MARKETING TOBACCO. 277 



thority by law to reject any bid offered, but in such 

 cases they are charged with the fees. A lien is usually 

 given on the tobacco for warehouse charges and fees. 



Buyers may make reclamations on the inspectors, 

 when the tobacco in the hogshead is inferior to the sam- 

 ples by which it is sold. Each inspector, before enter- 

 ing upon his duties, is required to give bonds for the 

 faithful performance of his duties, and for prompt pay- 

 ment of all reclamations granted. Inspection fees range 

 at 40 cents to $1 per hogshead. At the larger centers 

 of the warehouse system the " breaks," or sales, are at- 

 tended by buyers from all parts of Europe, and the 

 principal cities of America, interested in the export 

 trade, as shown in the illustration, Fig. 79. The 

 methods of conducting these sales are practically the 

 same at other markets, at Cincinnati and Louisville, as 

 may be seen from Figs. 80 and 81. 



Ordinarily, there is keen competition for the better 

 grades of leaf. Sometimes there is a fancy demand for 

 the first of the new crop, or for some special mark, or 

 for some special purpose. An instance in point was the 

 public sale by Mr. S. P. Carr, at the Richmond tobacco 

 exposition of 1888, of a fine hogshead of Kentucky 

 White Burley for the remarkable price of $4,555.90, or 

 at the rate of $3.10 per pound. 



In the Yellow Tobacco Districts of North Carolina 

 and Virginia, the bundles of leaf after stripping are put 

 on sticks and hung in the barn until taken to market, 

 but much leaf goes to market directly from the strip- 

 ping room. Most growers, however, prefer to wait until 

 spring, when the tobacco is ordered and either packed in 

 wagon beds, and thus taken to market, or, what is re- 

 garded as much better, is packed in tierces (as in east 

 Tennessee) about four feet high, three feet in diameter 

 at the smaller head, and three feet two inches at the 

 larger. In such tierces the tobacco is packed loosely, 



