No. 4.] TOBACCO RAISING. 141 



like the same way by the time our next tobacco crop is 

 cured? I trow not. 



There is, I believe, a more excellent way to meet foreign 

 and domestic competition, — one in which the farmer has the 

 chance, at least, to work out his own salvation quite apart 

 from the politician, statesman and economist, and one which 

 crowds no other man unfairly. He can meet it by raising 

 tobacco of better or more acceptable quality in all respects 

 than he has raised before. That is of all the best way, the 

 fairest way and the safest way, and it is a practicable way. 

 The last word has not been spoken about our domestic leaf. 

 We have not done our level best by it yet. We can pro- 

 duce a much better leaf, on the average, through the State 

 than we have yet produced. 



We grow tobacco as our fathers grew it, in the main ; but, 

 just as they added of their experience to what was known 

 before, so we are called on, and particularly called on at the 

 present, to add to this New England tobacco tradition such 

 improvements as our own experience has discovered ; and as 

 the demands of the trade change from time to time, our 

 practice must change to meet this. It is not what we think 

 is prime tobacco, but what the trade demands and will pay 

 for, that we must raise. The trade is calling for goods of 

 the Sumatra type. You and I may hold that there is nothing 

 better than a good broadleaf wrapper, and nothing bitterer 

 than a Sumatra leaf. But if the trade wants Sumatra, that 

 it will have ; if not from us, from some one else. We can- 

 not dictate to the trade ; we must satisfy its whims and 

 fads, whatever the} r are. I say the Sumatra type of leaf is 

 most in demand, — not necessarily leaf grown in the island 

 of Sumatra, nor even grown from seed which came from that 

 island. Judicious plant breeding may yet produce from 

 some other source a leaf equal or superior to the Sumatra 

 type. By the Sumatra type I mean a leaf smaller than the 

 New Enoland Havana, 16 or 18 inches being the most de- 

 sirable length, light to medium colors, with open grain, free 

 burn, great elasticity or " life," and very thin texture. That 

 is what the trade wants to-day, and will have ; and if this 

 demand continues, that is what New England must furnish 



