Dane County, Wisconsin - Chapter 3: Tobacco, 1905

Chapter 3: Tobacco

Although tobacco is rated as a crop belonging to the later, or diversified period of Wisconsin agriculture, it had its beginning at an early date. The Indians had raised it for a century at least, and it is sometimes held by old settlers that it was from the red men that the notion of growing tobacco in the state originated. This can hardly be proved or disproved; it seems reasonable to suppose that the suggestion might have thus been given, but beyond this the Indian cannot be implicated in the matter. When and by whom, then, was the first tobacco raised in Wisconsin? It is pretty safe to predict that no final answer to the question is to be given. At all events the testimony is abundant and conflicting.

The names most often mentioned in connection with early tobacco growing are those of two brothers, Ralph and Orrin Pomeroy. The facts concerning their history are easily obtainable, and while it seems reasonably certain that they did not raise the first tobacco in the state, they did in all probability raise the first in Dane county, and it was they who gave the industry its permanent footing as a farm crop in the heart of the tobacco section.

It is reported that tobacco was found growing wild on both sides of Lake Koshkonong about 1847.^* This must have been the remains of Indian tobacco patches as the plant is by no means indigenous here. The earliest date claimed for the introduction of the crop is 1838. Hon. E. W. Keyes of Madison, in a letter published in the Wisconsin Tobacco Reporter, November 13, 1885, states that his brother Abel brought some seed from Bing- hamton, New York, to Jefferson county, Wisconsin, and raised a small quantity of tobacco for home use. This makes it appear that tobacco was introduced here as early as in the Miami valley, Ohio, where it became important long before Wisconsin wa3 reckoned among the tobacco-growing states. The next testimony is contemporaneous and gives the status of the new industry in 1840.

"The resources of the west are continually developing. . . . We are informed that a number of inhabitants on Rock River whose granaries have been filled to overflowing the past two years, and who have found it inconvenient to dispose of their surplus products, have resolved to direct their attention to other means of obtaining profit from the products of the soil. Accordingly, the experiment of raising tobacco has been tried the past summer and has been found to succeed beyond expectation. The growth of the plant was astonishingly rapid, and it was brought to perfect maturity and completely ripened about the middle Of August last. Many of the leaves measured three feet in length and twenty inches in width. ... It has been demonstrated that one acre of land can, with the greatest ease, be made to produce one ton of tobacco. The price of one ton at twelve cents per pound would amount to $240. The cost of preparation and manufacture after the crop is gathered is estimated at three cents per pound. . . . The allowance for sowing and cultivation cannot possibly exceed three cents per pound.

"We understand that the prospect of success in the raising of tobacco is regarded in so flattering a light that arrangements are making for engaging extensively in the business the coming season, especially in that section of the country on the Pecatonica and on Rock River, between Beloit and Rockford."**

The interest in this quotation lies principally in the reasons given for launching into the new business. It was a question of transportation : the granaries were full. The price of tobacco was then high and continued so for a long time, and it seems strange that after once getting the idea definitely in mind to raise a crop comprising more value in less bulk, that wheat continued to hold first place for more than a score of years. Tobacco, though for a long time insignificant in quantity, was not wholly dropped. It sometimes happened that assessors failed to get statistics, because there was so Httle tobacco that neither they nor the farmers thought to list it as a farm crop, but a series of discussions and guesses as to the early history of the plant brought out the fact that it had persisted almost from the beginning of Wisconsin farming. Again, we have some light shed on the method of initiating the crop into western society.

" . . . Elias Hibbard (grandfather of the writer) settled at Troy, Walworth county, in 1843. In 1848 he obtained from Connecticut two professional or expert tobacco raisers whom he set at work cultivating the weed. . . . Tobacco was raised on that farm continuously and throughout that section from 1844 to 1866, when prices were so low, and nearly every farmer with two, three, and sometimes, five crops on hand discontinued the business as there seemed to be no market for the stuff. . We raised tobacco for years before it was ever thought of in Stoughton.""

Although not so stated, it is reasonable to suppose that the seed, as well as the growers, came from Connecticut, but this is of small consequence, since the tobacco raised in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Connecticut was approximately of the same variety.

