Tobacco history series; [a chapter in America's industrial growth]

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FORT RILEY •ailliylL"'l^ft^

TOPEKA

Tobacco

chapter in America's Industrial Growth

no. 3

(Lift i. '£. 'Ml iCibrarg

Nortlj (Earolina ^tatf Imopraitg

SB273

T628

no. 3

f good tobacco was
|, a source of income
settlers. Today, Kansas is an important market
tobacco products. It has many thousand retailers
who dispose of millions of dollars worth of goods.
In turn, this tnerchandising provides employment
for numerous people and brings fiscal benefits to
the state.

Tobacco History Series
Third Edition, Revised

THE TOBACCO INSTITUTE

1776 K Street, N.W., Washington, D. C. 20006
1970

Kansas and
Tobacco

mong the early settlers in Kansas
territory were a large number of emigrant Germans who,
when they could not get cigars, smoked pipes; French-
men and Flemings accustomed to snuflF, and Americans
from the East and South who were tobacco chewers.
They did what log-cabin pioneers usually did on new
lands: planted tobacco along with staple food crops.
Pioneering was hard work— and tobacco brought relaxa-
tion and a degree of comfort.

These settlers grew tobacco in patches on their farms
chiefly from seeds of Burley cultivated in nearby states.
The native type long used by the Kansa Indians— a small,
shrubby Nicotiana— was too harsh for the palates of men
accustomed to better leaf. This aboriginal type, which
was indigenous to the eastern part of the country as

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well, had always been rejected by European colonists.
What took its place were varieties of the tobacco derived
from Spanish-American colonies, experimentally planted
in Virginia around 1612.

he income of Kansas is supplemented
by tobacco

The extension of settlements in Kansas increased crops
of tobacco beyond the personal needs of farmers. For
a while this agriculture seemed commercially promising.
It never went very far, however, and tobacco production
in Kansas is now neghgible.

But Kansans today do not lack tobacco in manufac-
tured forms. In 1969, for instance, smokers in the state
bought about five billion cigarettes. These were suppUed
to them through 17,610 retail outlets including vending
machines and other sources.

Sales of cigarettes in Kansas returned about $18.8 mil-
lion gross in state tax revenue in fiscal 1969. The esti-
mated wholesale value of cigarettes came to more than
$63.1 million; that of other tobacco products to over
$11 milhon.

T

obacco's place in the national economy

Tobacco users in Kansas, together with more than 50
milhon other Americans, thus share in one of our coun-
try's major industries.

The business of tobacco in the United States is ex-
tensive.

In 1969, for instance, some 3 miUion farmers and their
helpers worked more than a half miUion tobacco farms.
They produced in the range of 1 biUion 800 milHon
pounds of fine leaf. For this, American and foreign buy-
ers paid them over $1.4 billion.

Almost every industrial section and many non-tobacco
farming communities participate in some phase of the
tobacco business. A considerable labor force is required
to auction off tobacco, to process and transport it, to
manufacture and distribute it. From the fields and
orchards, the factories and plants in over half the states
of the Union there is a steady flow of materials, machin-
ery and equipment to manufacturers of tobacco located
in some 25 states.

The chief part of the tobacco harvested each year in
22 states is converted into large quantities of tobacco
goods. In 1969 these totaled almost 558 biUion cigarettes,
over 8 billion cigars and cigarillos, over 64 million
pounds of smoking tobacco, some 70 million pounds of
chewing tobacco and more than 28 miUion pounds of
snuff. Over 1.5 miUion retail outlets meet the consumer
demand of Americans for these tobacco products.

The preparation of cigarettes alone requires millions
of dollars in additional material. Cigarette manufactur-
ers, in 1968, used 40 milUon pounds of cellophane, 70
milUon pounds of aluminum foil, 27 biUion printed
packs, 2.7 billion cartons, and employed over 1.5 million

businesses for supply, transportation, advertising, dis-
tribution and other necessary functions.

The tobacco industry is the oldest commercial enter-
prise in our country with an unbroken continuity dating
from around 1613. Its use of a large labor force, its
dependence upon the supplies and services of numerous
industries, its interstate operations, all give it a place of
major importance in the national economy.

