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"6th Monday, passed Thompson's creek on the East side at sunrise, Just below s'd. creek some high Bluffs on the east side. Put to at Bat- tinrooss [Baton Rouge] garrison at 12. Lay there till I. The Com- mandant's name is Vahanmond. He treated me with a great deal of complaisance-asked me to stay [to] dinner. I begged to be excused. Took a glass of punch with him & moved off at I. Passed Monshack garrison at 4. It was a very strong current & smart breeze of wind, so that the Boats could not conveniently land. I went ashore in a canoe. The commandant was from home. I shewed the Sergeant my passport. He said it was very good, and told me to return to my Boats. I moved on, came up with them in a few minutes."
CHAPTER LXXVIII
THE GROWTH AND CULTURE OF TOBACCO IN KENTUCKY
The world's production of tobacco in 1920 was 2,500,000,000 pounds. Of this amount the United States grew 1,500,000,000 pounds. The total farm value of this crop was $350,000,000, and while this total was not much more than one-third that of the great cotton crop, it compared very favorably with that staple in industrial value.
In the year 1920 the total production from 550,000 acres in Kentucky was, in round numbers, 475,000,000 pounds; one-third of the total pro- duction in the United States and almost one-fifth of the production in the entire world.
The production, handling, manufacturing and exporting of tobacco and tobacco products is Kentucky's chief industry and it affects, directly and indirectly, a very large proportion of its people. It not only fur- nishes employment to thousands of its citizens, but, furnishes in revenue to the United States Government over one hundred million dollars yearly, and produces for export a very large percentage of the United States trade, which, before the war, averaged around four hundred and fifty million pounds of raw leaf.1
Figures, as Dr. Selwyn Brown has so well said, do not properly emphasize the real importance of our tobacco industries. These have reached such a high degree of efficiency and excellence that they set the standards of the world. We have the most highly intensive methods of tobacco growing and curing, the most modern plants for the marketing, warehousing, redrying, and manufacturing purposes, and our packing, storing and exporting systems are unequaled by any other country.
All these advantages combine to make the tobacco industries of the United States, and very especially of Kentucky the chief producing state, lead the world in production, selling, manufacturing, and distributing methods.
The persistent tendency of tobacco to encroach on new and better lands is illustrated by its spread in Kentucky. For fully 100 years after the first settlement of the state, tobacco culture had made but slight inroads upon the so-called Blue Grass section of Kentucky.
For many years, hemp, the pride and cash crop of this famous region, far exceeded tobacco both in acreage and value. Today the conditions are reversed and tobacco is king.
For a period of 300 years tobacco has been cultivated on the most fertile fields of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, Kentucky and Ten- nessee and yet in all this period the planters are just now being awak- ened to the fact that they have been improvidently wasting their natural fertile resources with no intelligent cooperative action to insure a stable return or fair profit for the fertility of their soil, which is rapidly being exhausted.
No traveller can witness the eroded fields of the older tobacco sec- tion of Virginia without bearing witness to the fact that this product takes heavy tribute, nor pass in review the rolling hills of all Northern Kentucky-washed and gullied-the top soil deposited in the Mississippi
1 Tobacco, Vol. LXXIII, No. I, Article by Arthur S. Brown.
1177
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delta,-without reaching the conclusion that long ago the producers of so valuable a product as tobacco, should have taken counsel together whereby they would have received not only a fair price for their product but compensation for their depleting principal.
There are two distinct types of tobacco grown in Kentucky. One is "Burley," probably the most famous and most useful type of tobacco grown anywhere in the world. The other is what is generally termed "dark" or "dark-fired" tobacco.
The dark or dark-fired type was introduced from Virginia where it was grown in the early days and for which the Colonists had a strong foreign demand, most of it going to England, France and Germany.
The soil of Southern, Southwestern and Western Kentucky is espe- cially adapted to this type of tobacco and its production has increased so rapidly that by 1920 two-thirds of this type of tobacco produced in the United States, or nearly 200,000,000 pounds, was grown in Kentucky and a few adjoining counties of Tennessee.
