ipter in America's Industrial Growth

Qllfp i. 1. Btll ICtbrara

Norlli (Earoltna ^tatp MmnprHtty

SBP73
T6?.8
no. 10

pr/ey tobacco groicn than
quarter it has been a cash
il971 harvests of Btirley,
p a few of the state's 120
I pounds. Burleij leaf is
}hlended cigarettes and,
htities, in smoking and

\ in Kentucky. The cash

Mon in the 1971-72 season

\is total, Burley leaf ac-

^71. The total represents

es cash crops.

ckij is the occupation of

it a quarter of the United

pd their seasonal helpers.

yed in processing plants,

ories, and by various

ties manufactured in the

uisville's four factories

ther plants in Kentucky

of smoking and chewing

^^..j .^-^.^^^..^^r^^f,^^..^ retail market. Together
other tobacco commodities, close to 527 million pack-
of cigarettes were purchased there in 1971 through
nearly 28,000 outlets. Consumers pay a triple tax for the
privilege of smoking cigarettes: federal and state excise and
a sales tax. Since the inception of the state excise on ciga-
rettes the gross yield from this source alone to June 30, 1971
has been over $247 million.

From the period of the first known settlements in the late
18th century tobacco has been closely woven into the
economic and .social fabric of Kentucky. This booklet pre-
sents the record of tobacco in the state— some of it surpris-
ingly dramatic— and describes its current agriculture and
industry.

Tobacco History Series
Fourth Edition

THE TOBACCO INSTITl

[776 K Street, N.W., Washington north Carolina state university ubraries

1972

S01 202394

Kentucky and
Tobacco

Handle disk pipe; sec page 21

s

onietime in the spring of 1787 a flat-
boat cargo began a momentous trip down tlie Mississippi
from Louisville. An American general, James \\^ilkinson,
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 tlie first venture of its kind, an experi-
ment tliat had more tlian its share of normal hazards.

The major one, indeed the certain one, was that tlie
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.

TOBACCO AGRICULTURE

AND

INDUSTRY

IN

KENTUCKY TODAY

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

Ki

ng Burley

The planters ol W'ilkinsoirs da\- could liaidh' have
lorc'sccn how cnorniousK' the culture of tobacco would
de\elop. 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 — Burlev
— officially classified as light air-cured tobacco. The
Kentucky' har\est in 1971 totaled 339,625,000 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 Burle\- leaf. On an average, 35
percent of the tobacco in cigarettes of American manu-
facture is Burley. The leaf is also used in domestic
smoking and chewing tobaccos; a little goes into some
snuffs.

leaf quartette

The production of tobacco in Kentucky is diversified.
In addition to Burley, type 31, there are four other
types grown in the state. The collective area in which
they are grown (including sections of north-central
to northwestern Tennessee) was long known as the
Black Patch.

The types are:
• Eastern district ftre-curc>cl, t\ pe 22, grown in a limited
section of southern Kentuck\, east of the Tennessee
Ri\er, of which 9,<S55,0()() pounds was harvested in the
state in 1971.

• Western district fire-ciired, type 23, planted in a small
area bounded by the Tennessee, Ohio and Mississippi
Rivers, with a Kentucky crop total in 1971 of 6,753,000
pounds. Fire-cured types are strongly flavored, and
light- to dark-brown in color.

• Green River, a dark air-cured tobacco, type 36, pro-
duced in the river territory lying between the market
towns of Owensboro and Henderson in northwestern
Kentucky. A little over four million pounds was pro-
duced in 1971. 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, type 35, farmed
in a small part of south-central Kentucky. The total
crop in the state in 1971 was 9,000,000 pounds. The leaf
has several 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 nourish-
ment in the plants.) These suckers must be removed
several times in some types during the growing season.
FoiTnerly, the operation was necessary only once with
One Sucker tobacco prior to harvesting.

T

illers 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 recent survey indicates that there are
170,000 of these early-rising late-abedding farm families
in Kentucky. All but 15 percent of them were growers

of Burle\ . Four workers in a farm family is an average.

There were 149,594 tobacco farm allotments for Ken-
tucky in 1971. 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 $950 an acre, the capital
needed to produce the 1971 Burley crop in Kentucky
came to about $135,85(),()0(). Growers have to finance
their farming operations, including wages to hired
hands, until their crops are sold at auction— their sole
pay daw

The art of hand labor is retained in most pliases of
culti\ating, harvesting, and curing. Ecjuipment for ac-
celerating the chore of transplanting has largely elimi-
nated that general occupational backache, but the hu-
man element is still a controlling factor in the operation.

c

rop procedure and improved research

"Making" a tobacco crop invoKes more hand labor
than an\- other major agricultural activity. Seeds are
planted in a treated seedbed during March, trans-
planted to the field in late Ma\- and early June. Disease
and insects are \erv destructive during the summer
and re(|uire careful attention by the grower. W'hen the
plants ha\e reached the bloom stage, the flowers are
removed so that full-bodied, highly aromatic Burle\'
can be produced. Suckers are not allowed to grow .

The crop is cut b\ hand in September and placed in
a barn built for tiiis purpo.se. It is then air cured for
two months. After curiiii: it is thiMi remo\ ed from tiie

Spraying tobacco for insect control. A modern farm tool

employed by many Kentucky farmers
Courtesy of the University of Kentucky, College of Agriculture

barn, hand-stripped into grades and marketed in De-
cember to cigarette manufacturers. The leaf is then
packed into 1,000-pound liogsheads for the "long sleep."
After several years, the Burley is then ready to be
manufactured into the blended cigarette with Flue-
cured, Maryland and Turkish tobaccos.

The Agricultural College at the University of Ken-
tucky has been engaged in tobacco research for a long
time.

This research has meant tobacco farmers can use the
latest techniques in producing high quality tobacco
for the tobacco industry. Tremendous progress has
been made in the following areas:

Varieties: Development of varieties that are re-
sistant to major diseases in Kentucky.
Rotations: A rotation plan has been incorporated
that allows high quality Burley production and
at the same time improves fields on farms for
other crops and livestock.

Fertilization: The generous use ot nutrients to pro-
duce more tobacco on less land. This releases
land for the production of otiier crops and live-
stock on the farm.
Management: A management program that quali-
fies the Burley grower as being one of tlie best
production managers of any group of farmers
in the United States.
Intensive studies are now ])eing done at the College
of Agriculture, Uni\ersity of Kentuck)' in the areas of
mechanization, smoking and health, chemistry of the
tobacco plant, insecticides and residue studies on
tobacco leaf, agronomic studies in all areas of produc-
tion and economic aspects of production.

Xaking in and drying out

Meanwhile, the standard procedures persist in fields
and l)arns. A few Biuley farmers will first remove
matured lower leaves by hand before full-scale harvest-
ing. 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 Ri\'er and One Sucker tobacco plants
are hung in barns and cured by air. The process, which
starves the food reserves in tlie 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
curing." B\ this method some tliousand pounds of
leaves, stripped from stalks, are placed in a specialK'
designed unit. Heat, conducted bv flues, is provided In
an oil huiiace. Curing bv this process can be completed
in a wiH'k or less.

Hit

^

-A tijjiicdl Kriitm ki/ dir-cuK d tulnu en Imni
Courtesy of the University of Kentucky, College of Agriculture

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 low temperatures
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
prevent deterioration of tobacco on long sea voyages.

B,

d and take

Cured tohacco is a couiinodily that must he marketed
promptly. Jt is a dehcate article of commerce, lia])le to
spoilage under unfavorahle weather conditions.

As the cured leaves arc stripped and sorted a single
tie leaf is tied around the butts of a number of them to
make small bundles called "hands." (Though tied,
tobacco prepared 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 Kentuck\-
tobacco goes to auction. A small part of the fire-cured
crops-in recent years under 10 percent of eastern dis-
trict, and an insignificant amount of the western district
type-is "country sales," being sold b\- farmers at their
barn doors.

There have been little or no changes during the past
few years in the number of markets, warehouses or sell-
ing periods in the Kentucky tobacco-sales towns. The
1971 auction season was, therefore, a typical one. The
colorful, exciting annual event took place in 231 sales
warehouses of 30 Burley markets during the 1971-72
season. Sales began near the end of November and con-
cluded in mid-January except at Lexington, where
\olume usually necessitates closing a few weeks later.
Lexington, the world's largest "loo'se-leaf" sales center,
ranks first among Burley markets; gross sales totaled
about 65 million pounds of the 1971 crop.

Burley auctions ran from 11 selling davs at Ma\ field
where other txpes of tobacco arc sold throughout the
sales season, to about 40 days at Lexincrtoii. Under
regulations, firms operating on a basket basis-hands"
are packed on baskets in sales lines on warehouse floors

11

Harvesting Biirley tobacco

Courtesy of University of Kentucky,
College of Agriculture

—sold a maximum 1,260 baskets in a three-and-a-half-
hour daily period. Auction houses that sold on a pound-
age basis were limited to 340,200 pounds a day— the
allowable maximum is 1,800 baskets— for each group of
buyers.

When the final figures were in they showed that
341,090,000 pounds of the producers' 1971 Burley crop
had been sold with a value of $276,889,000-an average
price of $81.18 per hundred pounds.

o

tlier markets, other types

Sales across state lines are part of the selling pattern.
In this category was a total of some 7.2 million pounds
of 1971 Kentucky Burley. Over two-thirds was sold in
Tennessee; more than 2,000,000 pounds in Indiana.
Boundarv state farmers sent in around 13.2 million

12

^ ^^

II

Ajj auction scene

Courtesy of the University of Kentucky,

Collepe of AKriculture

pounds ot Burle\— 11.6 million pounds or so pretty
evenly from Indiana and Ohio and about 1.4 million
from Tennessee— to be sold in Kentueky auction warc-
liouses.