Any segment of the national tobacco market, such as
Kansas, represents more than merely another retail out-
let. Essential to the disposition of tobacco goods are
wholesalers and distributors, vending machine suppliers,
transportation services, media advertising — and other
workers in the state required to maintain the flow of
goods and provide services.

rocliaction in Kansas has an early start

A year after Kansas became a state in 1861, tobacco
was being grown as a cash crop. The first ofiicial statis-
tical reports of the agricultural products of Kansas are
incomplete. The tobacco harvest of 1862 was Hsted as
14,618 pounds. Fifteen years later tobacco crops totaled
530,839 pounds, worth $53,083 to growers.

Settlers were being invited to the new state where,
said its promoters, everything could be grown. This en-
thusiasm found expression in such pubHshed comments
as, "You have but to tickle the soil of Kansas to make it
laugh a harvest."

New settlers did come in, chiefly from the South. To-
gether with the farmers aheady estabhshed they con-
verted virgin soil to fruitful lands. Among the harvests
was practically a bumper crop of tobacco in 1883. In
that year 778,400 pounds were produced for the market.
Everyone was encouraged to go on. True, the work was
hard but there were compensations. And, as a contempo-
rary writer remarked :

life here is toned up to healthful tension . . .
One feels like business in this rare, radiant at-
mosphere. Nothing drags here. Everybody feels
fresh, and youthful, and self-commanding.
Nothing denotes age but the rocks and the hills.

JL obacco farmers try again

The cultivation of tobacco for cash crops would have
been extended had there been practical encouragement
to continue the industry. But the price of Kansas tobacco
in primary markets began to decHne. It had been 10
cents a pound in the 1880's; 8 cents the pound in the
1890's and was down to less later. Before the end of the
century, production was confined to 80 acres.

Early in the 1900's an effort was made to revive in-
terest in tobacco-growing among farmers in southern
Kansas, around Cofl^eyville. A local merchant. Colonel
Sharp, formerly of Kentucky, was convinced that Kansas-
grown tobacco would bring better prices than it had if

Looking toward the Missouri River
on Delaware Street, Leavenworth, in 1867

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farmers concentrated on the "right type." He took a
practical step to prove his point. Around 1909 he im-
ported seeds of the Burley variety from Kentucky, These
were distributed among all farmers in the area wiUing
to accept them— about a hundred in all— and Colonel
Sharp offered a $10 prize for the best example grown
from the Kentucky seed. The resultant crops convinced
him and his farmer friends that fine Burley could be as
successfully grown in Kansas as in Kentucky.

Once again hard-working men were wilfing to con-
tinue in a difficult agriculture. But a succession of
droughts seriously affected all farming. Tobacco was a
major casualty. Acreage was shortly reduced to 201
acres. At that time tobacco from those fields was valued
at $125 an acre. That production was, however, prac-
tically the end of its cultivation in the area around
Coffeyville.

ew efforts - and. old results

In 1912 a new Burley area was opened in the Weston
district of Missouri. It was, and remained, successful.
Nearby Kansas farmers showed only the mildest interest
in this venture of their neighbors. The better part of two
decades passed before they took any active part in
tobacco production.

Then, along the northeastern border of Kansas, fields
of tobacco began to appear. Only 200 acres were sown to
this crop by 1932. By 1939 the acreage had tripled and

489,000 pounds of Burley were harvested in that year.
The total crop, however, was worth only $73,000. The
harvest of 1944 was down to 300,000 pounds but the
price of tobacco had advanced in the war years and the
crop brought $144,000.

Tobacco production in Kansas during the middle
1940's was to be the last of any consequence. By the
early years of the 1950's no more than a hundred acres
were annually under tobacco cultivation in the state.
Colonel Sharp and his friends in the south and other
good farmers in the northeast had tried to make a suc-
cess out of a difficult agriculture. Nature had forced the
abandonment of the first efforts; economics the discon-
tinuance of the second. The latter factor was represented
by the successful operation of Burley farms in Kentucky,
Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina and elsewhere.

Long before the second revival of interest in tobacco
growing had taken place, the good earth of Kansas was
producing great quantities of food crops. The state which
United States Senator John J. Ingalls had described as
"the navel of the nation"— Fort Riley did in fact once
mark the geographic center of the country— had by then
become a major producer of wheat and corn, among
other commodities.

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he cigarette is extinguislieci by law

Failure to produce tobacco on a profitable commer-

cial scale in Kansas was not the only difficulty faced by
the recreative plant. Kansas was long a center of anti-
smoking activity.

There was nothing new about this opposition. The
social uses of tobacco in Europe were still novel when
they first came under attack by reformers. This antago-
nism had its earhest concerted expression in England
early in the 1600's.