In Kentucky this general type of tobacco has developed into five dis- tinctive classes, all more or less alike in general character, but differing in shades of color, body, size, and other characteristics, determined by the varying soils in different localities. As a type this tobacco is heavy bodied and much darker in color, the leaves varying from olive green to dark brown or black. It also produces a heavy yield sometimes run- ning as high as 2,000 pounds to the acre. An excellent quality of dark tobacco is produced in what is known as the Hopkinsville District in Southern Kentucky, which district is composed of Christian, Trigg, Todd, Logan and portions of Marshall, Caldwell, and Muhlenburg counties. The annual production reaches a total of close to 50,000,000 pounds.
West of the Hopkinsville District is the Paducah District composed of McCracken, Graves, Calloway, and portions of Ballard, Carlisle, Hick- man and Fulton counties.
The Paducah District, with its deep red sub-soil, produces a type of tobacco very similar to that of Hopkinsville and its production is some- what larger, sometimes reaching a total as high as 75,000,000.
The Henderson District is known as "The Stemming District," so- called because this tobacco, practically all exported to European coun- tries, is stemmed before packing thereby saving export shipping duty and expense. This tobacco has also what is called a high absorbent quality making it a further favorite for export because of the amount of sugar or other ingredients it will take up and thereby increase its weight.
The normal production of the Ohio Valley District, composed of the counties of Henderson, Union, Crittenden, Livingston, Webster, Hop- kins and Caldwell, is 40,000,000 pounds.
The Green River District, so-called because the particular type is grown in the counties of Daviess, Ohio, Hancock, Breckinridge, Gray- son and McLean, lying tributary to the waters of the Green, produces a type similar in many ways to that of the Henderson district type, heavy bodies, long oily leaves and very precious to the taste of foreign peoples. Certain grades of the dark lugs liave a domestic demand in the manu- facture of snuff.
All these four types of dark tobacco are cured in tight barns with furnaces or open fires from hardwood. The heat and smoke is modified to meet certain conditions or demand.
The remaining type of dark tobacco is called the "One Sucker." This tobacco, unlike the other types, is air cured like Burley. It is produced in the Southern Kentucky counties of Edmonson, Warren, Butler, Gray- son, Allen, Monroe, Larue, Taylor and portions of Simpson, Logan, Hart and Barren.
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY
The average production in the one sucker district is about twenty million pounds.
All these five types of dark, or dark-fired, tobacco have long been in great demand in foreign countries. Before the World war fully 75 per cent of it was exported to Great Britain, France, Holland, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Africa, Australia and the Scandinavian Countries. As an article of foreign commerce the 200,000,000 pounds of dark Ken- tucky tobacco formed a very important item.
Nearly all of the dark tobacco has been sold for years on the loose- leaf markets, a system to which later reference will be made, and on the Louisville hogshead market, and, as the greater part of it is purchased for foreign countries, all the great export buyers are represented on the principal markets, which are located at Henderson, Paducah, Mayfield, Hopkinsville, Owensboro, Madisonville and Bowling Green.
Kentucky, which has laid just claim to the origin of so many famous men, famous products and blooded animals within her border, cannot, unfortunately, receive credit for the origin of white Burley tobacco,-a world-wide staple,-though the state now practically controls its produc- tion, due to peculiar climatic and soil conditions. Owing to the mellow- ness of Burley, its color, its absorbent and keeping qualities, this type now commands throughout the world the leading position of all types of tobacco, in the demand which has been created for its manufactured forms in famous brands of cigarettes, plug and smoking tobaccos.2
White Burley tobacco was discovered in the year 1868 in Brown County, Ohio, just across the Ohio River from the picturesque County of Mason, by Mr. George Webb. Mr. Webb had procured his seed from the Government, and when his plants were nearing maturity, he noticed several which were a lighter green in color, the stalks and ribs of which were almost white. They were so different in appearance from the other plants that Mr. Webb carefully preserved the seed. In a crop grown from this seed the following year he discovered that the leaves were much smoother and brighter in appearance, and that, when cured, they had a milder flavor.3
2 Tobacco, Vol. 69, No. 2. Article by H. Woosley and C. A. Mahane.
3 This discovery is also attributed to a gentleman by the name of Ellis, of Brown County, Ohio. In reply to his inquiry Mr. Halley received the following letter from Mr. Ellis :
RIPLEY OHIO MCH 6TH 1922
Mr. Samuel H. Halley Lexington Ky
Dear Sir-
Your letter of few days ago received and after some inquiry, I obtained just today, from Mr. Wm. Barkley, son of Geo. Barkley mentioned in article, a copy of article written some time ago and which I consider very authentic as to origin of white Burley tobacco. As to the names "Burley" it has always been used, even when they grew the black tobacco. It being of large growth and rough would suggest the name of Burley. I am enclosing copy of article given me by Mr. Barkley and trust it will be of some help to you in making up your history. With kindest regards I am
Yours &c O C ELLIS
The account secured by Mr. Ellis and forwarded to Mr. Halley is here given : Origin of Burley Tobacco from Article Received from Mr. O. C. Ellis.