Warehouse sales of the fire-cured t\pes on 12 floors
in three markets yielded about $7 million for about 13.2
million pounds. Over 8.2 million pounds of the One
Sucker tvpe brought over 3.8 million through the 21
sales warehouses of four markets. 0\er 4.8 million
pounds of Green Ri\er tobacco sold in the 15 ware-
houses of three markets for more than $2 million. There
was the usual across-the-border movement of fire-cured
and dark-air t\pes into and from Kentuck)' for auction
selling. The cash receipts total from sales of Kentuck\-
tobacco represents 74 per cent of the \alue of all farm
cash crops grown in the state.

Among the ncarl\- 400 Kentuckv firms and indi\ iduals
that buy, sell, process, sort or otherwise handle tobacco

13

s

leaf are 167 companies operating more than 250 auction
warehouses. A well-estabhshed trade organization, the
Burley Auction Warehouse Association takes an active
role in maintaining market places for producers and
sellers.

ix- continent markets

Since the early national period, Kentucky tobacco
has had foreign outlets. The types now exported— and
for more than tlie past century— differ from those that
reached European importers via the Mississippi in the
late 18th century or went first to eastern ports of the
United States from early in the 19th century.

Burley leaf is shipped to all continents. West
Germany, Sweden, Italy, Denmark, Switzerland, The
Netherlands, Japan and Thailand are the major buyers.
A little of it, though very little, even reaches sucli places
as Barbados, Israel and Ireland. In the broad field of
foreign markets the Burley and Dark Leaf Tobacco
Export Association functions as an agency to increase
consumer outlets for these leaf types.

The first-cured types went chiefly to The Netherlands,
Switzerland, France and Belgium, with markets in all
continents taking small to fairly large amounts. The
large buyer of Green River tobacco is the United King-
dom. It is estimated that dark air-cured exports in
1971-72 will approximate about 2 million pounds, with
Tunisia, Belgium, and the United Kingdom the prin-
cipal markets.

B

lack Fat

One Sucker tobacco is the principal raw ingredient in
an unusual commodity: Black Fat. This is supplied by

14:

c

a separate aiitl liiglily specialized di\ ision of the export
industry, the reliandling trade.

TJiis trade came into being in the 1880's as a direct
result of a shipwreck on the northwest African coast.
Some of the vessel's cargo of tobacco leaf had been
salvaged. It had become black and gummy but the
inhabitants of the area liked it that way. Thereupon
a small number of American export companies went
into the business of supplying this special dark tobacco.

Tradition has it that the original consignments of leaf,
once the trade began, were treated with oil as were the
hogsheads. This was a practical step necessitated by
poor harbor facilities or shallow waters. At various
points of entry in northwest Africa, the hogsheads were
floated ashore. Their oily coating protected the leaf
from a saline bath.

Some fire-cured tobacco is included with the One
Sucker t\'pe. The blend is treated by methods regarded
as dark trade secrets. The preparation of Black Fat
(sometimes referred to as Dark African) is go\erned b\
the various local markets for which it is intended, and
its utilization In \ ery knowing and particular consumers.

onnoisseurs' market

To prevent rejection by bu\ers, therefore, a dozen
stringent requirements apply to the final form of Black
Fat, among them being the grade, qualit\-, color, and
especially the length and widtii of leaf, the'dressing and
e\ en the shape and size of the container. Hands of four
to six leaves are steamed and then almost saturated with
mineral oil (partly as a preservati\e ) . Sometimes other
fla\orings are added and the treated product is packed
in boxes under \er\- high pressure. Then it is shipped,
chiefly to Nigeria and Western Africa-together these
countries took oxer 1.5 million pounds in 1971-and in
lar smaller amounts to otiier countries, includinu the

16

West Indies. The declared export value ot about 2.6
million pounds of this unmanufactured, semi-processed
tobacco in 1971 was close to $2.5 million.

Black Fat is the preferred smoking tobacco of
numerous African natives. Some of these people mix
the composition with a powdered fruit nut to make
snulf. Various tribes use Black Fat as a commoditv in
exchange for rubber, hides, oil, and other native
products.

XTrociuctioii Line and Producers

The export trade involves the labor and services of
trucking firms, railroads and cargo lines. It is an impor-
tant but small part of Kentucky's complex tobacco in-
dustry. The manufacturing of tobacco, together with its
labor force, plants and other factors associated with it,
represents the major economic segment of the industry.

In this division the chief production is cigarettes. The
making machines of four factories, all in Louisville,
turned out nearly 107 billion cigarettes in the latest vear
of record.

Over 33 million pounds of chewing tobacco and
smoking tobacco came out of four Kentucky factories.
A few establishments manufactured nearly 310 million
cigars, of which all but a small portion were in the
mediijm-price class.

JLobacco and the economy

The adjusted value of tobacco products, created by
the process of manufacturing, was in the area of
$400,000,000. This indicated value serves to measure
the contribution of Kentucky's tobacco manufacturers
to the economy.

Apart from seasonal workers, who increase the total
by several thousand, the average number of employes

16

s

o

in Kentucky's 33 major tobacco plants in 1971 was in
tlie range of 11,300. Tlieir wages and salaries totaled
over $65 million. Additionally, a labor force of varying
size is emploxed b\- rehandling plants, leaf tobacco
dealers, packers and others.

upply network

There is a steady flow of materials, equipment and
supplies into Kentuek\' to meet the needs of farmers and
manufacturers. A map of the sources would include a
good part of the United States. Among the many hun-
dred individual items essential to production in fields
and factories are plant nutrients and agricultural equip-
ment, hea\y machincr\' of domestic and foreign manu-
facture, precision instruments, paper goods, packaging
material, and fla\orings.

The great number of trades and services generated
by the social uses of tobacco has long added to the eco-
nomic importance of the tobacco industry. In Kentucky
itself are 30 firms that specialize in ser\ices, materials
and equipment for farmers and manufacturers.

utlets and outlays

Kentuckians are no different in tlieir tobacco-buving
pattern from other Americans — the largest consumers of
cigarettes anxwhere. In 1971, through 27,310 retail out-
lets (vending machines and pri\ate clubs included),
they bought over 10.5 billion cigarettes in 426,100,000
packages with a retail \ alue of almost $160 million.

They also bought cigars, smoking and chewing to-
baccos and snuff, pipes and other smokers' articles. The
wholesale value of tobacco products distributed in the
state in 1971 was estimated to be $106,240,389. Of this
total, cigarettes represented ()\er $94 million, cigars,
about $9 million.

17

R

iscal contributors

Even-one buying a package of cigarettes in Kentucky,
as elsewhere in the United States, pays a federal tax of
8 cents. Additionally, a state excise of 3 cents is applied
to each package and there is a 5 percent sales tax. The
total yield from these various tax sources represents a
substantial contribution to federal and state treasuries.

Voices have been raised in protest against the multi-
plicity of taxes. A practical Kentucky farmer, Virgil
Steed, author of a book published in 1947, is among the
commentators on the subject. He remarked: "The prof-
iteering middleman (in tobacco commerce) is govern-
ment — municipal, state and Federal . . . tobacco has
carried more than its fair share of the tax burden."

The original tax on cigarettes in Kentucky, 1 cent on
each 20, became effective in 1936. Increased to 3 cents
in 1954, it was reduced to the 2^2 rate in 1960 and
increased again to 3 cents in 1970. Revenue from the
additional half-cent increase is currently bein^ used by
the University of Kentucky as part of a world-wide
attempt to do further scientific research on many aspects
of smoking and health.

Since the inception of the tax the gross yield to June
30, 1971 has been over $247 million. Income from this
source goes into the state general fund. Its benefits to all
Kentuckians — smokers or not — are visible through the
construction and maintenance of schools, hospitals,
roads, bridges, and in community services.

Kentucky's predominant agriculture and the com-
mercial operations that meet consumer demands for
tobacco products have an impact on every division of
the state's economy and on a good part of its social life.
The current commerce has its roots in times long past.
The theme of tobacco is intimately woven into the his-
tory of the Bluegrass State and the theme is not only
an interesting one; some of it is unusually dramatic.

18

ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT

OF

TOBACCO AGRICULTURE

AND

INDUSTRY

IN
KENTUCKY

rimeval smokers

The earliest explorers— French and English— of the ter-
ritory that became Kentucky saw no evidence that pre-
historic inhabitants of the region had been inveterate
tobacco smokers. Even if they had come upon the evi-
dence, it is very probable that they would not have un-
derstood its significance.

For the proof that tobacco had once been abundantly
cultivated in the "beautiful wilderness" lay in the mounds
of the Stone Age aborigines. When these earth- or stone-
work hillocks began to be uncovered in the early 19th
century, they revealed a wealth of pipes among numer-
ous other artifacts. Their quantity indicated clearly that
tobacco had been an intimate part of the ceremonial and
social life of a long-forgotten people who had li\'ed in a
primeval period of human culture. Many of these singu-
lar, one-piece smoking implements were remarkable
examples of artistic craftsmanship. (A curious specimen,
classified by archaeologists as an example of the handle
disk type, about fi\e inches long, is illustrated on page 1. )

Somewhere in the dim past the pipes of North Ameri-
can Indians had become more functional. Except for
special uses, their artistic form was neglected. The Ken-
tucky descendants of prehistoric inhabitants had evolved
(or adopted from other tribes) the streamlined, simple
pipe of clay. That was the pipe smoked by the Shawnees
when wliite explorers first met them. These Indians
maintained a few though temporary settlements in the
great game country of Kentucky, long a battleground of
Cherokee and Iroquois tribes. They grew just enough
tobacco for their own needs.

