xt7f1v5bct2w https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7f1v5bct2w/data/mets.xml Mathewson, E. H. (Ernest H.) 1912  books b98-53-42679764 English Govt. Print. Off., : Washington : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Tobacco. Export and manufacturing tobaccos of the United States  : with brief reference to the cigar types / by E.H. Mathewson. text Export and manufacturing tobaccos of the United States  : with brief reference to the cigar types / by E.H. Mathewson. 1912 2002 true xt7f1v5bct2w section xt7f1v5bct2w 




     U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.
          BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY-BULLETIN NO. 24.
                B. T. GALLOWAY, Chief of Bureau.




THE EXPORT Ai\,) DMlA.NtIJFAoTtURIN(U TOBAtC(COS

   OF THE UNITED STATES, WITH BRIEF

      REFERENCE TO rpjj E CIGA R TYPES.




                         BY


                  E. H. MATHEWN"SON,
           Crop Sehnologist, Ojjice of Tobacco Investigations.





                 ISmui) Nov i1  -m  s .2, 11e12.

















                     WASHINGTON:
               GOVERNMENT PRTNTIN47 OFFrCE.
                        1912.

 This page in the original text is blank.

 




     U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.
         BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY-BULLETIN NO. 2.
                B. T. GALLOWAY, Chief of Bureau.




THE EXPORT AND MANUFACTURING TOBACCOS

   OF THE UNITED STATES, WITH BRIEF

      REFERENCE TO THE CIGAR TYPES.




                         BY


                  E. H. MATHEWSON,
          Crop Technologist, Office of Tobacco Investigations.



ISSUED NOVEMBER 23, 1912.



     WASHINGTON:
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.
         1912.

 




































                        BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY.




                        Chief of Bureau, BEVERLY T. GALLOWAY.
                        Assistant Chief of Bureau, WILLIAm A. TAYLoR.
                        Editor, J. E. RoCKWELL.
                        Chief Clerk, JAMES E. JOwES.




                                 ToBACCO INVESTIGATIONS.

                                      SCIENTIFIC STAFF.

                             W. W. Garner, Physiologixt in Charge.
E. 11. Mathewson and G. W. Harris, Crop Technologists.
Ii. A. Allard. C. W. Bacon, E. G. Beinhart, I). E. Brown, C. L. Foiubert, W. M. IALnn, E. (. Moss, and
Otto Olson, Assistants.
J. S. (0ningham and B. F. S'herffius, Experts.
J. E. Blohm, Special Agent.
B. G. Anderson, R. P. Cocke, E. M. East, W. W. Green, E. K. Hihshman, and True H-ouser, Collaborators.
     244
     'p

 

                 LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL.


            U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE,
                        BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY,
                                   OFFICE OF TIE CHIEF,
                           Washington, D. C, February 16, 1912.
  SIR: I have the honor to transmit herewith a manuscript entitled
"The Export and Manufacturing Tobaccos of the United States,
with Brief Reference to the Cigar Types," by Mr. E. H. Mathewson,
Crop Technologist in the Office of Tobacco Investigations, and
recommend that it be published as Bulletin 244 of the series of
this Bureau.
  The manuscript was prepared in response to a long-felt need for a
general study of the tobacco-growing industry as a whole, so that the
various types of tobacco produced in the United States may be
understood in proper relation to each other and to the tobacco trade
as a whole.
  The accompanying maps, indicating the location of the different
tobacco districts, are regarded as a particularly valuable feature of
the bulletin, and it is in response to a specific demand for such maps
from the trade as a whole that they have been prepared for publica-
tion.
        Respectfully,                    B. T. GALLOWAY,
                                               CUief of Bureau.
  Hon. JAMES WAILSON,
      Secretary of Agriculture.
   244
                                                        a

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                              CONTENTS.

