=The Reader in the Factory.= The Tampa cigarmakers are all either Spanish or Cuban, and in conversation they gesticulate with their hands to such an extent that it is impossible for them to talk and work at the same time. Hence, the manufacturers are very sympathetic with the old custom of maintaining a reader in the factory. This reader has a little balcony from which he reads to the employees while they are at work, making his selections from current magazines, newspapers, novels, telegrams, dispatches from abroad, and extracts from books on national history. It is an interesting sight to see a factory of four or five hundred workers busily engaged in plying their trade, and listening at the same time to a story read by the paid reader, who, with coat off and suspenders hanging, gesticulates and shouts at the top of his voice. One of the readers in a Tampa factory has held his position for twenty years. He reads daily from the New York _Herald_, translating the news articles into Spanish as he reads them. The reader is well paid, for each worker gives him twenty-five cents a week; and it is reported that some of these men receive as high as $300 a month. The workers decide what shall be read. Some years ago there was a strike in one of the factories occasioned by a protest on the part of the women workers against the reading of an especially vulgar novel. The management ordered the reading of this novel stopped. The men then laid down their tools and refused to go back to work until they were assured that the story would be continued. Among the cigarmakers the tradition is that the custom of reading grew out of the desire of the early workers for a more liberal education than was offered by the church and its schools. =Wages and Unions.= The wages of the cigarmakers are based on the piece-work system. An expert may make as high as $35 a week; the average is a little higher than in other employments using the same grade of labor. Some years ago, when a bitter strike was conducted in Tampa, the question of wages was one of the grievances of the men but was not the real trouble, for the problem in Tampa now as well as then is racial and psychological rather than economic. The strike was settled on the basis of an agreement called the “equalization agreement.” This provided for the appointment of a board to be composed of three manufacturers and three cigarmakers who would meet regularly, hear complaints, and make adjustments. Most of the workers belong to the union, and under this agreement there is a fair degree of peace in the industry.