CHAPTEE IX. 



TOBACCO BAKNS AND SHEDS. 



The gradual improvement in the style, convenience 

 and character of tobacco barns and sheds during the 

 past thirty years is very marked in all the tobacco-grow- 

 ing districts of the United States. It was an unusual 

 thing, at that date, to see any other structure in the 

 heavy-tobacco growing region for the hanging and cur- 

 ing of tobacco, except a pen built with logs, which was 

 often shedded with a hip roof, leaving the sheds open. 

 Fig. 26 gives a good idea of these old-fashioned barns. 

 In the cigar-leaf sections, also, the crop, in early times, 

 was hung to dry and cure in any vacant shed or barn, or 

 unused stalls. But with the progress of the crop, these 

 haphazard arrangements have been superseded by sub- 

 stantial buildings known as tobacco sheds or barns, that 

 are constructed for the sole purpose of hanging and cur- 

 ing tobacco. But it will be seen, from the portions of 

 this work on the curing of the various kinds of leaf, 

 that the perfect structure is yet to be devised, though 

 for its purposes Snow's modern barn is certainly a great 

 step in advance. 



BARNS FOR HEAVY LEAF AND MANUFACTURING 

 TOBACCO. 



The size of the old log barns in the South varied 

 from twenty to twenty-four feet square on the inside, 

 containing five to six "rooms." A "room" is the ver- 

 tical space included between two sets of tier poles ex- 

 tending from bottom to top. These tier poles are placed 

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