up to the period of the American Revolution, reports 

 of the quantities of tobacco shipped from Virginia show 

 a steady advance except for a few years of crop failure. 



Excessive concentration on a single crop and the ex- 

 portation to England of leaf that was sometimes of poor 

 quality resulted first in a 1619 law prohibiting the ship- 

 ping of "trash" tobacco. A regulation in 1621 restricted 

 each planter to harvesting only 9 leaves from each of 

 1,000 plants. This was intended to yield a net of 100 

 pounds. By various expedients planters learned how to 

 evade these measures, which were frequently reaffirmed 

 or revised. 



Inspection warehouses were established in 1633 but 

 control efforts were generally ineffective for a century. 

 Such terms as market surplus, quotas, crop control, allot- 

 ments, plowing under and others now familiar in current 

 American agriculture were not used in 17th century 

 Virginia. Similar conditions existed then; only the terms 

 were different. 



Jeaf pays the bills 



The colony's economic dependence on a single staple 

 resulted in an imperfect barter system. Tobacco became 

 a monetary basis for goods and services, and frequently 

 replaced currency. The system was cumbersome and it 

 was unsound owing to occasional fluctuations in the 

 market value of tobacco. Yet, once tobacco had become 

 established as the basic industry, its use as a circulating 

 medium continued to be maintained throughout the 

 colonial period. As a result, such intriguing items as 



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