Tobacco Documents Online

Kentucky and Tobacco Handle disk pipe; see page 21 ometime in the spring of 1787 a flat- boat cargo began a momentous trip down the Mississippi from Louisville. An American general, James '%Vilkinson, later represented as "the mystery man of the West," was responsible for the shipment. Included in the several salable commodities in the cargo were some hogsheads of tobacco, a recent product of Kentucky's virgin soil. Not much of cured leaf or anything else was in the shipment. It was the first venture of its kind, an experi- ment that had more than its share of normal hazards. 1

The major one, indeed the certain one, was that the cargo would be seized at Natchez or New Orleans by the Spanish authorities. They were under strict orders to exclude foreign goods from Spanish ports on the Mississippi. Yet the flatboat went. It was up to Wilkinson to get its freight through. The tobacco in the shipment had been grown by planters who, not long before, had come to Kentucky from North Carolina and Virginia. They knew tobacco, and they knew that the leaf grown in Kentucky's rich earth was of fine quality. All that was needed was a market. That lay beyond the export barrier Spain had erected at New Orleans. Once the barrier was lifted, Kentucky farmers would have access to markets in the States and in Europe long supplied by planters of the older tobacco areas in the southeastern states. Wilkinson had planned his venture with skill and cun- ning. As expected, the cargo was seized. Yet Wilkinson not only effected its release but established a trade outlet at New Orleans for commodities produced in Kentucky. The success of his venture was described as "a miracle of miracles." The dramatic news Wilkinson reported on his return resulted in a prompt and considerable expan- sion of tobacco acreage in parts of Kentucky. 2

TOBACCO AGRICULTURE AND INDUSTRY IN KENTUCKY TODAY

Broadleaf variety of Burley, Kentucky's major farm crop Courtesy of the U. S. Department of Agriculture

.Lling Burley The planters of Wilkinson's day could hardly have foreseen how enormously the culture of tobacco would develop. For a while, though many years after the Wil- kinson period, Kentucky became the largest producer of tobacco in the United States, and when writers referred to the "Tobacco State" they meant Kentucky. For almost a century now, Kentucky has maintained its place as the foremost producer of one type-Burley- ofr'icially classified as light air-cured tobacco. The Ken- tucky harvest in 1960 totaled 320,125,000 pounds, by far the most abundant crop of this type. Though once confined to the Bluegrass area, Burley is now grown in all but a few of the state's 120 counties. Blended ciga- rettes would taste different-and not nearly as good as they do-if they lacked Burley leaf. On an average, 34 percent of the tobacco in cigarettes of American manu- facture is Burley. The leaf is also used in domestic smok- ing and chewing tobaccos; a little goes into some snuffs. Leaf quartette The production of tobacco in Kentucky is diversified. In addition to Burley, there are four other types grown in the state. The collective area in which they are grown (including sections of north-central to northwestern Ten- nessee) was long known as the Black Patch. The types are: • Eastern district fire-cured, grown in a limited section of southern Kentucky, east of the Tennessee River, of which 7,888,000 pounds was harvested in the state in 1960. Z Western district fire-cured, planted in a small area ounded by the Tennessee, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, 6

with a Kentucky crop total in 1960 of 7,866,000 pounds. Fire-cured types are strongly flavored, and light- to dark-brown in color. • Green River, a dark air-cured tobacco, produced in the river territory lying between the market towns of Owensboro and Henderson in northwestern Kentucky. A little over six million pounds was produced in 1960. It is an important ingredient (together with Burley) of fine-cut chewing tobacco. Some of it is manufactured directly into smoking tobacco and snuff. • One Sucker, a dark air-cured tobacco farmed in a small part of south-central Kentucky. The total crop in the state in 1960 was 9,380,000 pounds. The leaf has sev- eral uses: in plug and twist chewing tobaccos, in short- filler cigars, and in an exported pipe tobacco. This type is characterized by very long, narrow leaves with exceptionally large midribs. Its name derives from an essential cultural routine. Second-growth sprouts ("suckers") appear at leaf axils after the top of the plant has been broken off: (Topping maintains nourishment in the plants.) These suckers must be removed several times in some types during the growing season. Formerly, the operation was necessary only once with One Sucker tobacco prior to harvesting. 'Tillers and toilers It requires an impressive number of people-about a quarter of the United States tobacco farm population- to grow and harvest and cure Kentucky leaf and prepare it for market. A census taken in 1959 provided an esti- mate of how many of these early-rising, late a-bedding field workers there were in Kentucky: 200,000 farm fami- lies. All but 15 percent of them were growers of Burley. Four workers in a farm family is an average. 6