                                                                          Page.
Introduction.--------                                  .-.-.-.-----------     9
    Distinction between the export and manufacturing and the cigar types of
      tobacco.........9........                                    .....      9
    Imports and exports of tobacco       .... 10
Early history of the tobacco industry.................................. ...   12
    Development in colonial times.                              ..12
    Development from the Revolution to the Civil War         .              15
        Development of tobacco manufactures .       .............................  16
        Extension of producing areas       .....................            16
        Beginnings of the cigar-tobacco industry.                   .   .   17
        Summary (Revolution to the Civil War period) ..-      .             18
Development during the period since the Civil War          .       .        19
    Influence of the war..........................                     ..   19
    Influence of the new fiscal system.................... ..................  20
        Internal-revenue tax         ...............              .......   20
        Import duty on cigars and cigar leaf .    ...............................  20
    Development of cigar-leaf production     .........                      21
    Development of the cigar-manufacturing industry   .      ....   ....    26
    Distribution of the cigar-manufacturing industry       .       .        27
    Development of the export and manufacturing types of tobacco ..         28
    Development of different methods of curing tobacco.              ..29
The dark-fired type of tobacco        .........................             33
    Domestic demands ..-------------------------33
    Foreign demands ------------------.-. ..           ---..-.-.-           34
    Review of the dark-fired type by districts   .        .37
       The Virginia dark district ....................  ..........    ..   37
            Distribution in use of the Virginia dark-fired type .... ...... .  40
            Olive-green or black stemming district .  ........................ ..  40
        Dark-fired tobacco in Kentucky and Tennessee         .      .       41
           The Clarksville and Hopkinsville district .      ....           41
           The Paducah district         .......................            45
           Distribution in use of the combined Clarksville and Hopkinsville
             and the Paducah types .........                                46
           Grades and prices in the Clarksville and Paducah districts. .-.-  47
           The Henderson or the " Stemming " district ..-------------------  48
The Maryland or Baltimore types of tobacco      ...                                49
    Distribution in use          .............................              50
    Grades and prices           .............................               54
    Distribution of acreage        ..........................               54
Flue-cured tobacco...    .............................                      55
    Origin and early development        ..                    ..            55
    Importance of fertilizers in stimulating production .  .....................  57
    Uses of flue-cured tobacco ..------------------..---..-----..-..--      59
        Domestic consumption ....................5........................    59
        Export demand ...................................................     61



244



5

 

6                                 CONTENTS.

Flue-cured tobacco-Continued.                                               Pae.
    Distribution in use ....................................................  62
    Grades and prices ---------                          ---                   63
    Flue-cured tobacco at the Paris Exposition of 1900 -63
    Subdivisions of the flue-cured district -64
        The Old Belt section -67
        The New Belt section -                                                 68
White Burley tobacco -                                                         70
    Origin and early development -70
    Special soil influences on production -                                    73
    General characteristics and usefulness- .--..-.-..-.........-------        76
        Domestic use- -                                                       76
        Foreign demand -                                                      77
    Grades and prices -78
    Fluctuations in productioIn -80
    Distribution in use -81
    Distribution of acreage -81
Green River tobacco -                                                          85
    General characteristics -85
    Production and distribution in use -86
    Grades and prices- -                                                       86
    Distribution of acreage -86
One-Sucker types of tobacco -87
    General characteristics and usefulness -87
    Subdivisions of the One-Sucker districts -                                87
        Southern Kentucky and upper Cumberland sections -87
        The One-Sucker type in southern Indiana -89
    Production and distribution of acreage -89
    Grades and prices -90
    Distribution in use -                                                     90
Virginia " Sun-Cured " tobacco -91
    Method of curing and general characteristics- -                           91
    Uses of " Sun-Cured" tobacco -92
    Distribution of acreage -                                                 92
    Prices and grades -                                                       93
Perique tobacco -                                                             94
    Methods of production -94
    Uses of Perique tobacco and location of area -96
Brazilian tobacco -98
RWiim6 with statistics of all types -                                         98
    244

 


                          I LLU ST RATIONS.


                                    PLATES.
                                                                            Page.
PLATE 1. Map of the export and manufacturing tobacco districts of the eastern
           section of the United States -..                           In pocket.
      II. Map of the export and manufacturing tobacco districts of the western
           section of the United States ................................ In pocket.

                                 TEXT FIGURES.

