148 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



the barn and hanging them, after stringing, is any greater 

 than that of cutting, teaming and hanging the plants har- 

 vested in the usual way. 



The plants from an acre of tobacco weigh, as carried in, 

 18,500 pounds, of which 9,500 pounds (4% tons) are stalks. 

 But when the leaves are picked, these 4% tons of stalks stay 

 in the field, instead of being carefully handled and lifted 

 into place in the barn. Only about a fifth of our tobacco 

 was primed, the rest being cured on the stalk, and the work 

 was done by incompetent child labor, as it did not pay, with 

 so little to be done, to make an effort to get effective labor. 

 With 22 leaves to the plant and 40 leaves to a lath, there 

 would be required 6,200 lath to the acre. At the rate paid 

 to effective labor at Tariffville, viz., 20 cents for stringing 

 25 lath, the approximate expense of stringing would have 

 been $49.80 per acre. The prices named would give the 

 girls wages of from $1.35 to $2 per day. An acre of to- 

 bacco, hung in the usual way, requires about 1,300 lath; 

 when the leaves are strung separately, as in our experiment, 

 about 6,200 are needed. The whole cost of the extra 5,000 

 lath should not be charged to one crop. I think 20 per 

 cent of it, or $5.39, might fairly be so charged. 



Regarding the space required for hanging : allowing 8 

 inches between lath when tobacco is hung on the stalk, and 

 5 inches when the leaves only are hung, HbS running feet 

 of hanging poles are needed in the former case, and 2,052 

 in the latter ; but, since two tiers of leaves can be hung 

 where only one of stalks can hang, the disproportion is 

 much less, that is, an acre of primed tobacco takes up as 

 much room in the barn as 1.2 or 1.3 acres of tobacco hung 

 on the stalk. But where there is a considerable acreage of 

 tobacco, as there was at Tariffville, and the harvesting lasts 

 over a period of five or six weeks, two lots of tobacco can 

 be cured in the same barn, the first harvesting being cured 

 and taken down by the time the last harvesting is ready to 

 go in. 



Now, when it is time to take down and strip, the advan- 

 tage is very greatly with the primed leaf. The string can 

 be cut at each end, wound around the butts, thus making a 