21

ioneer planters

It was the settlers from Virginia and North Carolina
who once again made the "west" a tobacco-producing
land. Just when they first came into the territory is a
matter of speculation. Some historians set the date in the
late 1660's. That is probably too early. Yet, in view of
tlie colonizing spirit of the period and economic condi-
tions in the older colonies, it may well be that restless
men and their families found a way into Kentucky be-
fore 1700. There could not have been many of them.
One thing is certain: as soon as tliey had cleared trees
from a little tract, they did what many other American
pioneers did — set aside a patch of the best soil near their
vegetable plots for tobacco.

T

he Wilderness Road"

Entree to the rich new land became easier after Dr.
Thomas Walker discovered the Cumberland Gap in
1750. He had been engaged, as surveyor and agent, to
head an expedition to the west on behalf of the Loyal
Land Company of Charlottesville, Virginia, which had
obtained a huge land grant in the western territory. The
Indian trader, John Finley (or Findley), who reached
present Louisville by canoe via the Ohio River, in 1752,
encouraged settlement by his glowing description of the
land. His account encouraged Daniel Boone of Yadkin
County, North Carolina, who made his first visit to
Kentucky in 1767 shortly after meeting Finley. There-
after, when leading pioneer families into the "Garden
Spot of the World," at each camp site Boone carved on
the nearest big tree, "This is the way to Kentucke."

Travelers regularly brought back the good news to
inhabitants of the southeastern tobacco-growing colonies

22

that the chmate of the new territory was temperate and
tlie soil ripe for tobacco. That was an inspiration for men
bred to that agriculture, eager to leave the "overworked"
faniis of their communities and perhaps find economic
independence elsewhere.

We

estern Eden

Something about Kentucky inspired fervor among
those who visited and described it. (The pattern of using
only superlatives in relation to the Bluegrass State, thus
early begun, seems never to have altered. ) It seemed no
exaggeration to Kentuckians when a pastor, commenting
on the beauty of the land, remarked to his flock, "Heaven
is a Kentucky of a place!" There were other contempor-
ary enthusiasts. One of them, whose opinion was fre-
quently repeated, was a Virginia circuit judge. He had
returned from a tour of the Bluegrass region. As a refer-
ence, he mentioned the most noted scenic spots of
Virginia and then went on to say that, compared with
Kentucky, "When God made ( those spots ) , He was just
practicing."

A proclamation issued in 1763 by George HI forbade
British subjects to settle west of the Appalachians.
Colonial pioneers simply ignored the edict. During the
period of first settlements, Kentucky territory was a poli-
tical part of Virginia. The Assembly of that colony in
1772, when it learned that settlers were moving into the
"west," had designated it Fincastle County. Four years
later the area was officially separated into three counties.
One of tiiem. West Fincastle, was called Kentucky, and
that soon became general for tlie whole territory. The
name came from "Kenta-ke," the Iroquoian appellation
for a Sliawnee site signifying "prairie," or "meadow." It

23

also meant "the place of many fields," and similar syno-
nyms in a confusing group of meanings.

JLlie dark and bloody ground"

Interest in colonizing the territory was intensified as
the result of a pow-wow Judge Richard Henderson of
North Carolina and a group of fellow land speculators
held with 1,200 Cherokees at Sycamore Shoals on the
Watauga River. That was in 1775. A treaty was made
whereby an enormous tract of "Cane-tuck-ee" was
bought, for £10,000 in goods. The purchase was de-
nounced by Governor Martin of North Carolina as one
concluded by "land pyrates." Lord Dunmore, governor
of Virginia, denied Henderson's right to hold the land,
and the purchase was later voided by the Virginia
Assembly. Henderson and his associates had named the
new territory Transylvania. When the issue of ownership
was finally settled, the Transylvania Land Company was
awarded a tract of 200,000 acres.

At the time of the original transaction. Chief Dragging
Canoe, who had opposed it, spoke obscurely of a "dark
cloud" (the northern tribes) hovering over the territory.
Another unfriendly chief had referred to the land as
"bloody country." He probably had in mind the incessant
warfare between southern and northern Indian tribes in
the Kentucky hunting grounds, a warfare that had pre-
vented permanent Indian settlements. Whatever was
then said or intended, it was later stated that the Indians
were of the opinion that the whites had "bought a dark
and bloody ground. ' The phrase was long attached to
Kentucky. The survivors of early pioneer families who
were victims of murderous Indian attacks thought the
phrase an appropriate one.

24

R

oots in the soil

By 1774 the first permanent settlement in Kentucky
had been made at llarrodstown (later, Harrodsburg).
A year after that, Daniel Boone, under the auspices of
the Transylvania Company, had established a village,
Boonesboro, on the south side of the Kentucky River. In
consequence of the Company's interest, Boonesboro for
a while became colonial headquarters but by 1810 it was
all but abandoned.

Settlers began to flock in, all eager to work the soil, to
plant tobacco and wheat, and to produce hemp. The
newcomers had bought tobacco seeds of the same varie-
ties as those grown in the colonies from which they had
migrated: Sweet-scented and Orinoco. The new soil pro-
duced tobacco of good weight and fair quality but
curing was, for some time, rather haphazard. Planters
maintained the procedures in culture and barn manage-
ment they had learned back home. Some leaf was air-
cured, chiefly for local use, but the general pattern was
curing by smoky fire. There was a well-established mar-
ket in various European countries for the heavy, dark-
fired type— and the farmers of Kentucky hoped to reach
that market. The belief was firmly held in the early years
that good tobacco could come only from virgin soil. Each
year, therefore, seedlings were set in newly cleared fields.

J-obacco economy

Specific Acts of the Virginia Assembly, from 1783 on,
had brought the erection of warehouses on the Kentucky
and other rivers. They were, at first, crude log cabins.
Appointed ofTicials inspected the leaf, ordered any of
inferior (pialitN burricd, and issued receipts for accepted

26

tobacco. These were used in payment of public debts
and taxes, at 20 shillings the hundred weight. Inspectors
charged 10 shillings per hogshead for examination and
storage. A warehouse had been erected at Louisville by
a Colonel Campbell as early as 1783.

The rich, phosphatic, limestone soil of Kentucky was
ripe for tobacco and other commodities. It was reported
around 1789, in the Louisville area, that

Three times the quantity of tobacco and corn
can be raised on an acre here than can be
within the settlements on the east side of the
mountains, and with less cultivation.
In the communities from which the settlers had come,
tobacco had been a cash crop. A man could depend
upon it, to some degree, as part of his livelihood until
the soil "wore out." But geographic and political condi-
tions were curbing the interest of farmers in growing
tobacco. For a time it seemed that the only reason for
continuing the agriculture was to produce for taxes.

J-lie Spanish curtain

The diflBculty lay entirely in the hard fact that there
was no way in which the yields of numerous tobacco
farms could be delivered to markets. The long water
route to the East, via the Ohio, was impossible, the land
routes impassable, and the Spanish had a tight hold on
the logical market, at the throat of the Mississippi. What
was needed at this juncture was a merchandising genius,
a master distributor, a brilliant sales promotion man.

E

nter General Wilkinson

He turned up, unexpectedly, in the person of James
Wilkinson. At first glance he hardly seemed the right

26

man for so big an assignment, at least not as a commer-
cial entrepreneur. He had lost the fortune of his wife,
formerly Ann Biddle, a Piiiladelphia society belle, in a
business venture. Then he had migrated to Kentucky
and in 1784 opened a general store at Lexington in the
heart of the country where the grass turned steel-blue
each May. There were about 20,000 white people in
Kentucky then; more were coming in daily and it seemed
to Wilkinson that a general store could hardly fail.

But Wilkinson was no shopkeeper. Even his enemies,
of whom he had an unenviable share, conceded that he
was an unusual man. He had courage to the point of
audacity, he had imagination, he was charming — but it
was said that his ambitions made him unscrupulous.
During the American Revolution he had served with
Benedict Arnold in the Quebec campaign. At the age of
20 — he was born in 1757— he was appointed a brigadier-
general on the recommendation of General Gates.

JLrial run

In 1786 Wilkinson conceived the idea of breaking
through the export barrier the Spanish-American gov-
ernment had set up at Natchez and New Orleans. Every-
thing considered, he thought it unwise to risk too much
on that first \'enture. Wilkinson had founded Frankfort
in 1786 and it was from that area that he set out by
flatboat in April 1787 for tlic strenuous voyage on the
Kentucky River northward to the Ohio.

At the Falls of the Ohio (Louisville) the cargo of
tobacco, bacon and flour was transferred to two flatboats.
When they reached Natchez they were seized, as ex-
pected, but Wilkinson's ready tongue — and probably
some generous bribery- convinced the Spanish authori-

37

ties that they should promptly release boats and crew.
Wilkinson then sent them down the Mississippi to New
Orleans. A few days later, in late June or early July — a
matter of skilful timing— he appeared at the export city.
The flatboats and cargo had been confiscated.

Fx

ront men and conspirators

Preceding Wilkinson's appearance an American busi-
nessman at New Orleans who had been thoroughly in-
structed by the master mind had had an urgent talk
with Don Esteban Miro, governor of Louisiana.

Seizing the property of an American general,
even though a foreigner, simply isn't done. It
will enrage those hardy Indian fighters, the
Kentuckians. They'll come swooping down
and take New Orleans. This may he a clever
scheme on the general's part. Better talk to
him, your excellency. Furthermore, you know
the Kentucky planters are angry at the federal
and Virginia governments for not helping
them get their produce out ...If they separate
from the Union, they might become a Spanish
province. General Wilkinson could he most
useful. Better see him, your excellency . . .

Based on contemporary conditions and immediately
succeeding events, that was the substance of the argu-
ments advanced by Wilkinson's contact man. The seized
cargo was released, Governor Miro and Wilkinson met,
friendly relations were established. As a result of that
first meeting, and subsequent ones, the "Spanish In-
trigue," so intriguing to historians, had its origin. The
intrigue revolved about a nebulous plan— Wilkinson was

28

s

among several Kentuckians supposedly involved — to
separate the western territories from the United States
and place them under the protection of Spain.

ecret agent — or monopolist?