Mention is made from time to time of small quantities of tobacco raised, usually for home consumption, and so far as testing it goes, the possibility of success was pretty early established.**® Little more was said about the matter during the wild scramble for fortunes in wheat, but in the early '50's, when that crop failed both in quantity and price, the tobacco experiments were renewed. Dodge, Kenosha, and Jefferson counties reported small quantities of tobacco in 1851, and in the latter county one farmer estimated that at six and eight cents ?i pound he could clear forty dollars an acre above expenses.^^ These were feeble beginnings, and the conservatism and inherent difficulties attending the establishment of tobacco as a crop stood no show of being overcome in the face of the momentary boom of wheat

^The experiment of raising tobacco in Wisconsin has been tried this season, and succeeded beyond expectation. - "Ndes' Register, LIX, 80 (1840).

prices in 1854. It did, however, seem in a fair way to gain a foothold till in 1858 an early frost all but ruined the crop, and in the following year less than nine thousand pounds were raised. The number of acres is not obtainable but that amount ought not to require above eight or ten acres.

It was not till 1853 and 1854 that tobacco found the spot destined to be its favorite in Wisconsin.*^® It was at the time that the Pomeroys, above mentioned, came from the Miami valley, Ohio, where members of their family had introduced tobacco culture some fifteen years before. This venture in Ohio had proved an unqualified success, and these young men brought with them the thorough knowledge of the business requisite for making a similar record here.

"It was in March, 1853, that Ralph Pomeroy came to Madison from the Miami valley, Ohio, where Pomeroy had previously grown tobacco. In company with J. R. Hiestand they rented ten acres of land of Hiram Hiestand, five miles south-west of Madison on Syene Prairie, at five dollars per acre. The field was planted with the old Connecticut seedless variety. The crop was a fine one - very large growth; estimated to yield at least a ton per acre. To cure the crop they built a two tier pole shed, in the then Ohio style, and borrowed rail fence enough to hang it on with twine, instead of lath [as] at present. . . . The first storm after the crop was harvested drove the shed flat upon the ground, while the rain washed sand down the hill and nearly covered the tobacco. . . . The tobacco was stripped and sold to Dewey and Chapin of Janesville at 3j4 cents per pound. . . . This was undoubtedly the first tobacco ever marketed in the state. . . . The next season [in 1854] they [Ralph and Orrin Pomeroy] raised their first crop of tobacco in Rock county." ^^ That this was the first tobacco marketed in the state is hardly true but the error is unimportant.

We have, then, the independent introduction of tobacco growing by people from at least three diflferent states, yet it would seem that the reasons for attributing its success to the Ohio peo-

However, there had been one attempt by a Connecticut man to raise tobacco near Lake Koshkonong; (which county of the three bordering the lake is not stated) in 1851. It grew well, but was lost in curing. See Wisconsin Tohaoco Reporter, September 25, 1885.

pie are fairly good. It was the Ohio immigrants who happened to enter the section best adapted to tobacco growing ; it was they who persisted in its culture through adverse circumstances; and it was in their communities on "Tobacco Prairie," "Wheeler Prairie," and "Albion Prairie," that the first considerable quantities were raised. It was from these neighborhoods that tobacco culture spread among. the Norwegians who have ever since been its principal cultivators.

During the next ten years the same little farce was played again. In i860 the price was high and it seemed that tobacco was going to be raised in considerable quantities, but again the price of wheat came to the rescue, and the farmers were saved from prosperity. The shutting off of the southern supply of tobacco created a new demand on the northern grown crop but this was no greater comparatively than the increased demand for almost all other farm products. There was a tendency to quit wheat and go into tobacco, but the expense of building sheds, and the question of the required fertilizers were hindrances,^^ and by the close of the war the prices had dropped again* This depression was of short duration and by 1868 the sixteen to twenty cents a pound - in depreciated money of course - was sufficient to coax the growers into new ventures.®^ All went well for two or three years, but in 1871 the price slumped to one-third of that of the year before, and remained below remunerative figures for an entire decade. The acreage naturally declined, reaching low water mark in 1876, when Dane county had hardly more than is now planted in a single town. Again, the new decade opened auspiciously. The price climbed steadily upward and the acreage increased correspondingly, until in 1883 the unprecedented price of a quarter of a dollar a pound was paid by a few reckless buyers. Within the next two years the acreage had doubled. Men who knew nothing of the business beyond the startling fact that more than three hundred dollars had been made on a single acre in one year, became growers on a large scale.'* The beginners always produce a poor quality and are thus a constant menace ta the business; but, seeing their neighbors reap more profits from a ten acre lot than they themselves had received from a quarter section, it is little wonder that a large number were willing to stake their holdings on the lottery.** The inevitable happened: over production, poor quality, disgust - and the year 188(5 saw the quantity reduced as abruptly as it had been increased. The price began at once to recover, and at a fair level remained remarkably steady for half a dozen years. The acreage responded, but in a modest manner, and it was fourteen years before the mark set in 1885 was again touched. It was under this steady, but solid growth that tobacco won a permanent and dignified place in Wisconsin husbandry. Yet for the fifth time the middle of the decennial decade brought a depression. The prices in 1895 were only about half as high as in 1890 and the acreage followed approximately the same ratio. As in each of the other decades the closing years brought a gradual recovery and at the -end of the century the price was high and the acreage twenty-five per cent, beyond that of the preceding prosperous periods.**