FIG. 1. A Connecticut V'alley tobacco field ...................................23
     2. Group of curing barns in the broadleaf section of the Connecticut Valley  23
     3. Exterior view of cloth shade, Connecticut Valley shade-grown tobacco  24
     4. Hands of Sumatra-type shade-grown cigar wrappers .24
     5. Harvesting cigar-leaf tobacco near Janesville, Wis ................... 3 2
     6. Sweated cigar leaf, Wisconsin binders, 22, 18, and 14 inches long  25
     7. Sweated cigar leaf, Ohio cigar tobacco, Zimmer Spanish fillers, 11 to
          18 inches long.                                                     26
     8. Type of seed beds common in all of the cigar-tobacco districts -27
     9. Early type of log curing barn .......................................  30
     10. English strips, English leaf, and Austrian leaf tobacco from the V'ir-
          ginia dark-fired district.      ..................                   36
    11. Dark-brown "snuffer" tobacco from the dark-fired districts      37
    12. Plant bed in woods, with cloth covering ..............................  38
    13. Common type of Virginia log barn for curing dark tobacco with open
          fires. .................................                            39
    14. Characteristic tobacco plant of the Clarksville type ..................  42
    15. Worming and suckering tobacco in the Clarksville district .42
    16. Harvesting scene, Clarksville district ...............................  43
    17. Wilting and yellowing tobacco on the scaffold, Clarksville district  43
    18. Hauling tobacco from the field to the curing barn..                    45
    19. English strips, long and short, dark-fired tobacco .49
    20. Maryland tobacco-curing barn .-------------------------         52
    21. Maryland fine colory leaf export tobacco ...........................  53
    22. Hauling prized tobacco to railroad station for shipment ...     55
    23. Field of "fresh land " tobacco of the flue-cured type. .        58
    24. Typical flue-curing tobacco barn, Old Belt section .58
    25. Stages in the manufacture of chewing, twist, and plug tobaccos .   60
    26. Stemming room of a leaf-tobacco factory .............................  62
    27. Common method of hauling tobacco from the field in the Virginia
          tobacco districts .................................................  65
    28. Stringing the leaves of tobacco of the flue-cured type in the New Belt
          section..............................                         ..   66
    29. Part of a field of thrifty young Burley tobacco plants ...      74
    30. Transplanting and watering tobacco seedlings by machine ............  75
    31. Common type of curing barn in the Burley district of Kentucky   76
    32. Burley tobacco, flyer, colory leaf, and red-plug filler .80
    33. Typical Yellow Pryor tobacco plant ...................... I ..........  85
    34. Plant of the One-Sucker type .............................      88
    35. Sunning tobacco in the Virginia Sun-Cured district .. ...       92
    36. Working the twists of Perique tobacco during the pressing process .--  96
    37. Winding the carotte with rope, Perique tobacco district  . .    97
          244                                                     7

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B. P. I.-727.

THE EXPORT AND MANUFACTURING TOBACCOS
  OF THE UNITED STATES, WITH BRIEF REFER-
  ENCE TO THE CIGAR TYPES.


                       INTRODUCT1ION.
DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE EXPORT AND MANUFACTURING AND THE
                   CIGAR TYPES OF TOBACCO.
  The designations "export" and "manufacturing" are used by the
trade to distinguish these tobaccos from cigar tobacco. The terms
themselves do not make the distinction very clear. The making of
cigars might, of course, be regarded as a manufacturing process, but
as here used the term is limited to the domestic manufacture of pipe
and cigarette smoking tobacco, cigarettes, chewing tobacco, and
snuff. There is, however, some reason for restricting the term "manu-
facturing" to these types, because the making of cigars is largely
a hand process, requiring in its simpler forms no machinery worth
mentioning. In the case of the manufacturing tobaccos, however,
the machinery used is the dominating element, from putting the leaf
into keeping order by the elaborate and costly machine drier to the
finished products of the plug presses, the granulating and cutting
machines, and the snuff and cigarette machines. The manufacture
of these types adapts itself readily to the concentration of a great
business into a single very large factory, with an elaborate and costly
machine equipment, without which the chances of successful compe-
tition are minimized. As is well known, this point has been of funda-
mental importance in the success of the great tobacco combinations
in the manufacturing field.
  The export tobaccos are of the same general type as those used in
domestic manufacture, the same general methods are used in pro-
ducing and handling them, and in finding a market they move through
the same channels of trade. The export and manufacturing tobaccos
are thus naturally and properly considered together as a single broad
type, although, as will be explained later, there are important modi-
fications of quality in connection with some of them that cause cer-
tain types to be used mostly for domestic manufacture and consump-
tion and others to be mainly exported.
    244                                                9

 

EXPORT AND MANUFACTURING TOBACCOS.



  We have already noted one important difference between the cigar
and the export and manufacturing tobacco industries; that is, in the
machinery used in manufacture and in the tendency to consolidation
in large plants. This, however, is only one of several reasons that
cause them to fall quite naturally into different classifications.
  The cigar tobaccos are produced on different soils and in other
sections of the country. A very different type of seed is used. The
methods of cultivation, harvesting, and especially handling after
harvest are distinctive, and they move to market through separate
trade channels. The Bureau of Internal Revenue expressly forbids
the making of cigars and the manufacture of tobacco in the same
factory, and with some exceptions the growers, handlers, dealers, and
manufacturers of the export and manufacturing tobaccos generally
have very little or nothing to (1o with cigar tobacco.

