Culture of Tobacco.— The tobacco plant may be grown under a wide range of soil and climatic conditions but, on the other hand, the characteristics of the leaf of commercial im portance are greatly influenced -by both soil and climate. These facts explain the existence of so many different commercial types of to bacco each suited to special purposes of manu facture. Cultural methods, also, affect the character of leaf obtained so that these methods are modified in the different districts according to the special requirements of the type grown, although certain general features are common to all sections. The tobacco seedlings must be grown in a specially prepared seed bed which may be either a hotbed or more commonly a cold frame. The soil must be mellow and friable and must be made rich. The time of planting ranges from January in the South through the month of April in Northern dis tricts. The seed are sown at the rate of about a heaping teaspoonful to 25 square yards of seed bed and are covered only very lightly. The beds are covered with glass or with °tobacco to protect the young seedlings. When the seedlings have attained sufficient size, usually 6 to 10 weeks after the seed have been they are transplanted to the field either hand or machine. At the time of trans p anting each plant must be watered unless the T soil is wet. The plants are set in rows three to four feet apart while the distance allowed between the plants in the row varies from 14 to 16 inches for some of the cigar tobaccos up to three and one-half to four feet for the fire-cured type. The character and condition of the soil used for tobacco is of special import ance. Good drainage is essential in all cases. Broadly speaking, cigar wrapper and binder leaf, Maryland tobacco and the flue-cured type are grown on light sandy and sandy loam soils, with sandy or sandy clay subsoils. In New Eng land the Merrimac series of soils are widely used, while in Maryland the Norfolk and in the flue-cured district the Norfolk and Durham series are of special importance for tobacco. In the cigar filler district of Pennsylvania and in the Burley region of Kentucky fertile loams of limestone origin, particularly the Hagerstown loam, are chiefly used. Clay loams of the Miami series are typical tobacco soils of the Ohio cigar filler district. The dark fire-cured and air-cured export and manufacturing to baccos are grown on rather heavy silt and clay loams usually reddish or brownish in color, with clay subsoils. Both the kind and the quantity of fertilizer applied to the tobacco crop are important. An excess of nitrogen injures the quality of the leaf, especially in the case of the flue-cured type. At least a part of the nitrogen should be derived from organic sources such as cotton-seed meal or dried blood. A liberal supply of potash in the form of sulphate or carbonate favors good burning qualities and reduces susceptibility to leaf spot diseases. Chlorine tends to hinder free combustion in the cured tobacco. Only quickly available forms of phosphoric acid should be used in order to ensure proper °ripening') of the leaf. In Connecticut heavy applications of fertilizers furnishing 100 to 150 pounds each of nitrogen, phosphoric. acid and potash per acre are com monly employed while in Southern districts 20 to 40 pounds of nitrogen and potash and 40 to. 80 pounds of phosphoric acid per acre are apt plied to the crop. Barn manure, is widely used in Northern districts. Liming is less es sential for tobacco than for many other crops though possibly beneficial under some condi tions. The soil is tilled for tobacco about the same as for corn or cotton. When the flower head begins to develop or somewhat later the plants are by breaking off the top of the stalk carrying the flower head and upper leaves, in order to force a better development of the leaves remaining on the plant. Cigar wrapper and binder tobaccos, White Burley and Maryland tobacco are topped high, leaving 16 to 20 leaves on the plant, while the heavy fire curedis topped to only 10 to 14 leaves and other types are topped to intermediate heights. The suckers or branches which develop in the axils of the leaf also must be broken off by hand. It is important to harvest the crop at / the right stage of maturity. As the leaves ripen they take on a lighter green color and become more or less mottled with light-colored flecks. They also tend to crack when folded between the fingers. There are two methods in general use in harvesting the crop. In the first method the stalk is cut off near the ground and the inverted plants are attached to four-foot sticks either by means of cord or hooks properly spaced on the sticks, or by forcing the stick through the butts of the stalks by means of a removable metal spear head, or, finally, by splitting the stalks from the top to near the base and simply placing the plants astride the sticks. Each stick carries six to 10 plants and thus laden the sticks are arranged 6 to 12 inches apart on the tier poles of the barn. In the second method the leaves are plucked from the plant as they ripen, beginning at the bottom and taking two to five leaves at each picking. The field is thus gone over three to five times at intervals of a week or 10 days. The leaves are strung on cord by piercing the base of the midrib with a needle or the cord is merely looped around .the basal ends of the leaves. The free ends of the cord are attached to either end of a four-foot stick, each stick and cord carrying 20 to 40 