It is a remarkable fact that with all the excitement over the increase and spread of tobacco culture it is confined to a very limited area. In 1898, approximately a quarter of the entire crop of the state was raised in the four southeastern towns of Dane county; in 1899^ these towns raised a fifth of the entire crop of the state. Had it so happened that the southeastern quarter of Dane and the northern part of Rock had fallen within the lines of one county as it might easily have done, a full half, or even more, of the Wisconsin tobacco crop would regularly be reported from a single county. The question of accounting for this has met with varying solutions. Is it a social question? Manifestly not ; for as we have seen before there were plenty of men from tobacco growing states other than Ohio, scattered over the southern part of Wisconsin, who began the culture of the plant. Neither can it be explained on the basis of Norwegian settlements, for there are plenty of these industrious foreigners in other parts of Dane county and of the state. The slight differences in climate are wholly inadequate to settle the matter, so we are, perforce, driven for the explanation to the other main element in agriculture, viz. : - the soil. It may be seen by comparing a geological map of the United States with a map showing the tobacco areas that the limestone valleys and the tobacco districts in a rough way coincide. This is particularly true in Massachusetts, New York, and Ohio. Southern tobacco need hardly enter into our discussion, since it is of an almost entirely different quality and does not compete to any serious extent with the northern grown leaf. Northern tobacco, it may here be stated, is valuable for its leaf primarily. It is used in making cigars, and the size and texture and color of the leaf are of much more consequence than the flavor. To produce those qualities the soil must be rich, and of such a nature as to permit a very rapid growth in a latitude so high that the summers are but about three months between the frost dates. The quality of soil best for tobacco is discussed at length in the tenth Census Report and the statements there made are fairly well borne out by the subsequent history of the crop. The leading tobacco journal of the state sums up the matter of soils about as well as it can be done in a few lines : -

"There are three classes of soils recognized by the tobacco growers of Wisconsin. First, the calcareous sandy; second, clayey soils, light and dark, and third, prairie soils. The first produces a plant that matures a week or so earlier than the others ; the leaf is apt to be light in color, elastic, thin, and silky. On quite sandy soil the leaves often grow rough, lack tenacity and very often [are] devoid of the main essential, gum or finish, as it [is] more commonly called. Clay soils varying from light to heavy grow a good quality when not too heavy, and well drained. The timber growth of this soil with a hazel undergrowth, after the second or third crop, will produce the very finest quality of leaf grown in the state. On heavy clay the tobacco seems inclined to grow too thick and coarse. The third class of soils, prairie, produces by far the greatest proportion of Wisconsin leaf. It is naturally rich, deep and black, and when well drained, as most of it is, the very best results are obtained. . . . The soil lies loose and requires less cultivating than clay soils and is less liable to wash. The largest yields per acre are obtained from prairie soils."*' cast is to be preferred. But whatever the color or quality of the soil, if it is thin and lies upon a cold subsoil which is saturated with water until late in the season it is useless for tobacco, for the plant will not grow with a chill at its roots."*® This brings out the fact that tobacco land cannot be chosen by a novice, and that even the best of judges depend more upon experiment than upon any preconceived notions. It would seem to the writer after an extended trip through the tobacco district that the above observations as to the color of the soil are hardly warranted, and that more stress might be laid on the excellence of the "sandy calcareous" soil.