In 1867 Geo. Webb and Joseph Fore were tenants on the farm of Captain Fred Kautz, which lies back of Higgensport, in Brown County, Ohio.
Having run short of plants at setting time Mr. Fore crossed the Ohio River to the farm of Geo. Barkley, in Bracken County, Ky., where he obtained enough plants to finish planting their crop. From these plants sprang a half dozen stalks which were notable for their light color and fine texture, and the seed was saved from these plants. From this seed a bed was sown on the Sam'l Ellis farm the following spring and the first planting of about one acre was grown.
On curing, the yield proved of such high color compared to the old styles of Burley that the seed saved sold for $5.00 per teaspoonful. Amos F. Ellis offered the first seed for sale while Capt. James Hite took the first hogshead of the new growth
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY
Thus a new grade of Burley, originating from what may be called "sport" plants, was born, and so rapidly did its production in the sur- rounding country increase that it soon eliminated all other types. In a short while it invaded Kentucky, crossing the Ohio River into the rolling. fertile uplands of Mason, Bracken, Pendleton and Carroll counties and thence, by steady strides, southward to the high plateau in Central Ken- tucky known the world over as the famous Blue Grass Region. This fertile section is underlaid with limestone and phosphate rock, and here, from the blue grass sod and virgin soil of this favored region, have been produced the finest types of Burley, especially for smoking purposes.
The following counties in Kentucky compose the white Burley Belt, and produce annually about two hundred million pounds: Carroll, Camp- bell, Mason, Bracken, Robertson, Pendleton, Lewis, Greenup, Owen, Henry, Oldham, Trimble, Grant, Gallatin, Harrison, Nicholas, Fleming,
FIELD OF TOBACCO, SHOWING TOBACCO CULTURE IN FAYETTE COUNTY, NEAR LEXINGTON
Carter, Rowan, Bath, Bourbon, Scott, Franklin, Shelby, Spencer, Ander- son, Woodford, Fayette, Montgomery, Clark, Jessamine, Madison, Gar- rard, Mercer, Washington, Nelson, Boyle, Marion, Lincoln, Casey, Bullitt, Hardin, Meade, Green, Hart, Jefferson, Barren and Metcalfe.
Prior to the year 1890 Burley tobacco was marketed in the great hogshead markets of Louisville and Cincinnati, the former at that period having established its prestige of being the leading tobacco market of the world. About 1890 the American Tobacco and its allied companies be- gan buying direct from the planters. These buyers established a receiv- ing point at each county seat and paid for the tobacco from wagons without warehouse charges.
From 1900 to 1905 the prices became so low that great discontent arose among the producers and the following year there was inaugurated the first great concerted action among farmers to pool their holdings
to the Cincinnati market. The introduction of the new celery goods gave rise to the fine cut manufacturing interests, and Dr. T. R. Spence, of Cincinnati, was the first large cutter to appreciate its value.
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY
and control prices.+ The period of the first burley pool was the occasion of much lawlessness in the Burley District, and, in some instances the power of the state had to be invoked to prevent loss of life and property.
This period was a revolutionary one in many respects for Burley Tobacco, for in the first year that the first pool was formed, in 1906, there was developed by a few men a brighter, lighter type of Burley, suitable for the manufacture of fine smoking tobaccos. This smoking type, lighter in yield, but thinner and much brighter in color, rapidly supplanted the older, heavier types, because of the higher prices paid for this variety. Some of the greatest manufacturers of the United States quickly took advantage of this new type of Burley to manufacture it into fine smoking tobaccos and cigarettes, the names of whose brands have become rapidly famous throughout the civilized world.