Before Wilkinson returned to Frankfort in February
1788, via Philadelphia, he had sworn an oath of alle-
giance to Spain, apparently a routine formality imposed
on foreign merchants. What was not routine was that
he had become an agent — "Number 13" on the diplo-
matic records of the monarchy — and was on the Spanish
payroll. Yet Wilkinson was a doubtful character, in any
meaning of the word. For no one, despite heavy research,
has been able to prove that he was actively engaged in
the subversive scheme of breaking away the western
territory. Wilkinson, born to the cloak and dagger, was
a master at concealing his real motives. Probably taking
advantage of a political situation, lie merely wanted tlie
trade with the Spanish at New Orleans — provided he
could monopolize it.

What Wilkinson did announce on his return was that
the route to domestic eastern markets in the United
States and the markets of Europe was now open. His
friends received him "as an ambassador who had gained
greater concessions from Spain than the Federal Gov-
ernment had been able to secure." This "epoch-making
event," wrote a present-day historian, "was the actual
beginning in the heart of Kentucky of world export trade
by river." Wilkinson Jiad in effect (or so he thought)
control of Mississippi River commercial traffic from
Louisville south. The Spanisli autliorities, already large
buyers of Mississippi and Louisiana tobacco, now offered
to bu\ that produced in Kentucky and Tennessee.

29

K

reedom of the Mississippi

It was a deep shock to Wilkinson when a royal order
issued in Seville, December 1788, permitted Americans
to enter goods at Mississippi River ports on payment of
the Spanish entry duty. The home authorities had ob-
viously had sober second thoughts about Governor
Miro's concessions to Wilkinson. Yet, though the river
was open to those who dared risk its passage, Wilkinson
had the advantage of precedence, the right political
connections, and a developing organization.

He had circularized all likely local districts, asking
for large quantities of tobacco, to be shipped to New
Orleans. When the cured leaf came in, and it came in
promptly, he issued receipts which frequently passed as
currency. As an entrepreneur he was tough-minded. He
made a fixed charge for inspection, and six shillings per
hundredweight for freight when taken on the Kentucky
River, or four shillings sixpence if loaded at Louisville.
After charges were deducted from the sale proceeds, the
planter was to receive 15 shillings per 100 pounds
"should so much arise, . . . after which any surplus re-
maining" would be divided in the proportion of two-
thirds to Wilkinson and one-third to the consignor.

All shipments were at the owner's risks — and the risks
were there. Apart from the physical hazards of river
traffic that caused boats to capsize, sink or run aground,
there were river pirates and murderous Indians. For a
while, too, outlaws and white renegades infested the
long route. They were dangerous, for their call for help,
afloat or ashore, when sympathetically answered, too
frequently resulted in the seizure of a boat and the
massacre of her crew.

30

Tc

obacco ariTiada

Under \\ ilkinsoirs "system," fleets were made up at
Louisville. A resident of that town, in a letter published
in tlie Sew York Journal and Weekly Register, xMarch 5,
1789, wrote that in January a fleet of 25 large boats con-
trolled by Wilkinson started for New Orleans, freight-
ing ehiefly tobacco and flour. Some of the boats carried
3-pounders

and all of them swivels, manned by 150 hands,
brave and well armed, to fight their way down
the Ohio and Mississippi into the gulph of
Mexico. (Wilkinson) has been very unjustly
censured, by the inconsiderate part of man-
kind, for having monopolized the Spanish
trade, but the more expanded mind acknowl-
edges, that to ]iis penetrating genius, Ken-
tucke stands indebted for having procured its
citizens a market . . .

G

olden tobacco

Wilkinson's boast that he had opened the Mississippi
for the products of Kentucky was justified. Customs
records at New Orleans for 1790 showed that 250,000
pounds of tobacco had been registered in that port alone.
( Most of it was grown in Kentucky. ) Other entries were
made at Natchez. An incalculable amount was smuggled
in or went to sea without benefit of customs permits. The
annual purchases by Spain amounted to a maximum of
two million pounds. And the prices paid were high.
Tobacco which had been selling for $2 per hundred-
weight in Kentuc-k\ brouglit $9.50 or $10 in Spanish coin

31

at the Mississippi ports. The proceeds were frequently
used to purchase slaves, livestock and household goods.
Louisville was the only port on western rivers in 1789
and for ten years thereafter. Yet it remained for some
time a minor concentration point compared with Frank-
fort and Lexington. The latter town, by 1791, had its own
tobacco factories, as reported in the Kentucky Gazette
of that year. Tobacco hogsheads were making rolling
roads from central Kentucky to the Ohio. A few years
after Wilkinson's first barges negotiated the difficult
passage on the Kentucky, therefore, commercial traffic
up the river was all but abandoned. The boom in tobacco
had caused Kentucky farmers to petition the Virginia
General Assembly at Williamsburg, on various occasions
between 1787 and 1790, for more river warehouses.

s

hipping Leaf

The efficiency of Wilkinson's operations in delivering
shipments was generally conceded. ( Yet, despite his best
efforts, the final results proved to be unprofitable for
him.) Because of his exorbitant charges, a number of
planter-merchants organized river transportations of
their own. Among the independent traders was John
Halley, who had opened a merchandise store near
Boonesboro. It was he who, according to tradition, first
shipped Kentucky tobacco directly to England, via the
Mississippi. Exports of tobacco grown in the United
States in the 1790-1791 period were high. More than
half of the 118,000 hogsheads shipped out in 1790 went
to England. The value of the total was over $4.3 million.
Flour exceeded tobacco very slightly in export value.
Tobacco was again the export leader in the following
year— a place it was not to resume again until 1840.

33

T

lie river roarers

Traffic on the Oliio and Mississippi had become heavy.
It brouglit in a new breed of boatman, "a sort of am-
phibious animal — kind-hearted as a Connecticut grand-
mother, but as rough as a Rocky Mountain bear." Their
exploits became legendary, and some of the characters
may even have been mythical.

Among the boisterous crews who were to be found on
the boats were a number whose existence was not a sub-
ject of later doubts. Conspicuous among them were such
"river rats" as "Little Billy the Earthquake," out of
Florida, an expert at eye-gouging and, most notably,
Pittsburgh-born Mike Fink, so skillful a marksman that
he was frequently referred to as "Bang-All."

They were to be found as "captain," or sometimes as
a crew member on barges or flatboats (the "Kentucky
broadhorns" ) , manned by 40 to 50 hands and carrying
loads of 50 to 60 tons. Keelboats, which did not have to
be laboriousl)' rowed or dragged against currents up-
stream when returning to Louisville, usually freiglited
20-30 tons and had a crew of ten. Louisxille was the
boatmen's meeting-grounds, Natchez their recreation
center, the rivers their home.

K

eel boatmen

Mike Fink had graduated to keelboats early in his
career on the Ohio. It was a convention of the blustering
boatmen tliat they announce their presence in saloons
or elsewhere b>' roaring out a brag. Fink's was typical.
After assuring any audience that he had drunk only
whiskey in his cradle and boasting of similar accomplish-
ments he would go on to say .

33

N

I love the wimmen an I'm chockful d fight!
Vm half wild horse and half cock-eyed alli-
gator . . .1 can hit like fourth-proof lightnin
. . . I can out-run, out-jump, out-shoot, out-
brag, out-drink, an out-fight, rough-an-
tumble, no holts barred, ary man on both sides
of the river ... 7 ain't had a fight for two days
an I'm spilein for exercise.
They were rough, but Mike Fink was representative
of the dependable boatmen who would deliver a cargo
where it was supposed to go, and deliver it dry. Tobacco
packed in hogsheads or casks were, by regulation, a
minimum thousand pounds. It took stout men to handle
them. One of Wilkinson's shipments, for instance, in-
cluded 120 hogsheads on three boats. On one occasion
Wilkinson had the unpleasant duty of informing con-
signors that a flatboat with 40 hogsheads of tobacco
had sunk but that he hoped to salvage part of the cargo.
With the advent of the Mississippi steamboat, after
1811, the rowdy boatmen drifted to other occupations.

ew Orleans Blues

At the end of 1790 the Spanish authorities announced
that thereafter tobacco purchases would not exceed
40,000 pounds annually. It was a shock, but less to Ken-
tucky tobacco planters, many of whom began to turn to
wheat and a larger production of hemp, than it was to
farmers to the south. The Spanish had the grace to ex-
plain that the Seville warehouses were overstocked with
tobacco. At the same time they complained that leaf ex-
ported to Spain — not necessarily from Kentucky — was
of poor quality and that packers had included trash in
hogsheads to meet the weight requirement.

A contemporary observer reported that in the spring
of 1790 hundreds of hogsheads of tobacco were on the

34

New Orleans market at $5 per hogshead for ordinary
grades. He went on to say,

The Bri<i in wliich I soiled was loaded with
tobacco purchased at .^5 to $10 per hogshead
which I afterwards satv selling, for four and
five dollars per cwt. in Philadelphia.
It was in late 1791 that Wilkinson, "disgusted by dis-
appointment and misfortunes, the effect of my ignorance
of commerce," abandoned his export trade and reentered
tlie United States Army.

T

he first western state

Kentuck)' became a State of the Union in 1792 and
Frankfort, still a busy tobacco town though its popula-
tion was under 500, was named its capital. Immigration
into Kentucky had continued unabated. An estimate of
residents in the year it achieved statehood was close to
100,000. That meant an important consumer market at
the tobacco farmer's doorsteps.

