192 MASS. EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETIN 193. 



Little tobacco is stored by the producer for any length of time. In- 

 stances occur, however, where it is necessary for the grower to hold some 

 of his crop after it is taken from the poles. In such cases it is packed into 

 bundles and stored in a tightly closed shed or sorting room to prevent 

 drying. Wlien prices are low some farmers store and sweat their tobacco, 

 hoping to sell at an increased price. Though there is a good opportunity 

 for co-operative warehouses, nothing has yet been done along this line. 

 The essential features of this plan will be discussed later. 



Tobacco warehouses in the Connecticut valley are all privately owned. 

 The big storage plants are under the control of the packers. Each dealer 

 who has a sufficiently large business has at least one warehouse and some- 

 times several. These warehouses are usually constructed with the sorting 

 rooms partly under gi'ound, but so arranged that good light is available 

 for sorting tables. The storage room is above the sorting room, so arranged 

 that it is convenient to move the tobacco from the sweating room into the 

 storage after it has been packed. 



Besides the storage by packers or dealers, the manufacturers store 

 large quantities of tobacco, sometimes buying when tobacco is plentiful 

 and holding until an off year. Table 24, on page 180, gives the amount of 

 tobacco stored by manufacturers and dealers for a number of years. 



Cost of Storage. 



Cost of storage varies with the time the crop is stored and the time the 

 sweating occupies. Figures for the leaf-producing sections of Pennsylvania 

 give the cost of storing the case for one \^ear as 50 cents. The costs of 

 inspection, sampling, etc., amount to 50 cents. There is also a shrinkage 

 during storage which amounts to about 15 per cent. The total cost of 

 storage for a year and the attendant labor amounts to about $2 per case. 



The packers in the Connecticut valley estimated that it cost 11 cents 

 a pound to handle the 1917-18 tobacco crop from the time it reached their 

 hands until it was delivered to the purchaser. This figure is sufficiently 

 large to cover all expenses of packing and selling. At this figure the packers 

 could sell for 45 cents tobacco purchased from the farmers for 30 cents a 

 pound, making a clear profit of 4 cents per pound sold. Wholesale prices, 

 however, lead to the conclusion that far bigger profits are made. 



