568 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 
in quality, yet commanded an almost unprecedentedly high price. A 
commodity may be so scarce as to sell well despite its inferiority. Such 
was the case with tobacco at that time, the crop being but a little more 
than half the crop of 1877. But when the commodity is both poor and 
excessively abundant, as is tobacco now, there can be no reasonable hope 
of other than ruinously low values. 
The remedy found, it remains only to determine the proper manner in 
which to apply it. The first step, without doubt, is, as the doctors say, 
to “reduce the swelling,” 7. ¢., diminish the area. This done, the heavy 
applications of home-made manures indispensable (all new ideas to the 
contrary notwithstanding) to the production of the best tobaccos be- 
come more possible. More than ever in the reduced number of all kinds 
of farm stock kept and able to be kept in many large tobacco-producing 
States do the planters of to-day find it difficult to collect the requisite 
amount of stable and barn-yard manure. Less than ever are they able 
to purchase the commercial article. Ordinarily, therefore, whenever the 
planter begins to increase materially the size of his tobacco lots, that 
moment does he commence to dilute, so to speak, his manure-heap and 
to employ a method of long division in its distribution that can, by no 
possibility, result in anything else than thin, trashy, undesirable, and 
hence unsalable tobacco. 
It is said by some that heavy manuring is injurious to certain kinds 
of cigar or seed-leaf tobacco, and: perhaps to “ bright wrappers” and 
the like. We question the accuracy of this statement, and are quite 
sure that, with respect to the great bulk of tobacco in the large produc- 
ing States, an area which it is possible to make rich, an area reeking as 
it were with fertility, is the only area on which a paying crop of tobacco 
can be made. Good seasons, thorough preparation, nice cultivation, 
careful “worming and suckering,” and intelligent, painstaking curing 
and after-manipulation go a long way, undoubtedly, toward the produe- 
tion of a good article; but they are all of little avail if the crop has 
been planted on poor land that has not been aided by a fertilizer of 
some sort; and even this would not be acomplete remedy, for, to obtain 
the best results, land for tobacco should be friable as well as fertile, and 
this condition of soil, it is well known, can be attained only by gradual 
approach. It may be stated as an axiom that poor land, however abund- 
antly manured, will not make first-class tobacco the first year: 
The first step, then, toward recovery will have been taken by the planters 
of the country when they shall have circumscribed their crops within areas 
which have been brought to the highest state of fertility. That such has 
not hitherto been the prevailing condition of areas is evidenced by the 
small average yield per acre in nearly every large producing State. For 
the decade ending with 1878 that average was but about 700 pounds. 
This in itself is sufficient proof that the quality of the tobacco was poor. 
Twelve hundred pounds per acre would seem to be the minimum of profit- 
able production; but even this amount falls far short of what should be 
aimed at, and what can readily be grown under average conditions ot 
weather. Indeed it would be difficult to fix the limit to the possible pro- 
duction of tobacco from one acre of ground in the highest state of fer- 
tility and with but ordinarily propitious seasons. Twenty-five hundred 
pounds are known to have been produced—twenty-five hundred pounds, 
which, we are safe in asserting, could not have been bought then, and 
would not be sold to-day if on the market, for the insufficient sum of 5.6 
cents per pound, the average price at present. 
With our limited space we cannot now undertake to follow this crop 
“from the seed to the warehouse,” by describing in detail the many and 