At the first meeting of Kentucky's General Assembly
in 1792 it was enacted that all fees of officials payable in
tobacco sliould in future be collected in the currency of
the state. Later in the same year the legislators adopted
the Virginia system of warehouse inspection and allowed
the issuance of assignable and negotiable notes for use
in paying public and private debts. Court fees, fines and
forfeitures were, however, recoverable only in currency
at tlie rate of one penny for each pound of tobacco.

A

II old Spanisli custom

Kentuckians and other Americans hampered by
Spain's restrictive (and volatile) policies were becoming

35

R

increasingly restive. Their representations to the federal
government demanding action against Spain became
more numerous. The chief officials in Washington, and
the president, too, were concerned over the situation.
They were well aware of the "Spanish Intrigue" and its
dangerous potentials. The best American diplomats were
assigned to the problem of converting Spanish policy to
a less arbitrary one in the treatment of Mississippi River
shippers. By the Treaty of San Lorenzo, October 1795,
Spain agreed to free navigation on the great river and,
equally important, to duty-free deposit at New Orleans
pending exportation. With the signing of the treaty the
Spanish clique in Kentucky abandoned whatever
schemes its members had had.

Nearly three years of "maiiana" passed before the
New Orleans deposit was actually opened. Kentucky
tobacco farmers were ready, and thousands of hogs-
heads of leaf were freighted down the river. Then, to
everyone's astonishment except the Spanish, the deposit
was suddenly closed in October 1802. Napoleon may
have had something to do with that for, though few
knew it exactly, France had acquired the vast territory
of Louisiana by retrocession.

eal estate bargain

Planters and traders of Kentucky had been outraged
before by Spanish commercial and political behavior.
The latest demonstration infuriated them. They may not
have been entirely responsible for the step the federal
government took promptly upon news of the New Or-
leans closing. But the anger openly expressed by Ken-
tuckians and their neighbors did serve to accelerate a
governmental decision that had been ip the making. The
result was the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the most im-
portant of all real estate transactions and an unbelievable

36

bargain. With all costs considered — the initial bill of 60
million francs ($11,250,000), payment of claims of
American citizens against France, and interest charges
— the total came to something over $27 million, or about
four cents an acre for the land acquired!

w.

lieat and tobacco

The uncertainties attending the export market for
Kentucky tobacco since 1791 had brought about a de-
sirable diversification of agriculture in the state. Hemp
had shared with tobacco in commercial importance and
now flour was becoming the major product. A report to
the Secretary of State at Washington in 1798 said, in part:

In the beginning tobacco was the principal ex-
port from Kentucky and at one period from
fifteen hundred to two thousand hogsheads
came down the Mississippi annuaUy for three
or four years . . . Within the last three years
the exportation of tobacco has considerably
diminished and flour seems to take its place.

Five years later flour was, in fact, the major export
commodity from Kentucky to New Orleans. The produc-
tion of tobacco liad been curtailed by the older planters
but new settlers were continuing in an agriculture with
which they were most familiar. There was plenty of
cured tobacco available. An advertiser in 1804 offered
30,000 pounds of good leaf "three to four years old" to
be sold at New Orleans, and others were offering to ex-
change merchandise for cash or tobacco. And between
1792 and 1810 the Kentucky River banks held 42 new
tobacco warehouses. These were, since an enactment of
1803, more substantial buildings than the log cabins of
the preceding era. It seemed only logical that towns
de\el()ped wherex or these warehouses were erected.

37

Part of a tobacco inspector's duties was to burn leaf
refused as worthless. This regulation had been included
in warehouse and inspection laws until 1808. It was then
enacted that, effective June 1809, an owner had to dis-
pose of his unacceptable tobacco by any means he pre-
ferred. He was not permitted to repack it in "any cask
of crop or transfer tobacco." Quality control of tobacco
leaf had been subject to official supervision since an early
period in Virginia and other colonies.

We

ar economy

The farmers and merchants of Kentucky and in neigh-
boring states and territories had felt that the opening of
the Mississippi would usher in an era of prosperity. For
a few years it seemed that their expectations had been
justified. But the Jeffersonian philosophy of economic
sanctions expressed in the Embargo Act of 1807 (and
later Acts), and the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809, had
cut deeply into the export trade. Then, though the
Mississippi was free, the Atlantic was not because of
British interference with American shipping. By 1811
Kentuckians were vigorously demanding a war against
Great Britain as the only means left to prevent seizures
of their export shipments.

During the War of 1812 many tobacco growers in the
Bluegrass region turned to livestock and the production
of various farm commodities. But the importance of
tobacco as a cash crop was not underestimated by other
farmers. In the year the war began, new settlers in Logan
County devoted themselves largely to tobacco. Among
them was Thomas Morrow, out of North Carolina, whose
development of a fine leaf gave it his name.

Some of the tobacco was laboriously dragged to the
Cumberland River and then freighted by boat to New

38

Orleans where it sold for low prices. Some was taken to
markets twenty miles away and disposed of to local
buyers. Other growers who had too great a distance to
go for a navigable waterway manufactured their own
cured leaf. The product then went to Russellville, to
Nashville, Tennessee, or to other not-too-distant markets.

K

arm economy

What gave the greatest impetus to increased produc-
tion was the exceptional price brought at New Orleans
in 1817 for Adair County tobacco. Leaf had been selling
for as little as 75 cents to $2.50 per hundredweight at the
great Mississippi port. The superior produce of Adair
County brought about $8.00 per hundredweight.

The buyer had been the agent of the French state
monopoly, and prices for the same type, so suitable to
French tastes, went even higher in succeeding seasons.
Within the next few years the production of tobacco had
been firmly established in the counties of Logan, Adair,
Christian, and Barren and had become the most valuable
of their cash crops.

M

arkets at liome and abroad

There were three tobacco factories in Lexington in
1817 with a total capital of about $57,000. A small one
had opened at Ilopkinsville in 1818 to supply local de-
mand. Louisville, whose population was just about to
reach 4,000, had a number of manufacturing plants,
since before 1819. Tliat ri\er town was still some years
away from the time when it would become the major
shipping center for tobacco. Only about 500 hogsheads
were received there annually in the 1815 to 1820 period.

39

The local inspector, who received £25 currency a year
for his services, was sent for only when there was enough
tobacco in the warehouse.

Frankfort and the nearby village of Leestown, which
together had three warehouses, were active export
markets in that period. In 1818 tobacco worth $14,100
( in 282 hogsheads ) had been shipped out from that dis-
trict. Except for the tobacco of a few production areas
in the south-central parts of Kentucky, much of the leaf
was of poor quality. The consequent low prices in the
period between 1819 and 1836 curbed expansion of the
agriculture.

Yet, in 1821 planters were being advised by farm
authorities that tobacco was "unquestionably the best
crop the Farmers of Kentucky can at this time raise."
Much of the tobacco of the state was taken by coastwise
vessels out of New Orleans to Virginia for stemming and
redrying. The Old Dominion, by 1818, had developed a
considerable industry in processing Kentucky tobacco.

Tobacco from the Bluegrass State was reaching New-
Orleans in hogsheads averaging 1,300 pounds and in
kegs and in boxes. More than half of the leaf received at
that port went to United States ports on the Atlantic
seaboard and then to domestic factories. Some of it went
to the British who had adopted grading classifications
for Kentucky tobacco. The London market in 1832, for
instance, was offering the Kentucky product as "fine and
leafy," "middling," "ordinary and old." Stripped leaf had
a special category.

T

lie fertile fields

It was in the late 1830's that Kentucky entered the
period of its first great expansion in tobacco production.

40

B

Quality had improved, new types were being developed,
prices were better, access to markets had ])ecome easier
and se\ eral e\ ents of considerable economic importance
luid taken place. Louisville's first hogshead market had
been opened by 1825.

With production at more than 53 million pounds in
1839, Kentucky was second only to Virginia in tobacco
agriculture. Local dealers were now stemming tobacco
for the English market instead of sending it to Virginia
for that processing. In 1840, exports of American-grown
tobacco reached about 119,500 hogsheads and thus for
the first time exceeded the record of 1790.

urley, Burleigli or burly

Some Yankees from Connecticut had begun the pro-
duction of cigar-filler tobacco in Mason County. A con-
siderable quantity was grown there from about 1843.
It was to be superseded in commercial value (as was
true in most of Kentucky) by a type more suitable for
consumers in an era of tobacco chewing: Burley.

As early as 1838 small quantities of Burley had been
grown in Kentucky, and before that in southern Ohio.
It was a dark "leathery" type, cured by air, and among its
numerous varieties ("Standup," "Rainbow White," "Red
Twist Bud," "Little") the most common one was desig-
nated Red Burley.

While there is uncertainty about the origin of the
term Burle\', competent authorities believe that its
varietal names derixe from that of its original grower.
It has also been suggested that this type was called after
Lord Burleigh — just win, no one seems to know. There
is no valid reason to accept the notion that farmers in

41

iBK-.r:^^

Planters and buyers at a Louisville warehouse auction in 1873
From Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper

G

the area of its first development described the plant as
"burly," even if they spelled it "burley."

rowth story

Frankfort, which had become a major primary market
for tobacco by the mid-19th century, lost its predominant
place to Louisville shortly thereafter. The capital was
not, however, without other commercial resources —
notal)ly its distilleries so dependent on the limestone
water of Bourbon and otiier central Kentucky counties.

By 1850 Louisville had 82 tobacco and "segar" fac-
tories. The value of products manufactured in these
plants was about $1.4 million, being exceeded only by
that of foundries and pork houses. At that time the port
city was the chief concentration point in Kentucky for
tobacco. More than 16,000 hogsheads of tobacco were
shipped from its docks in 1852.

43

B

The city's sales markets were more active than ever.
It made the headlines when 244 hogsheads were sold off
warehonse Hoors in a single day, May 8, 1852. Prices
ranged from $1.50 to $7.05 per hundredweight, the latter
tor leaf from Mason Connty. (TweKe years later sales
at Louis\ille warehouses totaled 63,000 hogsheads.)

