TOBACCO. 565 
an acre consequently would yield on the average 300 pounds of yarn, or 
400 ells of cloth, which is certainly a good result. 
As every plant when cultivated yields more than when in a wild state, 
so can a greater yield be in the course of time expected from nettles. 
Until better machinery is invented for hackling, the nettle yarn is 
more adapted to articles of home consumption, such as bed and table 
linen, sacks, ropes, sails, &c. The nettle is easily bleached and dyes 
well, so that it possesses all the qualities which can be desired. 
Nature has endowed the nettle thus that it might play an important 
role in our domestic economy, and it is certain to stand with honor every 
trial to which it can be put. 
TOBACCO. 
Tobacco, paying to the general government, asit has done, a revenue 
of more than 426 millions of dollars in sixteen years, justly occupies a 
prominent place among the agricultural productions of the country. 
Naturally, we might expect to find the condition of those engaged in 
its cultivation both hopeful and prosperous. As a matter of fact, there 
is no other crop more languishing, or one from which the producer has, 
for the past two or three years, and for even a longer period, derived so 
little profit. 
Our tables show that the annual revenue to the government from 
manufactured tobacco of all kinds has for several years been greater 
than the receipts of the planters from the respective crops of those 
years; the excess in the case of the crop of 1877 reaching the large sum 
of about twelve and a half millions of dollars. 
In view of a contrast so marked, we are at once and irresistibly led 
to inquire into its causes, and to consider whether a remedy may not 
be found. To the tobacco grower himself who looks to this crop (as in 
many sections of the country he is forced to do), as his chief if not only 
“money crop,” the solution of this problem is one of overshadowing 
importance. 
The history of the plant; its histology; the derivation of its name; 
whether Nicot, Sir Walter Raleigh or some other person, was the first 
to bring it to the attention of the civilized world; what are its elementary 
constituents; what its chemical and medicinal properties; these and 
all kindred questions pale into insignificance beside the one pertinent, 
practical inquiry, ‘How may the production of tobacco be made remu- 
nerative to the producer in this country?” 
Turning aside, then, from the early history of this plant, now become 
but little more a luxury than a necessity of life; leaving it to others to 
trace its gradual but steady progress from a limited use, in a crude con- 
dition, by savage tribes, to its present universal adoption in the various 
attractive forms in which it is to-day offered in every land and clime, it 
will be our endeavor in the present article, to show the causes which, 
in our belief, have led to existing low prices, and to point out the way 
by which to escape the like damaging result in the future. 
I.—THE CAUSES OF THE PRESENT DEPRESSION OF PRICES. 
Much of this is to be aseribed, without doubt, to that general stagnation 
in all kinds of business which has made the five years just passed memo- 
rable for all time in the annals of trade. It was not to be expected that 