               IMPORTS AND EXPORTS OF TOBACCO.

  The standard of quality in the export anid manufacturing and in the
cigar types of tobacco is very different, which is strikingly empha-
sized by the fact that while some thirty-odd millions of pounds of cigar
tobacco are imported yearly, above 300,000,000 pounds of the other
type (average of 1910 and 1911 was 356,261,573 pounds) are each
year exported. Strangely enough, however, the value per pound of
the tobacco imported is so much greater than of that exported that
the value of the imports offsets about two-thirds the value of our
exports (for 15 years ending with 1911, 61 per cent; for the fiscal
year 1910-11, 72 per cent), so that the balance of trade in favor of
the United States on the tobacco account is smaller than might
be supposed.
  The tobacco which is imported consists principally of cigar-filler
leaf and cigars from Cuba and cigar-wrapper leaf from the Dutch East
Indies (Sumatra and Borneo, purchased at Amsterdam and Rotter-
dam, Holland) and is the finest and highest-priced tobacco in the
world. Our imports of Turkish tobacco, for use principally in ciga-
rettes, is coming to be of considerable importance and is rapidly
increasing.
  This imported tobacco bears a very high rate of import duty for the
protection of cigar-leaf growers in the United States and for revenue,
which is at the rate of 1.85 per pound on wrappers and 35 cents per
pound for fillers, with a reciprocity discount of 20 per cent in the case
of Cuban imports. Adding this duty to the declared value of the
imported tobacco and cigars causes it to exceed the value of our
exports by more than 30 per cent. These values are shown in
Tables I and II.
     244



10

 


                            INTRODUCTION.                            11

TABLE I.-Exports of tobacco produced in the United States for the fiscal year ended
                              June 30, 1908.



Kinds.       Pounds.   Value.        Kinds.       Number.   Value.
               II            I                 I -   



Leaf.3, ( .           33,034534,342,293Cigarettes.       1.539.364.00082,000,881
Stems and trimmings7,779,624  384,864All other tobacco            1. !1158,051
Plug ..........   ....   6,295,757   1,525.888 I
Cigars.            2,352,000   51,702    Total.  ........   -     ---- 39.463, 679

TABLE II.-Imports of tobacco into the United States for consumption in the fiscal year
                           ended June 3ai, 1908.



           Kinds.             Pounds.    Value.      Duty.     adlded(d)

Wrapper leaf ............... ..... ..  5,396,539  56,073.444.52  89. 949,094. 04  s16,022.538A r6
Fillerl  eaf ..   ...    ..   27,183,222  16,166.369.02  8,513,519.16  24,679,88A. 18
All other leaf .........,...........  89,488  35,470.30  42,068.54  77,538.84
Stems.      .........          3,164,242   15,280.00...............15,280.00
Cigars and cheroots .....................  704,875  4,011,177.80  3,342.527.13  7,353,704.93
Cigarettes ..............................  22,452  69,081.87  115 969.28  185,051.15
Other manufactured tobacco .-.-. - 358,841  139,699.80  196,911.59  336,611.39
    Total .............................  26.510,523.31  22,160,089.74  48,670,613.05


  The trade movements of the export and manufacturing types are
of course not entirely separate from the cigar types, and one could
easily find points of real contact and more or less striking points of
similarity. There are no official figures to quote, but it is generally
known by those connected with the trade that every year some of
the export types of tobacco are used in the manufacture of cheap
cigars, stogies, and cheroots. Conversely, a considerable quantity
of cigar leaf in the aggregate is used in manufactured tobacco,
particularly in those brands known as scrap tobacco, made largely
from cigar cuttings and the heavier and commoner grades of cigar
leaf. As noted in Table I, also, more than 2,000,000 cigars are
exported annually, which is an insignificant quantity compared with
our imports or home consumption, and it is generally known that a
small quantity of cigar leaf is exported annually, notably to Canada,
England, and Germany.
  Imports include also a very small quantity of manufactured
tobacco, mostly fancy brands used by foreigners resident here; some
cigarettes, mostly of Turkish tobacco; and a considerable and rapidly
increasing quantity of Turkish leaf now amounting to about 10,000,000
pounds annually for use in manufacturing Turkish cigarettes and for
blending with our own domestic cigarette and smoking-tobacco
mixtures.
     244

 

EXPORT AND MANUFACTURING TOBACCOS.