Such campaigns, thereafter, came in cycles. During a
recurrence of these attacks— and one which historians
have described as most intemperate— the sale or distribu-
tion of cigarettes was prohibited in Kansas. That was in
1909.

Sales of cigarettes in the United States had risen from
about 2,640 million in 1900 to over 6 bilhon in 1909.
Smokers in Kansas made it openly clear that they were
unwilling to rehnquish cigarettes, a general attitude in
other areas where the right to use cigarettes was inter-
fered with. Defiance of the law was widespread in
Kansas. On pubHc thoroughfares, in clubs and homes,
there was daily evidence that smokers were having no
particular trouble in obtaining all the cigarettes they
liked.

The immediate beneficiaries of the prohibitory legis-
lation of Kansas were dealers in the adjoining states of
Colorado, Missouri and elsewhere. Bootleggers of ciga-
rettes, who were charging 10 cents a package over the
average rate in other states, were encouraging mainte-
nance of the Kansas anti-cigarette statute.

opular demanci changes the law

From 1920 on, veterans of World War I were demand-
ing that the law which deprived them of the right to
buy cigarettes in their own state be rescinded. In their
drive for repeal they pointed out that they had been
wartime beneficiaries of cigarettes distributed by the
Young Men's Christian Association and similar organi-
zations. The veterans had numerous supporters among
the citizens of the state.

Kansas was not the only state in the Union that had
acceded to the demands of the reforming element,
among whom were included some noted anti-tobacco
fanatics. It was, however, the last state to revoke legis-
lation against the commerce in cigarettes.

Having accepted the inevitable, Kansas lawmakers
repealed the 1909 law in 1927. A new statute permitting
the sale of cigarettes placed an excise of 2 cents on each
package of 20 sold within the state. Additionally, ciga-
rette papers used by roll-your-own smokers were taxed
and dealers had to pay a license fee of $25 to $50. A
new excise stamp appeared showing the state bird, the
meadow lark. This was to be applied to cigarette pack-
ages. The advertising of cigarettes was prohibited, a
provision that was voided by the Kansas Supreme Court
soon after its enactment.

The right to purchase cigarettes openly, and enjoy a
universal custom publicly soon benefited the industrial

10

s

community of Kansas. Within two years after the anti-
cigarette law was repealed there were about two dozen
wholesale tobacco estabhshments in Kansas. Their net
sales came to $9,065,954.

mokers meet the tobacco tax

By the end of 1969 the state had collected in the range
of $242 million gross from the cigarette tax. Much of this
yield was funneled into community improvements. The
excise was estabhshed in 1927 and had been increased
to 11 cents each package of 20 by 1970.

The state tax is not the only one imposed on cigarette
smokers. They have also to pay a federal tax of 8 cents
on each package. There is a federal excise on all tobacco
products, a levy that brought $2,138,000,000 to the
United States Treasury in the fiscal year ending June
1969. Since 1863, when the tax on manufactured tobacco
was first collected, through 1969, users of tobacco have
contributed over $48 bilfion to the federal revenues.

The people of the Sunflower State apparently do not
miss the rich, green fields of tobacco growing in numer-
ous other parts of America. Kansans seem now quite
satisfied to leave that agricultural industry to those com-
munities where it is well estabhshed. They are consumers
of the harvests of that industry. So long as the fine to-
bacco products of domestic factories continue to reach
them, they are content.

11

East Main Street in the year Wichita was incorporated as a village, 1871.
Albert T. Reid collection. New York Public Library

12

The Kansas State Board of Agriculture (Division of Statistics) and
the Kansas Department of Revenue (Cigarette Tax Division) have
supplied information incorporated in this booklet. Other data have
been derived from publications of the United States Department of
Agricidture and of the Tobaca) Tax Council (Richmond, Virginia).

General works which provided valuable information were Collections,
Kansas State Historical Society, various volumes; Kansas. A Cyclo-
paedia of State History (1912); and History of Kansas, William E.
Connelley (1928).

The passage quoted on page 4 is from Kansas Facts, Executive
Department (1927), which is also the source of Senator Ingalls' com-
ment on page 8. The quotation on page 5 comes from Kansas As It Is
by L. D. Burch (1878).

Permission to quote directly from this booklet is granted.

Additional copies will be made available without charge

upon request to The Tobacco Institute,

1776 K Street, N.W., Washington, D. C. 20006

u&

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