The different classes of soils here enumerated are not mutually exclusive, for some of the prairie is also of a calcareous nature, and when this happens to be the case it no doubt constitutes the choicest of tobacco land. Within the limestone area of Wisconsin a more specific classification of tobacco soils can be made. Of the four principal limestone soils, two are used for tobacco growing: the Trenton, and the Lower Magnesian. These soils have more friable loam than is found in the higher and more rugged Galena limestone and are better drained and richer than the Niagara limestone. Neither the Potsdam nor the St. Peters sandstone districts have become important in tobacco production.

Rotation And Fertiuzation

Shall tobacco be raised for a long number of years on the same ground or not, is a question that growers are still asking rather than answering. So far as practice goes there cannot be said to be at present any regular system of rotation. Tobacco land requires so much manure, and the manure used is of such a crude kind that it would be folly to attempt the preparation of a new tobacco plot every year or two. It is no small undertaking to get a piece of ground ready for tobacco, as can be easily understood by any one who comprehends the high state of tilth and fertility to which it must be brought. Tobacco of good quality can be raised on the same land year after year, and the cumulative effect of the manure makes it possible to produce a given quantity with less expense than where a new piece is taken each season. The amount of manure used varies greatly, but it is safe to say that very few farmers who grow tobacco put fertilizer on any other field, and for the most part, they "buy, borrow, and steal" every available load for miles around. A wagon load is a very indefinite quantity but it is usually estimated that somewhere from twenty-five to a hundred loads must be put on each acre each year. Thus it often happens that the cash expenditure for manure is ten, twenty, or thirty dollars per acre, while the labor of getting and applying it would amount to an equal or greater sum. Commercial fertilizers have not been used in any important quantities, though their qualities and cost are often a subject of debate. Wood ashes are always in demand, as it has been found that they have a good effect when mixed with other fertilizer. The value of ashes lies, of course, in the potash which they furnish and this is of consequence in growing a crop which produces a great quantity of leaf. The same principle explains the preference of tobacco growers for horse manure, it being rich in phosphates which are also needed in growing a leaf crop. The result of this heavy fertilization is that the soil becomes surfeited with nitrates, by far the most expensive plant food, yet these ingredients in excess usually are unfavorable to grain or grass. Another important reason for keeping tobacco on the same ground year after year is the freedom from weeds of a piece of land where it has so long been sure death for a weed to show its head. In many old tobacco fields the plowing and other cultivation done in the spring and again in the late fall keep the weeds so thoroughly subdued that little trouble is experienced during the short growing season of mid-summer.

For a long time it was believed that no system of rotation was needed and even yet an occasional field may be found where tobacco has been raised continuously for fifteen or twenty years, and very many of them where no break has been made in its tenure for a decade. But in general it may be said that six or eight years is as long as it is kept on a single plot, and since few growers have been in the business longer than the extent of two such periods there can be little said of the tendency to turn a piece of land back into a tobacco field after it has once been changed to something else.

way. Occasionally a tobacco grower asserts that proof is available to show that more rotation will result in better crops. "Instead of planting the old fields again try a fresh field. If the grower has not a piece of cleared woodland, try the pasture lot or any rich land that has never before been into tobacco. The most satisfactory results, however, have been obtained from woodlands that have been cleared and the virgin soil has yielded some beautiful tobacco. It is the fresh soil that g^ves the open grain leaf, so much in demand at the present time."*^ Yet as late as May 13, 1892, the same writer had given advice the very opposite of this: "Equally fine crops have been grown on land upon which tobacco has been raised after tobacco for a series of years, and if you have a small piece of land such as is described above,*® better results will be obtained by keeping it in tobacco year after year, fertilizing it highly, than to change."

Almost without exception com is the crop to succeed tobacco, and unless it be in very dry years the yield is remarkably large. The abnormal amount of nitrogen in the soil is taken care of by the corn and there is not the danger of an excessive growth of leaf and stalk, which would almost certainly prove the ruin of a crop of small grain. Corn is usually planted on such ground several years in succession, and then clover or grass, though small grain may be introduced earlier in the series if the nitrates seem to be sufficiently reduced to warrant it.