         EARLY HISTORY OF THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY.
               DEVELOPMENT IN COLONIAL TIMES.
  The commercial culture of tobacco in this country was almost
coincident with the first permanent settlement established at James-
town, Va., in 1607. The people of Great Britain and of Continental
Europe had aiready become familiar with the use of tobacco from
the numerous expeditions to various parts of the New World during
the previous 115 years since its discovery by Columbus, and during
the last 50 years of that period it had become common to include as
much tobacco as possible in the return cargo from the various parts
of the New World where it might be obtained from the natives.
Intro(luced first because of its supposed medicinal effects, the taste
and deman(l for it had already become general in much of Europe
and the British Isles.
  The Virginia colonists soon found that it was about the only
commodity which they could produce that would exchange to advan-
tage against the various manufactured necessities or luxuries which
they desired from the home country. History records that John
Rolfe was growing tobacco in the streets of Jamestown in 1612, and
in 1618 the first official statement of exports is recorded, which
amounted in that year to 20.000 pounds of tobacco at a valuation
of 541 cents per pound.
  These early settlers found a heavily forested country, which re-
quired a great expenditure of labor to clear and put into shape for
planting. Nothing else that could be grown would produce so large
an exchange value from a given area of land against manufactured
commodities from home as tobacco. It absorbed almost the entire
attention of the early settlers, aside from producing sufficient corn,
wheat, and vegetables for mere subsistence. At first the cultivation
was restricted almost entirely to the richest river land along the
James, the York, and the Rappahannock Rivers, where the largest
yield and highest return for a given amount of effort could be obtained
  New colonists were constantly arriving and the production of to-
bacco increased with wonderful rapidity. From 20,000 pounds in
1618 the exports increased in 1627, nine years later, tQ 500,000
pounds.
  In the later forties the palatinate of Maryland (officially established
in 16.34 with the first settlement at St. Marys) was also developing
rapidly in population and in the production of tobacco, which became
there also the main reliance and most available resource as a commer-
cial medium for exchange against the necessities and luxuries of the
Old World.
  In 1639 the total exports for the two colonies reached the large total
of 1,500,000 pounds, but the value had dropped to 6.08 cents a pound.
     244



12

 

EARLY HISTORY OF THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY.



Although the market in England and on the Continent was a rapidly
expanding one, production in America under the influence of necessity
occasioned by the rapidly increasing influx of immigration, particu-
larly indentured white laborers and negro slaves, increased at a still
greater rate. Just at this period also, England was entering upon her
navigation and colonial policy, which had for its object the building
up of English shipping, creating and retaining exclusive control of
the colonial markets for home manufactures and increasing national
resources.
  Parliament passed laws effectively prohibiting the importation
of any tobacco except from the Colonies. This excluded Spanish
colonial tobacco, which had hitherto been of considerable importance,
and secured a monopoly of the British markets for the Colonies.
Conversely, however, the Colonies were forbidden to export tobacco,
except to the mother country and in English ships. This had the
effect of reserving the market for colonial tobacco to England only
and helped to build up English shipping, but it placed the colonists
entirely at the mercy of English merchants and shipowners as to
prices obtained for tobacco. The British merchants, however, could
sell colonial tobacco to other countries freely after it had passed the
British ports, and it is estimated that during the colonial period two-
thirds or more of the colonial tobacco reaching England was resold for
use in continental countries. England thus became the great supply
center for leaf tobacco for the rest of Europe.
  In order to increase colonial imports, augment customs receipts, and
make the farming out of the tobacco monopoly of greater value to the
King, the growing of tobacco in Britain, which had already become
of some importance in certain sections there, was forbidden. Laws
were also passed discouraging the development of any manufacturing
activities in the Colonies in order to retain the colonial markets for
British products. This, too, had the effect of making still more com-
plete the dependence of the Colonies upon agriculture alone as a means
of livelihood, and for exchange purposes tobacco seemed to be the only
resource. The whole policy as outlined, together with the rapidly in-
creasing population of the Colonies, conspired to increase production
and depress prices.
  In 1664 exports amounted to 23,750,000 pounds at 3.09 cents a
pound. So it went on with production and prices fluctuating greatly
I It should perhaps be noted in this connection that the action of this colonial policy in respect to Mary-
land was somewhat different from that of the other colonies. Maryland was a palatinate and as such had
a degree of freedom from control by the mother country not enjoyed by Virginia and the other Colonies.
For example, the policy limiting the exports of colonial tobacco to Great Britain did not apply to Mary-
land. She thus enjoyed a freer market and sold much of her product directly to other countries in Europe,
particularly to France and Holland, and built up a trade in tobacco leaf with these countries which has
persisted. These countries continue to take between them the larger portion of the Maryland product.
Virginia, however, produced a much larger quantity of tobacoo than Maryland, and was really the con.
trolling factor in prices and production in colonial times.
     244



