grew some very desirable tobacco leaf used in cigar production.Congress handled every aspect of the production, from the raw leaf to cellophane. The only thing the company didn’t do was grow its own tobacco, however the Havana and Puerto Rican operations assured Paley and his company access to a wide variety of the best quality tobaccos. Samuel Paley often visited Havana and personally dealt with the acquisition of tobaccos, while the company distributed the cigars they produced through three offices they maintained in New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago.Later on, Paley was joined by his brother Jacob as well as his own son, William S. Paley, who had graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and Finance (now known simply as The Wharton School). Samuel placed a great deal of trust in his son William, to the point where the workaholic allowed himself to be pulled from his duties to take Goldie on a trip to Europe. During his absence, the younger Paley spent a several hundred dollars sponsoring a radio show that became known as the La Palina Hour. His obvious purpose was to advertise the cigars. William returned to America to find that sales of La Palina cigars had risen dramatically in his absence.William S. Paley become enthralled by radio, radio advertising, and the potential profits in the operation of radio stations. So enthralled, in fact, that he acquired a small network of stations (six of them) and created the Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System, which would later be renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System, or “CBS.”William S. Paley remained Chairman of CBS until 1986 when the company was acquired by Laurence and Preston Tisch. Between 1928, when he became President of CBS, and his death in 1990 at age 89, Paley had created what became known as the “Tiffany Network,” an obvious reference to the elegant New York jeweler and its renowned quality, and an equally obvious compliment to the broadcasting giant’s quality.SIZE:JAR 5 1/2" tall and 5 1/2" across the baseLid is 1 3/4" tall. weight approx. 3 poundsCONDITION:Imperfection in the glass created a... read more

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