No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 347 



the soil and they got dirt on them. These are called ground or sand 

 leaves. They are not as valuable as the other leaves and conse- 

 quently he makes two grades and in one he puts the ground or sand 

 leaves and all torn, broken or worm eaten leaves, and in the other 

 grade he puts the best leaves. So he takes the tobacco from the 

 stripping table and sorts out all the bad leaves. Usually there is 

 about a proportion of one to six or one to eight of second grade or 

 ground leaves leaves to the best leaves in the crop. Then his next 

 concern is to sort these ditferent grades out according to the length 

 of leaves. That would not show any good sorting (illustrating). 

 But where he has a large bulk usually one man strips off and 

 another sorts and several lay out. He will lay the longest back here, 

 the medium in the middle and the shortest one in front, graded up 

 that way, and then reaching at one side he gets a handful, as much 

 as I have here, and he ties^them up with another leaf, usually taking 

 a leaf out of the second grade, taking about a dozen leaves and 

 making the ends nice and even. There is a difference. Soms growl- 

 ers do it up more carefully than others because in tying up not many 

 growers will make the butts as even as that. You have three to four 

 inches difference in the butt end of the leaves. It shows poor sort- 

 ing. I think it would pay the growers to tie it up neater. He takes 

 it up and ties it with another leaf. That is known as a hank. Some 

 places a hank is called a hand of tobacco. His whole crop is put 

 up that way. Of course, the leaves are uniform in length, maybe 

 a half inch or so variation. In this condition the grower sells it and 

 after it is done up this way he usually bales it up in bales of 50 

 pounds and covers the bales with paper. This is the paper used in 

 baling them. They have baling boxes made especially for certain 

 sizes, about 34 inches by 18 inches each way. The paper is Avrapped 

 around these bales and they are tied with three wraps. Then it is 

 in that condition that the grower sells it to what is called the packer, 

 Kemember this tobacco is what we call green. It would not be fit 

 to smoke. It has the gum on. It has not the color or texture, not at 

 all like the tobacco you find in the cigar shop. It must have good 

 fermentation and sweat in which it will lose twenty per cent, weight 

 going through the sweating and it takes the gum off. This tobacco 

 is sticky. It has the gummy excretion of the leaf which in fer- 

 menting is broken up and dispersed. There are not many growers 

 that sweat the tobacco. Thev sell to the middleman, who does the 

 fermenting and sweating and sells to the manufacturer. And it is 

 done up in hanks like this and tied up in the bales that the grower 

 sells to the packer. Now in Pennsylvania the packer goes from 

 farm to farm and buys the crop. Each farmer is his own salesman. 

 There are some sections where they sell on what is called the block. 

 A farmer may have a large crop and may want to sell at once, 

 and he makes known that Mr. Black will have a public auction. The 

 buyers come there and bid against each other. I believe there they 

 get a more fair price for tobacco than in Pennsylvania, because the 

 packer goes to farmer after farmer and says: "Sell me your tobacco 

 at ten and three. That is all we are bidding and we want your whole 

 crop." "Well, I think I will have to sell for that," the farmer says. 

 And that is the way a great deal of tobacco is sold. It is not l)ought 

 on its merits as much as it should be in Pennsylvania. That Is only 

 the objections in selling. I believe if the grower would do the crop 

 up better he could get better prices for it than he does. 