Also in 1906, there was opened in Lexington the first loose-leaf sales warehouse ever established in Kentucky, by Mr. Charles Bohmer, of Virginia. This method of selling tobacco, in the loose leaf form, had long been in vogue in the older tobacco growing states of Virginia and the Carolinas. The new system was so easy and so simple that the Ken- tucky farmers, always conservative about making a change, tried it out cautiously and by degrees. The more they tried it, the better satisfied they became that it was a step forward over the old hogshead prizing method, long in vogue, and its development was so rapid, so popular and so contagious that by the season of 1919-20, when tobacco prices reached the high peak owing to the World war and its accompanying increased demand for tobacco products, there had sprung up in a little more than one decade throughout the Burley Belt thirty-odd different Burley mar- kets and more than 100 loose-leaf sales warehouses, nearly all of which were modern brick buildings, owned and managed by producers of tobacco.
Lexington and Maysville had the two largest markets. At Lexington in 1920 there were eighteen large, modern, well equipped sales ware- houses with a floor capacity of 7,000,000 pounds and a daily sales capacity of 1,500,000 pounds. There were established at the same point eight large re-drying plants with sufficient capacity to put all the tobacco sold immediately into secure keeping order. The receiving plants and storage houses at Lexington were sufficient to properly take care of 100,000,000 pounds.
The Maysville market, almost as large as that of Lexington, and proportionately as well equipped, sold annually for the Northern Burley Belt from 25,000,000 to 40,000,000 pounds. Other markets at Carroll- ton, Paris, Shelbyville, Cynthiana, Mt. Sterling, Richmond, Danville, Winchester, Lancaster, Eminence, Harrodsburg, Carlisle, Frankfort, Springfield, Horse Cave, Glasgow, Labanon, Flemingsburg, Augusta, Falmouth and many other places in Kentucky, were all similarly equipped to take care of Kentucky's chief product.
At these markets during each sales season, December Ist to April Ist, gathered from the four quarters of the earth buyers for every type of Burley produced.
During the marketing season of 1919-20, when tobacco prices were the highest the producers had ever known, there was sold at Lexington 63,392,656 pounds of Burley for a total of $29,392,449 or at a grand general average price of $46.17 per hundred pounds.
It was not unusual during this period, for an acre of ground to pro- duce gross value of $1,000 or more, and it was during this sales season that the highest priced tobacco crop of record anywhere, which had been produced without cover, was sold on the Lexington market. It was
4 One of the leading spirits in this movement was Clarence De Bus, of Cynthiana. See sketch elsewhere.
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY
raised by Mr. Webb Offutt, a planter of Scott County, the son of Capt. W. N. Offutt, a distinguished soldier in the Confederate army, who raised the first crop of Burley, in the year 1878, ever grown in the Blue Grass country.
The Webb Offutt crop, loaded on one wagon, contained 3,850 pounds and brought the record breaking average price of $116.57 per hundred pounds or a total of $4,486.94. If he had received his money in silver dollars, the horses which delivered his tobacco would have been fairly well loaded on returning home.
The 1919-20 crop of Kentucky Burley returned to the producers nearly $80,000,000 in cash, almost as much money as all the gold mined in the United States during that year, and five times as much as the famous Cripple Creek district produced in its bonanza year.
Some of the natural consequences of the great and rapid inflation of the price of this commodity followed. Many of the tobacco growers who had been tenants. and whose earnings on their share of the 1919-20 crop had been so unexpectedly large, saw the vision of owning their own homes and consequently purchased land at high prices, paying a small portion, rarely exceeding one-third, of the purchase price in cash, exe- cuting notes secured by lien on the land for the remainder. Prices of land under this eager buying steadily advanced until $500 per acre was considered nothing unusual. Merchant's sales, especially of articles of luxury, reflected the prosperity of the farmers, and the future seemed to promise greater profits to nearly all classes in the Burley District who freely shared in the opulence and plenty created by such conditions.