Not all the tobacco took the Mississippi route to New
Orleans. The Louisville and Nashville Railroad, a success
from the time of its incorporation in 1850, was shortly
to begin car-loadings of tobacco for delivery to eastern
depots. Production of leaf in the state exceeded 108
million pounds in 1859, around 16 million pounds less
than that produced in \'irginia, long the major source of
supply.

During the Ci\'il War Kentucky became the largest
tobacco-producing state. The fact, then general knowl-
edge among growers, was proudly announced by Col.
Laban J. Bradford of Augusta, Kentucky, in a published
letter dated February 2, 1863. There had been a marked
increase in harvests of the dark fire-cured types. Maxi-
mum production had been reached just prior to the
beginning of the war.

right" Burley

Through a fortunate accident of nature — assuming
that there are "accidents " in nature — a revolution took
place in tobacco farming. It affected other areas than
Kentuck)-, as well, but that state became its chief bene-
ficiary.

On a forgotten da\ in the spring of 1864, which should
be celebrated b\' Burley growers, two tenants (George
Webb and Joseph Fore) were seeding tobacco beds on

43

B

the farm of Captain Fred Kautz near the village of
Higginsport, Brown County, Ohio. Being short of seeds,
Fore crossed the Ohio River to the farm of George Bark-
ley in Bracken County, Kentucky. There he acquired
seeds of Little Burley.

The seedlings that consequently developed were
sturdy and of fine texture. But the leaf color was a "dirty
yellow," and the tenant farmers, believing the plants
unhealthy or dwarfed, destroyed them. Jn the following
season, on George Webb's farm, some of the seeds ob-
tained from Barkley were again sowed. When they dis-
played the same characteristics as the original lot, Webb
was imaginative enough to transplant about a thousand
of tliem. In their maturity the plants, described as
"healthy and thrifty," had a stalk of unclassifiable color
— "cream" is usually used as a vague description — and
pale-green leaves. (Another farmer, Samuel Ellis of
Brown County, Ohio, is believed to have grown the new
"bright" Burley in the same season that Webb first ex-
perimented with his.)

rown Gold

The "freak tobacco" caused a neighborhood sensation.
When cured, the leaf was a bright yellow or cream color
but the experts said that it smoked "bitter." Webb was
advised not to risk any large acreage on the new sort.
But he had acquired a good quantity of seeds, and fol-
lowing his own thrifty judgment planted enough of the
type, by then called "White Burley," to cure 20,000
pounds. In its final form, its color was a delicate brown.
(Today, it is light tan.)

At the Cincinnati market, to which Webb had con-
signed two hogsheads, the tobacco brought an excellent
price. Then, at the St. Louis Fair in 1867, Webb's new

44

Biirley won first and second prizes for cutting leaf. It
])rought $58 a hundred pounds. White Burley was "in."
Tlie spread of tlic new type, particularly through cen-
tral Kentucky, was rapid. It thrived best on the soil of the
Bluegrass (replacing hemp and other farm products
there), and on "old sod." White Burley (the White was
dropped later) quickly replaced the gummy, leathery
Red Burley, long a staple in various areas. It could be
harvested more quickly (by stalk-cutting) and cured
more rapidly than other types. As a result of the steady
development of Burley, tobacco soon dominated the
farm ecouonn of Kentucky. Its quality and taste im-
pro\ed, and manufacturers of smoking and plug tobacco
— particularh' the latter— became its biggest buyer. Bur-
ley tobacco is highly absorbent and an ideal leaf for
hea\ ily sweetened chewing and pipe tobaccos.

-Ltie Glamour State

Kentucky, having now found a firm place in the na-
tional economy, began to enjoy the fruits of success. In
relation to its major farm product, the only term appli-
cable was "growth." The 142,()()() acres devoted to to-
bacco in 1866 had become 320,000 in 1875, yielding
305,600,000 pounds of leaf worth $20,170,000.

Except in specialized publications not much was writ-
ten about tobacco in that period or later. There were
subjects of far greater interest to the reading public. Tlie
pattern of glamorizing Kentucky— a century-old art-
became more expressive. The last quarter of the lOtli
century in the Bluegrass State was to become the good
old days when all was right in Kentucky.

Hyperbole was not confined to Kentuckians. Take, for
example, the opinion of E. R. Billings, a Yankee author
of a book on tobacco. He wrote, in 1875:

45

Kentucky planters are men of the largest en-
dowments; Nature in her gift to them has been
most lavish, and the princely fortunes which
they have acquired shows how well they have
benefited by her munificence. In manners
affable, and in benevolence unsurpassed, the
Kentucky planter gains the plaudits of all. He
is polite to both friend and foe, and possessed
with all of that polished manner which marks
the true gentleman, and especially all growers
of the "kingly plant."

Ivig the product"

Plug tobacco in its original form was created by back-
woodsmen, most probably in the Kentucky-Missouri
area. Curing barns were few and far between, factories
non-existent so far west in the early pioneer days— but
materials and tools for making a good chew were readily
available.

Making it meant a little work. A small quantity of
tobacco leaves was wedged into a hole that had been
dug in a green maple or hickory log. The leaves had
been saturated with homemade apple or peach brandy.
The hole was then plugged. When the log was dry the
"cured" tobacco was removed. Quite logically, chewers
nicknamed the toothsome preparation "plug." Its use
spread throughout the backwoods areas for some time
before it was taken up by urban residents.

By 1880 Kentucky, with 48 chewing tobacco factories,
ranked fifth in the national manufacture of plug, a com-
modity that had grown in popular favor since the period
of Andrew Jackson. The daily exercise of the jaw re-
quired for the full enjoyment of this tobacco sweetmeat
had developed some notable orators and a nation of

46

voluble talkers. Over 6 million pounds of plug came out
of Kentucky's plants in 1880, and nearly 31.5 million
cigars were rolled out of 107 "factories." The term "fac-
tory" frequently meant a single residence room in which
one man operated.

Manufacturers of chewing tobacco in tlie United
States, with thousands of brands to offer — over 12,000
were listed in the heyday of eating tobaccos — engaged
in a "plug war." This began in the middle 1890's about
two decades before the decline of the popular chew.
Tlie battle occasionally took tlie form of pushing "loss
leaders" in efforts to capture a bigger share of the vola-
tile consumer market.

The contest was not confined to the broad arena of
sales outlets. With so many brands available, it spilled
o\er into tlie field of nomenclature. The common method
of brand labeling was represented by a bright-colored,
pronged tin tag pressed into the plug, on which the
maker's name or s>'mbol was stamped. The tag meant
a discount to the purchaser, for he could turn it in for
cash or for prizes. During the "war" it seemed logical
that chewing tobaccos of Kentucky manufacture were
a\'ailable under such brand names as War Club, Police
Club, Buzzard, and the like.

Other factories of the Bluegrass State around the turn
of the century were offering chewing tobaccos labeled
Boss of All Twist, Free Lunch, Tlic Earth for 5 cents.
Pigs Eye, Real Think, Dudes Delight, and Tough and
Sweet. Brand names of smoking tobacco included Cock
of the Cock, Dagger, Good Enough, Daily Bread and
Befoe de War. The last also served for a cheroot, a plug,
and a snuff. It should be said, to the credit of the promo-
tion men who concocted these appellations, that the\'
were original thinkers — not plagiarists. Using another's
brand name was then a common practice.

47

Loading drays tcith tobacco hogsheads outside a Louisville warehouse in 1873
From Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper

Tc

obacco metropolis

Louisville had become the tobacco manufacturing
center of the state and its shipping operations had been
greatly extended. It was now the great marketing head-
quarters for Burley leaf. Prices brought at auction in
the city's numerous warehouses were sometimes week-
long sensations. In the 1880-1881 auction season, for
instance, there was a flurry of excitement when some
Burley leaf, designated as "colory cutting," brought $7
to $9 per hundred pounds for lugs (common ground
leaves), and $20 to $24 for the same weight of "fine leaf."

World outlets had opened up for Kentucky tobacco.
In 1880, when the best farm land could be bought in
the Paducah or Western District fire-cured area for $25
to $30 an acre, that section was producing a variety of
types for domestic and foreign manufacturers. Included
were Dark and Red Shipping, sun- and air-cured filler
(for plug), African, and leaf for European state monopo-
lies, designated as "Regie" tobaccos. The range of prices
then was $2 for poor lugs to $40 per hundred pounds
for fine, light wrapper. The Green River district was

48

s

supplying stripped leaf of heavy, coarse variety to the
Enghsh market. Out of tlie Cumberhind River area came
a considerable number of types among which Poor Man's
Friend, One Sucker, Shoestring, White Burley, Morrow,
Blue and Yellow Pryor were best known.

elling systems

Despite Louisville's prominence as the greatest hogs-
head auction center — 175,000 hogsheads were annually
on the Hoors of its twenty warehouses before 1900 — not
all larmers went to the trouble of pressing cured leaf
into hogsheads.

For two decades and longer, from 1880 on, many in-
dependent growers of tobacco in Kentucky maintained
their own pattern of selling leaf. They had been encour-
aged by buyers representing domestic and European
firms to "sell direct." At barn doors, in market town
streets, or at designated meeting places on country roads,
buyers bought leaf without benefit of auctions.

When disposing of loose leaf from their wagons
farmers called it "the Virginia method," which it cer-
tainly was not. When planters of western Kentucky
mo\ed their wagons to the protection of a roofed-over
drivewa)- (the "chute"), buyers standing on a platform
from which they could inspect the leaf were engaged in
"chute bu\ ing." For a number of years, in the "nortliern
districts" near Owensboro, Green Hiver tobacco was
sold at auction, though only sample leaves of the sea-
son s crop were shown to l)idders.