With such a plethoric condition of an old tobacco field in mind, it is hard to convince any man who wants to grow tobacco that the crop is one which exhausts the soil. Almost without exception the growers claim that tobacco takes less from the soil than do potatoes, or com, or wheat, arguing that the leaves draw their substance principally from the air. No doubt they have heard that leaves do get their carbon from the air, but carbon has little in common with nitrates, phosphates, and potassium compounds, and the man who can show that these substances are taken from the air directly by tobacco will be entitled to a rare medal. A few comparisons tell the story:

*It takes bad bntter to contain more than one-half per cent, of *' nitrojg'enons matter/ and this will have a very small percentage of nitrates. At the Wisconsin Experiment Station it has been estimated that five cents' worth of fertilizer is lost in

No one denies that raising grain year after year upon a farm will eventually reduce its fertility, even cheese has the same tendency, while butter has the least to answer for in that regard of any important farm product. There is more plant food taken from the farm in one ton of tobacco than in a hundred tons of butter, or, there is as much plant food taken from a single acre of tobacco in a year as will be carried off in all the butter that can be produced on the largest farm of Dane county.

It may as well be acknowledged that tobacco is a crop that keeps up a continual drain on the soil, and facing this proposition, consider whether or not it pays. The fact that the soil in the tobacco district is as rich, or richer, than in other parts of the state is not a pertinent argument. It is due to two causes: First, the soil in this district is the best in the state; second, the tobacco growers have exerted themselves to the utmost to keep it up to a high standard; they have utilized the available fertilizers to an extent unknown in other sections. But the test is one that cannot be made in a few years, and much more intelligent judgment can be passed on the matter after the duration of tobacco culture can be reckoned in quarter-century periods than now when it is a matter of only a fraction of that time. From the experience of the old tobacco states but one conclusion can be reached: Tobacco is an exceedingly exhausting crop, and the question of keeping up the fertility of the soil is an everpresent problem.

After all, the area planted to tobacco is small ; in Dane county it is only about ten per cent, of the acreage once sown to wheats and when the whole state is considered it drops to a small fraction indeed. In the towns where the most is raised the ratio to the whole area has never equalled one to ten; yet the most enthusiastic tobacco men are continually advising the grower to plant less, and not more. A prominent tobacco dealer of Stoughton who was for years engaged in growing tobacco on his own land estimates that five acres is as much as can profitably be grown on an eighty-acre farm. This would allow but 1,440 acres in a town were it equally distributed over the entire extent, but such a distribution can never be made, and in order to reach that amount in the aggregate many eighty-acre farms produce twenty or, more acres each year. In 1893, with an acreage very much less than at present, and with prices almost as good, our tobacco editor, so frequently quoted, is eloquent in his appeal to his constituents to go into dairying as a means of keeping up the fertility of the tobacco fields, especially as an antidote to over-production, against which, as an imminent catastrophe, he forever warns them.*®

In the first place the ground must be in process of preparation some months in advance. A few years ago it was customary to plow once in the fall and twice in the spring, but at present one plowing is considered sufficient, and this is done but a short time before planting. If tobacco has been raised on the land the previous year some mode of cultivation to prevent a second growth IS desirable, and a disc harrow is a satisfactory tool for the work. Manure is spread upon the ground any time during the fall, winter, or spring. Occasionally a top dressing, is applied after the ground is plowed, but does not seem a very popular method. One of the most important considerations of the whole process of tobacco growing is to have the ground in good shape before the crop is planted. It must be mellow and warm.

skill with which it is prepared and tended. Much theorizing and experimentation have been done in this connection, but in a general way it may be said that the best results are obtained from an outdoor bed made in some sheltered spot as soon as the weather will permit in the spring. It was at one time thought of great consequence to burn some brush on the bed in order to destroy weed seed and animal life in the soil, but this is practiced very much less of late. As early as the danger of hard freezing is past the seed, which has already been sprouted, is sown in the bed, and canvas is stretched over it as a protection against wind and frosf. The seed used should be entirely free from weed seed, as all weeds must with scrupulous care be kept out, and it is difficut to pull any great number of them without injuring the small and tender tobacco plants. When the little plants are about two inches high the cloth covering is taken off and they become toughened somewhat by exposure to the sun and wind. It is of great importance to have them ready for setting at the first moment the weather seems to permit, which is usually during the first half of June; they must be large enough to handle and if they are kept in the bed long after the proper size - from three to five inches in height - is reached they lose rapidly in vigor.