There were 174,479 tobacco farm allotments for Ken- tucky in 1960. A few farms have more than one type allotment. More than one family may be working on the large farms. At planting, harvesting and stripping times, the farm population is somewhat increased. A recent analysis showed that during a ten-month period an average of 339 hours of labor an acre is re- quired to produce a Burley crop in Kentucky. At an estimated running outlay of $625 an acre, the capital needed to produce the 1958 Burley crop in Kentucky came to about $127 million. Growers have to finance their farming operations, including wages to hired hands, until their crops are sold at auction-their sole payday. The art of the hand is retained in most phases of culti- vating, harvesting, and curing. Equipment for accelerat- ing the chore of transplanting has largely eliminated that general occupational backache, but the human ele- ment is still a controlling factor in the operation. Crop mechanics The Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of Kentucky has for some time been engaged with the problems of reducing hand labor in seeding, harvesting and barn management. (Farm mechanization is under in- tensive study in several educational institutions located in tobacco-producing states.) Various experimental methods of field and barn operations have been devel- oped. The research programs received some aid from a 1960 Congressional appropriation of $250,000. Coopera- tion has come, too, from a number of tobacco industry firms particularly interested in tests with labor-saving machinery. These are among the current experiments at the Uni- versity of Kentucky Station: clay coating to make pellets 7

of tiny tobacco seeds-there are over 300,000 seeds in an ounce-as an aid to mechanical planting and place- ment directly in fields instead of beds; weed control through the use of a plastic mulch; a mechanical har- vester for removing leaves singly, or cutting stalks of growing plants, and a machine to accelerate the hanging of leaves in curing barns. The inescapable routines of trial and error apply to these experiments. It may be some time before results are achieved that will be acceptable to practical farmers. Yet quite a number of agricultural economists are certain that the tobacco planters' helpers of the immediate fu- ture will be dependable machines, not only field workers carrying on manual routines that are centuries old. Taking in and drying out Meanwhile, the standard procedures persist in fields and barns. In some Burley districts farmers will first remove matured lower leaves by hand before full-scale harvesting. Soon after this operation, called "priming," the plants are cut down, stalk and all. This method of taking in a crop applies to all types grown in Kentucky. Five or six of the plants are then speared onto sticks. Burley, Green River and One Sucker tobacco plants are hung in barns and cured by air. The process, which starves the food reserves in the plant, takes four to six weeks. By then the leaves will have dried out and have the desired color: tan to reddish brown. There has been some experimentation with "bulk cur- ing." By this method some thousand pounds of leaves, stripped from stalks, are placed in a specially designed unit. Heat, conducted by flues, is provided by an oil furnace. Curing by this process can be completed in a week or less. 8

The matter of taste is the simple explanation of why there is such a variety of tobacco commodities, such a multiplicity of brands. Some users of snuff, various sorts of chewing tobacco and strong cigars, for instance, prefer a smoky flavor in these products. So long as they do, the leaf ingredient will continue to be fire-cured. , After the plants have had a few days of barn-curing, hardwood or hardwood sawdust fires, built on barn floors, are kept burning slowly and at lowlemperatures at first, for a three- to ten-day period in some areas, from ten to forty in others. The cured leaves are stripped from the stalk when humidity conditions are favorable. Fire-curing is a very old method. The early colonists of Virginia used the method, which was common among some Indian tribes. But the fire-curing of leaf as prac- ticed by colonial farmers had a special purpose: to pre- vent deterioration of tobacco on long sea voyages. -.l-Jid and take Cured tobacco is a commodity that must be marketed promptly. It is a delicate article of commerce, liable to spoilage under unfavorable weather conditions. As the cured leaves are stripped and sorted a single one is tied around the butts of a number of them to make small bundles called "hands." (Though tied, tobacco pre- pared in this manner for sale has long been designated as "loose leaf," to distinguish it from tobacco packed in hogsheads.) The hands are carefully stacked in bulks, tips in, butts out, to retain moisture and then trucked to auction warehouses. Not all Kentucky tobacco goes to auction. A small part of the fire-cured crops-in recent years under 10 percent of eastern district, and an insig- nificant amount of the western district type-is "countrv sales," being sold by farmers at their barn doors. 9