wrapper. This factor was to become increasingly impor- 

 tant as smokers became more discriminating, for the 

 wrapper was what the buyer first saw and that eye 

 appeal had a direct influence on sales. 



This seedleaf type became shortly known as Connecti- 

 cut Broadleaf. "Shoestring" tobacco was plowed under 

 and farmers went enthusiastically into the production 

 of the new type. Most of the crops had been grown 

 around East Windsor. By 1840 harvests of Broadleaf in 

 Connecticut's Tobacco Valley were in the range of a 

 million pounds— fifty times the best production years of 

 the colonial period. Growers spoke of the new leaf as a 

 bonanza. Wise old farmers voiced the general opinion 

 that there could never be a finer tobacco. 



Around that time, too, the sorting of tobacco first be- 

 gan and became standard procedure. Only two grades 

 were separated: filler and wrapper. The latter included 

 all but the poorest leaves. A new production area was 

 opened up in the Housatonic Valley in the early 1840's. 

 The first crop for the market came from Kent, in Litch- 

 field County, in 1845. It was not too long before the 

 tobacco of the area was, for a while, to supply the finest 

 of domestic wrapper leaf. 



w. 



rapper up 



A successful sale by a Connecticut dealer in the early 

 1840's made New York manufacturers aware of what 

 their next-door neighbor was doing. Prior to that time 

 Connecticut tobacco was being used in the big cigar- 

 rolhng center of New York for cheap cigars. But no one 

 in that metropolis seemed to have been aware that Con- 



34 