Transplanting has been greatly simplified by the invention of the machine for doing the work. As in the case of the gra?n binder, this machine came at a time when there was great demand for such a device on account of the increased quantity produced, the high price paid for the product, and the extreme difficulty of getting the requisite amount of desirable help at the critical moment. The first trial recorded in Wisconsin took place at Janesville in 1885, the machine being the invention of Mr. Maurice Smith of Farley, lowa.*^^ Although many improvements have since been made, the description of this first machine gives a good idea of those now in use : -

"The machine proper is a carriage having attached in front a roller, and just back of that two blades, which together make a small furrow in the ground and throw the earth to one side. Two boys sitting just behind these blades drop the plants about thirty inches apart, with the roots lying in this furrow. A scraper under the boys throws loose dirt over the roots, and a wheel on the back of the truck presses down the loose dirt. The attachment for watering the plant is a box set on the axle, a hose leading from the box to the ground, and a valve opened and closed by an eccentric on one of the large wheels. It works very well, and instead of soaking the surface, waters only at the root of the plant. With boys accustomed to feeding, the plants should be set very well, and it is said that a man and two boys, with this machine, can set as many* as eight or ten can by hand. The great beauty of the setter, however, lies in the fact that when the farmer has his field ready, he can go right ahead and put out the tobacco, not having to wait for rain. With this alone to recommend it, if some automatic feed can be arranged, the invention will be an invaluable one for the grower. - Janesville Gazette/"^^

The automatic feed has not yet been provided and the tobacco planters seem well satisfied with the machine as it is. One of the most gratifying features of the transplanter is the manner in which the watering is done; the water is applied at the roots of the plant and the fine dry soil, gently pressed down by the wheel at the rear, seldom results in "puddling," which so often gave trouble when the setting and watering were done by hand.

A writer in 1881 called the hoe "the most important implement in the tobacco field," for at that time the greater part of the cultivation was done in that primitive way, but by 1885 the hand hoe was almost entirely put out of business by the horse hoe. At present the usual practice is to go over the field once by hand to cut out the few weeds missed by the cultivator, but this is a light task. The horse cultivator is put at work almost as soon as the plants are set and there is little chance of using it too often up to the time the leaves are in danger of injury. Tobacco grows rapidly, sometimes being ready to harvest in less than two months after planting, and there is little time to be lost, for unless it be kept moving along at a swift rate it is likely to be caught by the frost.

Pruning, i. e., removing the lower leaves during the growing period, has been discontinued. Harvesting is done rapidly as there are but a few days from the time the crop is ready until it begins to lose in quality. All members of the family work early and late until the last load is in the shed. The women and girls do the cutting, the small children the piling, the boys string it on lath, and the men haul it to the shed, the whole process being done in a single day when the weather is favorable.

It is after the crop is in the shed that the real trouble begins.^* Pole-rot, shed-burn, strutting, etc., etc., keep the owner on the anxious seat till at last the stripping and sorting is done, the crop sold, and the money in his pocket. The cost of raising is estimated roughly at sixty or eighty dollars per acre.

Variety And Quality

The variety of tobacco grown is almost entirely the Spanish, the "seed-leaf" going out pf favor with the decline in price during the '8o's, since which time very little of it has been planted.

Wisconsin growers have never been able to produce as fine an article as is grown in the eastern states. In 1879, New England tobacco graded fifty per cent, wrappers, Wisconsin less than thirty per cent.; in 1889 ^^^ percentages^* were about the same, and they have not changed materially since. Nor is this all ; the Wisconsin wrappers invariably sell at half, or less, than wrappers from Connecticut ; in fact, a considerable share of "Wisconsin wrappers" are not wrappers at all but sell as "binders."

Whether or not the tobacco industry is still an infant, it has required as tender nursing by the politician as by the farmer, and shows no symptoms of being able to stand alone. It was the tariflF of war times that gave the industry its first importance, and with all the discussion as to seed, and sheds, and land, and labor, the tariff has continued to be the sine qua non of tobacco culture. In

"The shed Is nsuallj twentj-siz feet wide and sixteen feet bigb. Eyerj fonrth board is bung on hinges for ventilation. A shed of this height holds f onr tiers besides those bung in the gable ; twenty to twenty-four feet In length holds the crop from one acre, and costs about one hundred dollars.