13

 

EXPORT AND MANUFACTURING TOBACCOS.



from year to year throughout the whole colonial period, the produc-
tion always tending to expand rapidly, as the average of a series of
years, attended with chronic dissatisfaction from low prices. The
lowest recorded price was 1.52 cents a pound in 1730, when exporta-
tions were 36,000,000 pounds.
  All through this early period tobacco was a constant source of legis-
lation, particularly in the Virginia Assembly, in the effort to control
production and keep up the price, but the effort usually met with
little or at best only temporary success. Laws limiting the number
of plants grown by each planter, limiting the number of leaves to be
harvested, providing for the total destruction of a portion of the
stocks on hand, or eliminating a crop altogether were passed from
time to time. On several occasions memorials were addressed to the
King praying for relief. Several times negotiations between Virginia
and Maryland were attempted for the purposes of limiting production
and maintaining prices, but it usually happened that lack of unity
would defeat the effort, and when one colony tried to limit production,
the other would increase the acreage. Warehouses, or rolling houses
as they were first called, were established at several points with sworn
official inspectors. Laws were passed placing heavy penalties against
nesting or false packing, in the hope thus to raise the price level which
the English merchants would be willing to pay. Both Maryland and
Virginia tried to fix artificially the price of tobacco by statute. No
legislative device, however, seemed able permanently to overcome the
combined influence of the natural conditions favoring the production
of tobacco and the artificial influences of the British colonial policy
an(l navigation laws and the rapidly increasing colonial population,
including cheap slave labor in particular.
  Production, therefore, continued to increase and low prices worried
the colonists until the outbreak of the American Revolution, when the
production in the Colonies was at its maximum. Exports averaged
about 100,000,000 pounds annually for the years 1770 to 1774. But
the war, of course, nearly put a stop to exports. The English market,
which had been receiving almost all the colonial tobacco, was closed
to the Colonies and the danger from seizure by English privateers
and gunboats was great and the war itself absorbed the attention of
the great body of the people. The low mark for this period was
reached in 1776, when exports were only 2,440,947 pounds of tobacco,
and the exports for the seven years of war averaged less than 12,500,-
000 pounds yearly.'
I It may be of interest to note that soon after the establishment of the permanent colonies In the New
England section attempts were made there to grow and export tobacco, but conditions were such that these
efforts were attended with no real success. The principal cause of this failure in New England was largely
due to its soil, which did not possess anything like the natural fertility of the rich river valleys of Virginia.
Tobacco growing in New England never amounted to much until the introduction of the cigar-tobacco
Industry into the Connecticut Valley In the second quarter of the nineteenth century.
     244



14

 

EARLY HISTORY OF THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY.



  At the close of the Revolutionary War the production and exporta-
tion of American tobacco was of course resumed, but under very
different conditions, as the British colonial policy and navigation
laws were no longer effective here.
  Almost from the beginning of the commercial trade in tobacco
it seems to have been regarded as an available asset for taxation.
In Great Britain and in many of the continental countries it was
made to yield a good revenue by duties upon imports and by farming
out the privilege of trading in it. Indeed, the Colonies themselves
were able to realize considerable public revenue by means of an
export tax, which stood for a portion of the time in both Virginia
and Maryland at 2 shillings per hogshead. This policy of using
tobacco as a subject for taxation, as is well known, has become a
fixed policy with most of the leading nations to-day, either in the
form of customs duties or internal taxes or by governmental monop-
oly, and the revenue exacted is in many cases much more than the
value of the tobacco itself.
    DEVELOPMENT FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THIE CIVIL WAR.
  In the half century succeeding the Revolutionary War a number
of effective causes tended to check the production and exportation
of leaf tobacco in the United States. The war itself had made it
impossible for European countries to import their regular supplies of
American tobacco, and they turned to other sources, particularly to
Cuba and to the Dutch East Indies. They also tried the exp