leaves. Curing, which must be carried out under proper conditions of tem perature and moisture supply, is effected in specially constructed curing barns. Three dis tinctive methods are practised, known as air curing, flue-curing and fire-curing. In all cases the process must be so regulated as to develop the desired properties in the tobacco leaf. In air-curing natural atmospheric conditions are largely depended upon and little or no artificial heat is employed. The barns are comparatively large and are provided with a maximum of ven tilation. From three to 12 weeks are required to complete the process of air-curing. This method is applied to all cigar tobaccos, Mary land tobacco, White Burley and the dark manufacturing types. For flue-curing the barns are small in size, tightly constructed and are provided with a system of metal pipes by means of which artificial heat may be freely applied without allowing smoke to come in contact with the tobacco. Heat is applied throughout the curing and the temperature is carefully regu lated, beginning with 90-100° F. and ending with 180° or even 220° F. The whole process is completed in three to five days. In fire-cur ing heat is supplied by making open fires on the floor of the barn, thus allowing the smoke to come in contact with the tobacco, to which it imparts a characteristic odor. The barns should be tightly constructed but they should be pro vided with ventilators. In practice heat is not applied until the tobacco has been hanging in the barn for two or three days and the fires are kept going for only a few days at a time. Alter nate periods of air-curing and firing are thus continued till the curing process is completed. After curing in the barn is completed the to bacco leaf is too brittle to handle without break ing except after a period of damp weather or when moisture is applied artificially. Under suitable moisture conditions the leaf becomes pliable so that the crop can be handled in prep aration for market. After the leaves have been stripped from the stalks they are separated into various grades according to size, color and other important elements of quality. The number of grades made by the grower ranges from two to 10 or more, according to the type and value of the crop. After the grading is completed the leaves are tied into small bundles or °hands° by securely wrapping a folded leaf around the butt ends of the leaves in the bundle. There are several different methods of marketing the various types of leaf tobacco. In the case of cigar tobaccos and, to a limited extent, the dark air-cured and fire-cured types, the buyer in spects and bargains for the crop on the farm, the grower delivering the tobacco at the buyer's receiving warehouse. In the South and, to an increasing extent, in the Western districts the eloose leaf auction system) prevails. Under this system the various grades of the grower are placed in separate lots on the warehouse floor at market centres and sold at auction on a commission basis. In a third system which has been extensively employed, the tobacco, put up in standard containers, is sold from carefully drawn samples without the buyer having seen the contents of the package until delivery has been effected. The sale is made either by auction
or by private bargaining. There are three standard containers in which leaf tobacco is de livered to the manufacturers, namely, the box or case, the bale and the hogshead. Cigar tobaccos are packed in cases and bales and Turkish tobacco, also, is put up in bales, while the bulk of other tobaccos is packed in hogs heads. In all cases, after having been packed, the tobacco goes through an important fermentative or aging process which develops the aroma and otherwise improves the quality. In some cases, however, the tobacco is put through a preliminary, more active fermenta tion in large heaps or bulks before it is packed for storage or transportation. The extent or degree of the fermentation is controlled largely by regulating the moisture contents of the tobacco. The tobacco plant throughout its period of growth is subject to injury by numer ous insect pests and parasitic diseases. Among the more important insect enemies are the cut worm, wireworm, flea-beetle, hornworm and budworm. The cutworm and wireworm are best controlled by rotation of crops and the hornworm and budworm by the use of arsenical insecticides or by hand picking, while no effec tive remedy has been found for the flea-beetle. The tobacco-beetle (not the tobacco flea-beetle), a serious pest in all forms of cured leaf and manufactured tobacco, is best controlled by the use of heat under certain conditions or by fumi gation. As important diseases of the tobacco plant should be mentioned bacterial wilt, con trolled by rotation of crops; root rot, the most effective remedy for which is the use of re sistant varieties; a fusarium root disease, for which a remedy has not yet been developed; "sore shank," a decay of the stem, most ef fectively combated by rotation of crops; mosaic, an infectious disease disseminated by plant lice and other insects and through the handling of diseased plants by laborers; frenching, a malnutrition disease, the exact nature of which has not been determined; leaf spot, of which there are several forms, becoming destructive only under certain environmental conditions. During the curing proces3 and in all subsequent stages tobacco is subject to injury by molds ot decay, which usually can be prevented by proper regulation of the moisture supply.