1882 petitions were sent to congress asking that the tariff on Sumatra leaf be raised from thirty-five cents to a dollar a poimd. In 1884 it was predicted that, in case the proposed reduction of twenty per cent, on import duty should pass congress, tobacco growing in Wisconsin would become a memory.*'*^ In 1890 the Sumatra wrappers were taxed two dollars a pound and the Wisconsin growers complained that it had not been set at two-fifty or two-seventy-five in order to protect them against the product of slave labor of the Orient. A small cut in tariff rates under the Wilson Act, in conjunction with the powerful stimulus to overproduction just preceding, worked havoc with prices, and a new application of the beneficent remedy was demanded. The Milwaukee Sentinel in 1894, commenting on the depression in the tobacco trade, took occasion to remark that dealers and growers were principally Scandinavians and Americans, with a small sprinkling of Germans and Irish, but they were alike in one respect - all Republicans - and adds that it would be strange were they anything else, for the tobacco industry would soon become a thing unknown without protective tariff. A little before this a tobacco grower in addressing a Farmers' Institute remarks that **if the present policy is continued it will be only a short time till the bottom is completely knocked out, and with the present free trade tendencies of the times ... the prospects of the tobacco growers are not overloaded with rainbow tints." But during the Spanish War the growers had conscientious scruples against letting "the constitution follow the flag," and in a memorial to congress protesting against annexation of any islands, solemnly resolved that: "a government can only derive its just powers from the consent of the governed." The last note in this politico-economic refrain was sounded at a convention at Janesville, October 31, 1901, where it was resolved: "That it is expedient for the tobacco growers of the state of Wisconsin to form a State Association, whose head-quarters shall be at Madison or Edgerton, and whose primary object shall be to unite with other similar organizations in protecting the leaf industry of the state." ^«

It is believed by many that the high price of land in Dane and neighboring counties is chiefly owing to the tobacco industry. There is an element of truth in this, but it is far from being all truth. Between 1880 and 1885, the period when tobacco culture made its greatest gains, the price of land did make remarkable advances. On section 20, Christiana, a farm which sold near the beginning of this period for forty dollars an acre was later divided up into smaller lots, and with no improvements, some of the forties sold at a hundred dollars an acre. Numerous instances might be given from which, if taken alone, it would appear that tobacco was responsible for about all the advance in land values for the past twenty years. But it may also be shown that worn out wheat farms in the southwestern part of the country sold as low as ten dollars in the '70's and came up to twenty, forty, and fifty, within the next twenty years when turned into dairy farms.''^ Moreover, the average value of land in Windsor and Bristol is about equal to that of Albion and Christiana,*^® yet the former towns have been insignificant in tobacco production. Again, it is instructive to notice the value of land at some distance away; four hundred miles directly west of Dane county, in the northwestern part of Iowa, ordinary farms are selling as high as seventy-five dollars per acre, and it is a half-day's ride on a train to the nearest patch of tobacco. If all these prices are even indirectly the result of tobacco growing the western farmer has no cause to complain of the tobacco tariflF. The fact of the matter is that a complexity of causes has resulted in the rise in price.

As to the higher price given for choice tobacco land there can be no dispute, but where the land is not already in shape for planting, the premium paid for it is not great. It takes very little figuring to see that a man wishing to go into tobacco culture can aflFord to pay for the superior richness of the soil which repeated applications of manure afford. A twenty-acre farm with even modest improvements in the way of buildings, and with half, or more, of the land brought up to the highest point of fettility can

"As an instance of this a farm In the town of Vermont, Section 25, sold for eleven dollars per acre in 1873, and is easily worthy fifty dollars now. "See chapter on Land Values.

not be fairly compared in price per acre with a dairy farm ten times its size. In the one case the selling price is half contained in the improvements, in the other the improvements make a much smaller percentage. The possibility of a large income from a few acres has induced many foreigners to pay a hundred dollars an acre for small pieces of land, thus getting a home with a small absolute indebtedness.

