HO BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



Nevertheless, in the face of these very favorable condi- 

 tions, we have had for years strong and growing competitors 

 and rivals, — and apparently this competition will become still 

 more active. I do not need to enlarge on this. We all 

 know that the cigar makers of this country are using annu- 

 ally 30,000 bales, or over 5,000,000 pounds, of imported 

 Sumatra leaf, which supplants a great deal more than that 

 amount of our New England wrapper leaf, and that this 

 goes on in the face of an import duty of $1.85 per pound. 

 We know, too, that several large concerns in Florida are 

 raising excellent wrappers of the Sumatra type, are packing 

 the crop to closely imitate Sumatra, and are .selling it freely 

 in New York, from Avhich centre it undoubtedly finds its 

 way to factories which are supposed to handle only imported 

 Sumatra. 



But the things we do not know make some of us still 

 more afraid. We do not yet know what Cuba, Porto Rico 

 and the Philippines, with American capital and business 

 methods, can do in producing wrapper leaf, nor on what 

 terms their products will enter our markets a few years 

 hence ; nor do we know what effect the concentration of 

 the tobacco trading and manufacturing business in gigantic 

 trusts will have on the business of the grower of the leaf. 

 It is a time of great uncertainty and not a little apprehen- 

 sion. Tobacco worms and hail and drought and pole-burn 

 are not our only enemies. Competition and the manoeuvres 

 of the tobacco trusts seem just now the more formidable. 



How shall we meet this growing eompetition ? There is 

 a tendency to turn at once to the State or national Legis- 

 lature, whenever things go hard with us, and see if some 

 new law cannot be devised which will relieve us at some 

 one's expense other than our own. But, whether we ap- 

 prove or disapprove of either the principle or the practical 

 working of such protective legislation, in one thing we all 

 agree, namely, that such protection does not always protect, 

 nor fully protect, and is subject to great fluctuations with 

 changes in the administration. For instance, we are now 

 " protected" in a way against Sumatra and Cuba ; but have 

 we any assurance that we shall be " protected" in anything 