Production, Trade Movement and Con sumption of Tobacco.—The estimated normal production of tobacco for all countries growing notable quantities is shown in Table I.
The present normal production of tobacco in the United States is placed at 1,150,000,000 pounds, grown on 1,400,000 acres and having a farm value of $1,380,000,000. Nearly all of this crop is grown in 15 States. Kentucky pro duces fully a third of the entire crop and Virginia and North Carolina together produce nearly another third. Lancaster County, Pa, with a production of nearly 40,000,0M pounds, is the banner tobacco-growing county of the United States. The crop as a whole is made up approximately of 28 per cent fide-cured, 25 per cent White Burley and 20 per cent each of cigar leaf and the dark fire cured export type, the remainder consisting of Maryland e]cport and dark-air-cured manufac turing leaf. Considerable quantities of fine cigar and cigarette leaf tobacco are imported into the United States from foreign countries and shipped in from non-contiguous territory. The imports for 1914 as given in Table IV may be taken as representing approximately the nor mal pre-war import requirements of the tobacco industry. The war proved a disturbing factor in the tobacco trade and while the demand was greater than ever before it was not reflected in the inTorts.
From the earliest days of the colonies, tobacco has always been an important article of export in the international trade of the United States. For many years Great Britain has been the heavie,st foreign purchaser of American tobacco. Statistics for the year 1913 may be talcen as indicating the normal distribution of our exports of leaf tobacco. The data are shown in detail in Table V, The international trade of the United States in tobacco manufactures, also, is considerable, the chief items being the imports of cigars from the Philippines and Cuba and the exports of cigarettes to Asiatic countries. In 1917 the im ports of Manila cigars were, in round numbers, 200,000,000, worth $3,863,000. The normal im ports of cigars from Cuba amount from 40,000, 000 to 45,000,000 annually, valued at $3,500,000 to $4,000,000. Approximately 175,000,000 cigars are shipped into continental United States each year from Porto Rico and these cigars are valued at about $6,500,000. Nearly 5,000,000, 000 cigarettes having a value of $9,600,000 were exported to China in 1917 and in 1918 the num ber had increased to some 7,500,000,000, worth over $12,000,000. More than a billion cigarettes, also, are exported annually to the Straits Settle ments. Total exports of plug tobacco and smoking tobacco amount to some 5,000,000 and 2,500,0M pounds, respectively. Our export trade in cigars is of little importance. It now remains to consider the quantity of leaf tobacco consumed in domestic manufactures. The quantities thus used in the manufacture of cigars, cigarettes, smoking and chewing tobacco and snuff are shown in Table VI, for the 10 year period ending with 1917. These figures which are based on reports of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, do not include the quantities of leaf tobacco consumed in bonded manufac turing warehouses. The tobacco consumed in these establishments in 1917 amounted to nearly 18,000,000 pounds.
The output of the various forms of manu factured tobacco produced from the quantities of leaf tobacco consumed, as above indicated, is set forth in Table VII. In addition to the tobacco leaf large quantities of licorice, sugar and other materials are used in the manufac ture of chewing and smoking tobacco. The figures show more or less of an increase in most forms of manufactured tobacco but the outstanding feature of the table is the enormous increase from year to year in the output of cigarettes. In addition to the quantities given in Table VII, which are based on reports of the commissioner of internal revenue, the various forms of tobacco were manufactured to some extent in bonded manufacturing warehouses. There were thus manufactured in 1916 4,594, 662,940 cigarettes and 87,654,149 cigars, making a total output of 29907,149,551 cigarettes and 8,020,264,340 cigars or that year. Thus, the indicated total of cigarettes manufactured in 1917 is in excess of 40,000,000,000.
In 1914 there were 13,951 establishments, with a capital of $303,840,000, engaged in the manufacture of tobacco in the United States. Salaries and wages paid to 195,694 persons en gaged in the industry 'amounted to $99,980,000 and the total value of manufactured products was $490,165,000. Manufactured tobacco is an important source of governmental revenue in the United States. During the decade ending with 1917 the internal revenue collected On tobacco ranged from $49,862,754 in 1908 to in 1916 and k03,201,592 in 1917.
(Naples 1900); • Fairholt, F. W.,