Although in nowise responsible for the introduction of tobacco culture, the Norwegians are the main growers and have been almost from the beginning. It so happened that these people settled in Christiana and Albion at a very early day, and during the years of the great Norwegian immigration there were always great numbers of new arrivals, with large families and no money, keenly on the lookout for an opportunity to earn a living and get homes of their own. Here was a rare chance. They could buy a small piece of land on time, or become "sharemen"^" and plant some one else's land to tobacco, the landlord furnishing all the capital; the tenant doing all the work; and each getting half the crop when ready for the market. This was an especially good thing, in view of the fact that a large part of the labor required in growing tobacco is such as can be done by women and children. The Norwegians knew nothing about tobacco culture before coming here, but they soon became experts, and the same reasons that turned their attention in this direction at first have kept them in the business. Their standard of life was frugal; few comforts, fewer luxuries, rigid economy, and hard work have brought many of them up from poor sharemen to owners of hundreds of acres. The Americans who grow tobacco usually plant a few acres on a larger farm, while the small farms, which are the distinctive tobacco farms, are held by Scandinavians.

Other parts of the county toward the tobacco section that he is coming to land worth a quarter or a half more than that which he has been viewing.

In the dairy and general farming districts the houses are large, well painted, often as fine in appearance as average city residences, the barns have a capacious, substantial look, and the whole homestead gives the impression of prosperity and comfort. In the tobacco section the houses are little more than a story in height, and are often in poor repair ; there can hardly be said to be any barns, and the omnipresent tobacco sheds are seldom painted or shingled. Nor is this all; the crops, other than tobacco, present rather a neglected aspect. At the time of my visit, when almost every acre of corn in other parts of the county was in the shock, and the fall plowing well under way, there was not a quarter of the corn in the tobacco district cut, and hardly a furrow of the stubble ground had been turned. This was as late as September 20th, and the corn was long past its best as a fodder crop, though the tobacco farmers expressed themselves in favor of late-cut corn. Mr. F. A. Coon of Edgerton writes of the tobacco crop : "It is a great monopolist of manure and attention. If any crop is neglected it is not the tobacco crop. That must be cultivated and fertilized even though the corn is wrapped in grass, or the hay crop suffers for want of cutting, ... it is usually the petted crop." This testimony is from one of the strongest friends of the plant, yet it can be duplicated at pleasure, and any observer who does not happen to approve of the business will express the same sentiment in stronger terms. It is not denied that many men have become rich growing tobacco, but it is by no means self-evident that they have done better than their neighbors who have farmed on other lines ; they, too, have grown rich, as wealth is counted among farmers. Often, side by side, two farmers have lived for twenty years, the one growing tobacco continuously, the other raising com and cattle, and as they are both about to retire it is remarked that one is worth as much as the other and the opportunities have been equal. This proves very little either way, but it does seem to show that there are as great possibilities in ordinary farming and dairying as in the much-lauded tobacco farming.

buildings merely good enough to answer the purpose. It is also urged that many of the tobacco growers began with nothing and cannot be expected to pay for such high-priced land and put on good improvements all within a few years. There is some truth in both of these arguments, but the fact remains tliat the other parts of the county have more of the appearance of permanent prosperity. A system of farming which encourages investment in land for the hopes of big returns and no work, as seems to be the case where land is held by a man living in town, and let out to sharemen, can hardly be commended from either an economic or a moral standpoint.

Acreage And Prices

For the following tables no minute accuracy is claimed. The acreage figures are taken from statistics given in the reports of the secretary of state ; they were compiled from the assessors' books, made out in May of each year, and, therefore, based on estimates of what was intended to be planted. The census enumerators invariably find more acres than do the assessors, and this is hard to account for unless it be that there is less reserve on the part of the farmer in dealing with an officer whose duties are of a scientific nature and in no wise connected with taxation. No doubt there are many inaccuracies in the best of these figures, as tobacco fields are so often small and irregular and seldom accurately measured. There are still greater difficulties in getting representative prices. Each year there is some tobacco which sells for a cent or two a pound, and any attempt to average such extremes is useless. The prices given are for good grades, the highest prices are not quoted and the very lowest are not considered at all. For the years previous to 1870 the data are very meager; since that time price lists are abundant. The average given for 1862-1865 is an estimate made by a government statistician. However, the table is sufficiently accurate to show the general tendency of prices over the main tobacco period.

^Complete returns were not available far the early period of tobacco raising* These numbers represent the number of pounds produced In entire state. The acreage relates to Dane.