John Schamke, a local fanner, is said to have been the 

 imaginative person with an idea about com cobs. He 

 may not have been the first to have put the idea to prac- 

 tical use but in the absence of other claimants he should 

 be credited with giving it impetus. In 1869 Scharnke 

 brought to a woodworker at Washington, Missouri, a cob 

 of com and asked that it be worked into a pipe bowl. The 

 woodworker, Henry Tibbe, was newly from Holland. 

 Thus the first mechanically produced corncob pipe was 

 created. It provided a soothing smoke. White com, with 

 its large, firm cob, was used — not the smaller, yellow 

 Indian maize. 



This "Missouri meerschaum" or "barnyard briar"— a 

 genuine symbol of rural America — had an almost im- 

 mediate popularity. It brought several factories into 

 existence which profitably produced enormous quanti- 

 ties of "nature's sweetest smoke." By the mid-20's about 

 20 percent of the corncob pipes, made exclusively in 

 Missouri, was shipped to foreign markets. Washington, 

 Missouri, is still the world's "corncob capital." 



Missouri tobacco smoked in native comcob pipes, on 

 the authority of the state's Bureau of Labor Statistics 

 (1914), "soothes to such an extent that business cares 

 and all troubles are quickly forgotten." Furthermore, the 

 same source proudly announced, "the Bureau of Eth- 

 nology of the federal government has pointed out that 

 native Missourians are stronger and taller than the native 

 citizens of any other State." That splendid condition was 

 not, of course, directly credited by the Missouri author 

 to the use of native tobacco in corncob pipes. 



Had there ever been any doubts about the popularity 

 of corncobs they would have been dispelled by the types 



lO 