B

ountiful Burley

The se\ eral distinct types produced in Kentucky were
not competitive insofar as markets were concerned. Be-

49

fore 1900 the commercial pattern of tobacco consump-
tion seemed fairly well fixed. Some of the wiser men in
the industry, aware of cycles in taste and responsive to
a slowly growing interest in cigarettes, had added that
new line to their other products. For the most part,
however, manufacturers felt that nothing would change.
There could be only more tobacco chewers, pipe and
cigar smokers.

Production of Burley tobacco had developed in sev-
eral states other than Kentucky and Ohio. The type was
vying with the Bright tobacco of North Carolina and
Virginia in popularity. Enthusiastic supporters were ex-
pressing their opinions in print. A writer of the 1920's,
a practical tobacco man, was repeating a general opinion
of late IQtli century Kentuckians when he referred to
Burley as "probably the most famous and most useful
type of tobacco grown anywhere in the world."

An indication of what Burley production meant to
Kentuckians in the late 19th century appeared in an
article written by Thomas G. Watkins, commercial editor
of the Louisville Courier-Journal. He said, in part:

Burley is one of the most profitable crops that
can he grown and were it not for the peculiar
limitations of the industry it would make all
the land of Kentucky among the most valu-
able tillable ground of the globe . . .
The chief field for its production is in the fa-
mous Blue Grass region. Here it is grown of
the finest quality and on the largest scale. It has
made up to the fortunate planters great depre-
ciation in the value of horses and cattle, whose
breeding was such a feature in the agricultural
life of the State. It can almost he said it has
saved the Blue Grass farmers from nun. Their
crops are spread over hundreds of acres and

50

B

are wortJi small fortunes each year. No wonder
that pastures that had been pazed by thor-
ou<i,hbrcdsfor a century have been plowed up
and planted witJi the weed.

lack Patcli War

AioiiikI the turn of the cciitiii) most of tlic tobacco
farmers in Kentucky were lia\ing a difficult time. Sev-
eral lactors were ad\ersel\' affecting the prices they had
been recei\ ing for their hard-earned crops. Overproduc-
tion, resulting occasionally in poor leaf quality, a reduc-
tion in foreign market demand for Kentucky tobaccos,
and a swing in consumer interest to tobacco products
that did not depend on Kentucky leaf— cigars and ciga-
rettes—brought prices down.

Faced with the hard realities of economic facts the
planters rationalized their difficulties by blaming the
most immediate apparent cause— the bu>ers of leaf. This
attitude, a traditional one among farmers, was pretty
general in all Kentucky tobacco-producing areas. It was
most \ igorousK expressed in the Black Patch districts of
western Kentuckv and Tennessee.

Congress had been petitioned by Black Patch farmers
to eliminate the federal ta.x on cured natural leaf. This
tax, applied onh' when the tolxicco was sold at retail
directly to consumers, had been in eflect since 1872. The
House had acted fa\orably on the petition but the bill
was killed by the vSenate Finance Connnittee. Had the
repeal been effected, it is doubtful tiiat it would Iia\e
benefited farmers directK , at a period of extremely low
prices.

Thereupon a number of energetic planters decided
that tiie\ could force prices up if they pooled their crops
and their resources. The constitution of Kentuckv had a

51

provision, mandatory on the legislature, that prohibited
pooling designed to increase prices. The organizers of
the proposed farmers' association ignored this legal re-
striction. It was not the first time that a planters' com-
bine had been formed. The earliest such organization in
Kentucky had appeared in 1873.

At Guthrie, Kentucky, in September 1904, a meeting
of five to six thousand farmers formed the Dark Tobacco
District Planters' Protective Association. Those planters
who failed to join, the "Hill Billies," were denounced as
violently as were the assumed enemies. Hill Billies con-
tinued to sell to the usual buyers. When the news got
around that non-members were receiving high prices
for their tobacco, farmers in the Association began to
drift away.

This led to direct action by members in the form of
night calls on farmers who preferred to remain indepen-
dent, and on buyers' agents. Before long, the Night
Riders had become a secret organization of some ten
thousand farmers. Although the Association denied that
it had any connection with the Night Riders, everyone
knew better.

A

ction and counteraction

The original plan of the Association founders had been
to pack members' tobacco and sell by sample leaf. But
they had no outlet for members' crops. The Night Riders
turned to vigorous, direct, and unlawful action. The
crops of Hill Billies were destroyed, quite a few of these
independent farmers were beaten, some were wounded
by gunfire, and some deaths resulted. In December 1906
masked Night Riders raided Princeton, the seat of Cald-
well County, and burned down two factories. One was
described as "the biggest and best equipped stemmery

52

in the world." A year later the Xiglit Riders moved in on
Hopkinsville and engaged in violent activity. Included
in the destruction tliat took place was a warehouse tliat
held $15,()()() worth of tobacco owned by the Italian
Rc'^ie.

B\- 1908 it appeared as if the Association and its mili-
tant arm had won. Black Patch farmers were operating
in a sellers' market. Almost all tobacco produced in their
area was bougiit directl\- from the Association. (Only a
tenth of the 1907 har\est of 1()(),()()(),()()() pounds came
from independent farmers.) Tiie average price paid
member farmers was three to four times that current in
the \ears just l)efore the Association was formed.

Yet in the same year when the organization was look-
ing forward to a long existence and a comfortable old
age one of its victims, who had been beaten, won a suit
in a federal court for damages against thirty Association
members. Other successful suits followed. Meanwhile,
contingents of the state militia had been moved into
the Black Patch districts. Other elements were combin-
ing to reduce the effectiveness of the Association. Hogs-
head selling was on the way out; farmers could now
dispose of their crops at loose-leaf auctions if they
wished. Prices were better. A section of the Payne-
Aldrich Tariff Act of 1909 eliminated the tax on pro-
ducer-to-consumer sales of natural leaf. The Association
had begun to lose membership at a noticeable rate from
1909 on. Its last days came by 1915.

Se\eral farmers' pools had, meanwhile, been organ-
ized in the Burley districts. Most conspicuous of these
was tliat known as "the Lebus pool," after the president
ot tiie Burle\ Tobacco Societ\', Clarence Le Bus. Despite
moderate leadership, a situation similar to that in the
Black Patch developed. The economic factors that
affected farmers in the Black Patch soon brought about
the dissolution of the Burley pools.

53

Fe

ending echo

From ancient times tobacco, in its social uses, had
been a promoter of harmony and fellowship. It seemed
a strange contradiction that it should have been the
center of violent conflict in modern times. The real cause
of the discord was economic, the same element that had
brought about other instances of violence in the field
of tobacco agriculture. The Culpeper Rebellion in North
Carolina, 1677-1679, had its roots in the demand of
tobacco planters for a free market. In an effort to curb
overproduction of tobacco in Virginia, farmers had de-
stroyed their own and their neighbors' plants in 1682,
and tobacco-cutting riots had taken place in Maryland
in the early 1730's.

With changes in buying practices after 1911, and the
high prices that prevailed during World War I, the bru-
talities of the pooling combines were largely forgotten.
Yet a native son of Kentucky, Irvin Cobb, may have had
the war partly in mind when he wrote his pseudo-guide
to Kentucky. He must also have been aware, too, of the
provocative character of some place names in the
Bluegrass State, among them Contrary, Disputanta,
Squabble, Hazard, Mad Dog, Viper, Rowdy.
Cobb remarked:

The crest of the state shows two gentlemen . . .
holding each other firmly . . . The intent of the
picture is plain. So long as they hold hands,
neither can reach for his hardware. The mot-
to which goes with this device is "United We
Stand, Divided We Fall To." By an oversight
the designers left the word "To" off the end
of the phrase.

54

N,

ovel sales; novel brand

A pattern of selling new to Kentucky began in 1906
when Charles Bohmer of Virginia opened the first
"loose-leaf" auction warehouse at Lexington. ( Leaves,
though "loose," were tied in "hands.") This method of
selling at auction had been practiced in Virginia since
early in tlie 19th century. Kentucky growers of Burley
thought the system a fair one and it developed steadily.
Farmers of dark tobacco in the western section of the
state were less willing to abandon the traditional hogs-
head selling. But within a reasonable number of years
they too accepted loose-leaf auctions, by then the pro-
cedure in all tobacco-growing states except those pro-
ducing cigar-leaf types.

For a while Louisville was the center of loose-leaf
sales. Then Lexington took its place as the major Burley
auction market. In 1913 a "revolution" occurred in the
tobacco industry when the first modem blended ciga-
rette was marketed and heavily promoted. Before that,
cigarettes produced in the States were almost entirely
of aromatic leaf, the "Turkish" type, though a few made
from flue-cured tobaccos or some containing Burley were
also available.

What particularly interested the farmers of Kentucky
was the considerable quantity of Burley (sweetened as
heavily as plug had been) in the new cigarette. The
blended cigarette quickly won popular approval. All
domestic manufacturers converted to the modern style
to meet a growing consumer demand, the cigarette be-
came the dominant form in which tobacco was used —
and Burley had a broadened outlet.

55

v^.^^

A quiet day in Lexington, Kentucky's largest tobacco market town, 1889
From Harper's Monthly

K

armers' Cooperative

The harvests of all types from Kentucky's numerous
tobacco farms came to 462 million pounds in 1916. With
an overall average of 12.7 cents per pound the total
value of production was $58,674,000. Acreage increased
during the war years of 1917 to 1919. Burley tobacco sold
for 34 cents a pound in the latter year. Then, with pro-
duction still high, its price dropped to 13.3 cents a pound
in 1920. The war was over— and a long, rainy season
was responsible for poor leaf quality.

