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arket surplus — and remedies 



The early Virginia leaf growers were frequently 

 plagued by overproduction. Events generally regarded 

 as disasters had, therefore, a contrary eflFect. Planters 

 thought it a stroke of good fortune when, during the 

 Second Dutch War, the entire tobacco fleet was cap- 

 tured and burned by the enemy. Tobacco farmers ex- 

 pressed equal satisfaction when, in the same period, the 

 "mighty winds" of 1667 almost entirely destroyed the 

 huge Virginia crop then ready for harvesting. 



Lord Culpeper, the governor, commented in 1681: 

 . . . that which is more to us than all other things 

 put together, and will he the speedy and certain 

 ruin of the colony, is the low price of tobacco. 

 The thing is so fatal and desperate that there is 

 no remedy; the market is overstocked and every 

 crop overstocks it more. It is commonly said 

 that there is tobacco enough now in London to 

 last all England for five years . . . Our thriving 

 is our undoing . . . 

 Sometimes desperate measures were taken to cure the 

 menace of surplus. In 1682, for instance, growers who 

 were enraged at the low price of tobacco, destroyed 

 their own crops and those of hesitant neighbors. Various 

 legislative expedients intended to aid the planters were 

 frequently voided by Parliament, usually on behalf of 

 "the planters' enemies," the London importers. For many 

 years Virginia's chief agricultural industry went through 

 periods of great instability. 



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