The rentals of land had soared in prices; farm wages had gone up in keeping with labor prices in all other industries; taxes had doubled and trebled and everything that went into the production of a crop of tobacco, labor, utensils, fertilizer, tobacco sticks, and barns had advanced in keeping with the prices paid for the last crop. The year 1920 wit- nessed a great increase in the production of tobacco in the Carolinas and Virginia, states where the market opened earlier than the Kentucky mar- ket, a consequence perfectly natural under the unprecedented demand of the previous year for the raw product and absolutely unavoidable in the face of the unorganized condition of the producers. Kentucky tried to increase its production but failed because of the light yield per acre resulting from the long rainy season at harvesting time. The result in the Burley District therefore, was a crop grown under the greatest diffi- culties and at enormous expense, damaged by the unfavorable season, and making a lighter yield per acre than the Burley planters had ever known. 1920 had a great reversion. The opening of the Burley mar- kets for the sale of this crop was postponed from December Ist to Jan- uary 3rd. 1921, owing to the solicitations of all the large manufacturers who were struggling with the overproduction in Virginia and the Caro- linas, and who had been acquainted with the fact that Kentucky Burley production, in spite of the effort to increase, was not above normal.
The market at Lexington opened January 3rd, on all the other mar- kets the following day. On the morning of the second day they were simultaneously closed all over the district by crowds of outraged and angry planters.
Dark clouds began to hang over the Burley Belt. A complete wiping out of the savings of thousands, the loss of homes and the crippling of thousands of others, presented the gloomiest outlook ever faced by the tobacco growers, and augmented an already widespread economic dis- tress throughout the state. Only by the calm, quick, courageous action of the leaders in the tobacco trade was violence averted.
Representatives of all the leading manufacturers were called in con- ference. It developed at this meeting that millions of pounds of the crop
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY
to be sold was so common, so inferior it could not be used at any price. The committee was brought face to face with the fact that the foreign demand, which in the years before the war had absorbed such a large percentage of the low grades, was broken down by the lack of funds and demoralized rates of exchange.
The markets were re-opened after a suspension of two weeks and the crop, a normal one in pounds, was marketed in the loose leaf man- ner at an average price of a little more than 13 cents per pound, about one-half the cost of actual production, one-third the average price of the year before, and in actuality, counting the light yield per acre, not more than one-fifth of the net return per acre of the previous crop.
Millions of pounds were "sold" over the loose leaf floors at I cent per pound, the better grades selling at pre-war prices, all of which meant ruin to thousands and thousands of farmers, large and small. Careful economists have calculated that the Burley planters alone lost in actual cash put into the production of this crop $35,000,000.
One rather extreme example of this economic distress may be men- tioned. A prominent woman of Fayette County, known for her business ability and active church work, was found stamping down the warehouse floor, cursing at every breath, because her share in a load of tobacco just sold amounted to $2.75, when a similar share the year before had brought $325.
That something must be done to save the growers from ruin became evident. Some other system of marketing must be found whereby the producer of so valuable and so expensive a crop should not be left a prey to chance. An effort must be made through organization or other- wise, to stabilize the business and avoid, if possible, inflation of prices, with its tendencies to overproduction, just as zealously as extreme depres- sion with its crippling consequences not only to the tobacco producers themselves, but to the banks and business interests dependent upon this industry.
Judge Robert Worth Bingham, of Louisville, the owner of the Courier Journal and the Louisville Times, had recently traveled through the rural districts in the vicinity of San Francisco and down the coast to Los Angeles. Impressed with the evidences of rural prosperity, he ascer- tained that the cooperative idea of marketing was the cause. In Jan- uary, 1921, when the Kentucky Burley market opened at distressingly low prices, and, when the closing of the warehouses to give time for deliberation and calm counsel alone prevented disorder, and perhaps bloodshed, Judge Bingham decided that the time and opportunity for trying the cooperative marketing plan in Kentucky had arrived. A Bur- ley Tobacco Growers Association composed of many members, though perhaps only a small portion of the total number of growers of Burley tobacco, already existed, and its president, John W. Newman, of Wood- ford County, Kentucky, was called into consultation. He warmly favored Judge Bingham's suggestion of a preliminary conference on the cooper- ative plan with Bernard M. Baruch, former chairman of the War Indus- tries Board; and for that conference in New York City, Judge Bingham selected as delegates Ralph M. Barker of Carrollton, Samuel H. Halley of Lexington, and Mr. Newman. Mr. Arthur Krock, the editor of the Louisville Times, attended the conference as Judge Bingham's personal representative, and Mr. J. C. Cantrill, Congressman from the Ashland District, was asked to meet the committee in New York.
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