At Lexington the auction market opened on January
3, 1920 and other Burley markets opened on the day
following. They were summarily and simultaneously
closed during the morning of the second day thereafter
by farmers indignant over the low prices. A few lots had
been purchased at prices below the cost of production.

It was stated that all Burley growers faced economic
ruin. Excitement continued high and the mood in the
auction areas was ugly. Buyers, who were hardly ac-

56

countable for market conditions, were tlireatened with
bodily harm. But out of tliis disastrous situation came a
steadsing (though temporary) influence in farmer sup-
port and in marketing. It took form in the Burley To-
bacco Growers Cooperatixe Association.

The principle of the cooperative plan was hardly new.
And insofar as Kentucky farmers were concerned, it was
an old idea, having been expressed more than a century
before by Gen. James Wilkinson. In December 1789 he
and his partner, Peyton Short, addressed a letter to Col.
Isaac Slielby, a tobacco farmer wlio later became Ken-
tucky's first governor. One sentence in that letter was
basic in the formulation of group action. It read:

1000 Iio^islieads of tobacco in the hands of one
man will stand a much better chance for a
good market than the same quantity in twenty
hands at any market.

restige pool

An association of Buvley growers had already l)een
formed before tlie bottom dropped out of the auction
market in 1920. The growers' association was de\eloped
into a practical cooperatix e chiefly througli tlie hard
work and influence of Judge Robert W. Bingham, editor
of the Louisville Courier-Journal, Samuel Halley of Lex-
ington, a noted tobacco planter and warehouse operator,
and Arthur Krock, then editor of the Louisville Times.
They had the support of financier Bernard Baruch and
they made effecti\e use of the legal talent of Aaron
Sapiro, an experienced man in forming cooperatixes.

The fiist president and general manager, James C.
Stone, became a ke\- figure in building the Association
and maintaining its liigh prestige. There were more than
55.000 members by Xo\ ember 1921; by 1924 member-
ship went owv llie 10(),(X)0 roster. For the 1921 crop an

57

average 21 cents per pound had been paid for Associa-
tion Burley. Warehouses in Burley districts in Kentucky
and other states had been acquired by the Association
which also graded, redried and stored tobacco. For the
first six years of its existence the Association sold more
than 100 million pounds annually.

Then, from about 1925, members began to withdraw
from the Association and from other pooling organiza-
tions. There were several reasons for the lack of mem-
bership interest and the consequent decline of coopera-
tive groups. Chief of these lay in the simple fact that a
farmer selling directly at auction was paid at once for
his product. When his leaf went to the cooperative pool
he had to wait for a brief period after it was sold. A
majority of Association members refused to sign a new
five-year contract in 1926, whereupon the organization
discontinued its operations. Yet it retained its properties
and continued its corporate structure.

T

he modern look

The last hogsheads of leaf sold at auction in Kentucky
had been rolled off the warehouse floors during the 1929-
1930 season. No one, except perhaps the coopers, was
sorry to see them go. In varying sizes they had been on
the farm scene in tobacco colonies since their earliest
settlements. They had made the primitive routes for land
passage that developed into major highways. Now that
they were gone, everyone concerned with growing and
selling tobacco agreed that loose leaf in hands, placed in
baskets on auction floors, looked better, smelled "sweet-
er," and sold better than in hogsheads.

Other changes were taking place. For some time the
area just south of Henderson had been known as the
"stemming district," as tobacco from that section had

58

c

had tlie woody stem and midrib removed (stemmed)
before packing. Nearly all of this fire-cured leaf, pro-
duced in northwestern Kentucky, was exported to Eu-
rope. But by 1949, when its harvests had been reduced
to under 1()0,()()0 poinids— it had been even lower in tiie
earlier '40's — cultivation of this type was abandoned.
Green River tobacco and fire-cured types from other
Kentucky areas were as acceptable to foreign buyers and
domestic manufacturers of snuff.

ounsel, controls, cooperation

Several efforts had been made in the early 1930's to
revive tobacco-farmer cooperatives. A few got off to a
flourishing start but none of these early successes was
maintained.

Government interest in the agrarian and economic
problems of farmers became intensified during tlie de-
pression years and developed into programs of allot-
ments and price supports. Tobacco as a basic com-
modity, soil conservation, parity, the AAA and the
Commodity Credit Corporation, marketing quotas and
referendums were terms and conditions that became
part of the lives of farmers and sometimes a part of
their vocabuhu)'.

Somehow, through the years of adjusting themselves
to government counsel and controls, busy tobacco farm-
ers found time to get to meetings wliere their economic
status was under discussion. As a result of such meetings
the practical operations of the twenty-year-old Burley
Tobacco Growers Cooperative Association were re-
newed in 1941. Other tobacco-farmers' organizations
followed and now work closely witli go^ermnent agen-
cies that are concerned witli agricultiual prices under
the federal stabilization program.

59

T.

lie Burley flavor

During the decade to 1970 there was a higher yield
per acre from Kentucky's tobacco farms though acreage
dropped from 197,000 acres to 143,000 acres. Good
leaf prices prevailed. Domestic cigarette production
rose to about 575 billion in 1971. In the same period
filter-tip cigarettes went from 52 percent of the market
to 80 percent.

Consumer use of all tobacco commodities rose or
was maintained in recent years. Kentucky leaf is to be
found in all of these products. The latest official esti-
mate of domestic cigarette consumption in 1971 records
an advance to over 550 billion. Americans are maintain-
ing their reputation as the largest consumers of tobacco
anywhere and they clearly show their preference for
what is still referred to in the States as "the Burley
blend."

From the earliest period of settlement tobacco has
had a powerful influence in shaping the economic and
social life of the Bluegrass State.

Its potential as a commercial crop furthered emigra-
tion from other parts of the Union and from Europe for
many decades. Its realization as a salable agricultural
product was an important element in fixing settlers in
the soil, in building new towns and roads. Kentucky's
tobacco crops had an exceptional influence in develop-
ing the "new West's " first export trade.

The annual harvests of desirable leaf created markets
that drew buyers from home and abroad. And after
Burley became the major product of Kentucky's farms,
it had the world as its outlet. In the fields, the auction
warehouses, the factories, along the transportation
highways, and in retail shops, Kentucky tobacco re-
mains a vital element in the healthy economic life of
the state.

60

Data on the current tobacco industry in Kentucky have been sup-
phcd by the Agricultural Marketing Service, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture,
and the Departments of Revenue (Program and Research div. ),
Kconouiic Security (Research and Statistics div.), Agriculture, and
Economic Development (Agricultural Development div.), all of
Iventucky. A special note of thanks is due to Ira E. Massie, tobacco
specialist. University (jf Kentucky, College of Agriculture Cooperative
Ivxtension Service. Various recent standard publications of the U.S.
Dept. of Agriculture, the Dept. of Conunerce, the Internal Revenue
Service, and of the Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station, Univer-
sity of Kentucky also provided information on pre.sent-day tobacco
agriculture and conunerce in Kentucky. Of value, too, was the article-
In' John H. Bondurant in Ketituchf Farm and Home Science (Winter
1959).

For material on tobacco agriculture and c oinmerce in the later 19th
and earlv 2()th century the major sources depended on were "Report
on . . . tobacco," by j. B. Killebrew (in tlie lOtii Census, 1880); 77if
Vwductkm of White Burlcy Tobacco, E. J. Kinney, published by the
C'ollege of .\griculture, University of Kentuck) (1930); "Statistics of
.Manufactures of Tobacco," J. R. Dodge (in the 10th Census, 1880),
and Export and Manufacturing Tobaccos of the United States, E. H.
Mathewson, U.S. Bureau of Riant Industry (1912).

The chapters on tobacco by Sanuiel H. Halley in Ilistort/ of Ken-
tucky, W. E. Connelley and E. M. Coulter, ed. Charles Kerr (1922),
were particularly valuable, as was "Th(! Tobacco Trade of Louisville,"
by T. C W'atkins in Memorial History of Louisville, ed. J. S. Johnston
( 1896). Other useful secondary sources were The History of Louis-
ville, B. Cas.seday ( 1852); The Wilderness Trail, C. A. Hanna (1911);
The S})anish-American Frontier, A. P. W'hitaker (1927); Histortj of
Kentucky . . . before 1H03, T Bodley ( 1928); Pioneer Kentucky, W. R.
Jillson (1934); The Black Patch War, J. C. Miller (1936); A Hisiory
of Kentucky, T. D. Clark (1937); Hisiory of Agriculture in the
Southern United States to 1860, L. C. Cray (1941); The Keelboat
Age on Western Waters, L. D. Baldwin ( 1941); The Story of Tobacco
in America, J. C. Robert (1952). and Kentucky Tradition, L. S.
Thomps(m (1956).

The passage on p. 18 is from Steed's Kentucky Tobacco Patch
( 1947); that on p. 26 is from Halley's article in the Kerr edition of
History of Kentucky ( 1922); the (pio'tation on p. 29 is from The Ken-
tucky River \avigation, Mary Verhoelf ( Filson Club. 1917). The
pre.sent-day historian quoted on p. 29 is NN'illard R. Jillson, from his
Kentucky in Anwrican History {c. 1933). The portion of a letter oji
p. 31 occurs in VerhoefT; the quotation on p. 33 is from The Crockett
Almanacs, ed. V. J. Meine ( 1955); that on p. 34 is from Mike Fink . . .
W. Blair and K. J. Meine (c. 1933); the excerpt on p. 35 is from
\erhoetf as is the report on p. 37. BiUings' book, (juoted on p. 46, is
I'obacco. Samuel Halley is the "practic;d ttjbacco man" cpioted on
p. 50. W'atkins' couunent on pp. 50-51 appeared in his article in
Memorial History of Louisville, ed. Johnston (1896). Cobb's Iwok.
(|uoted on p. 54, is Kentucky (e. 1924K The passage on p. 57 is from

thr K.

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