AMERICAN TOBACCO TYPES, USES, AND MARKETS 13 
Cincinnati, Ohio, was an important tobacco market during the period 
of the hogshead system but is no longer recognized as a tobacco market. 
CLOSED-BID AUCTIONS 
The only hogshead market now in operation is the closed-bid auction 
at Baltimore, Md., and even there it may soon be abandoned. During 
the early years of the colony the warehouses were located at numerous 
convenient tidewater points in the tobacco-growing territory, but 
these small markets were later superseded by the Baltimore market. 
The tobacco is prized on the farm and shipped to Baltimore under 
consignment to a broker or to the cooperative marketing association. 
In either case the hogshead is sampled by State inspectors, and the 
samples are sealed and turned over to the consignee for display at 
his place of business. The buyers make the rounds of these brokerage 
offices and submit sealed bids on such tobacco as suits them. The 
bids are opened at the close of the day. 
A similar procedure once prevailed in Richmond, with the exception 
that the warehousing and inspections were conducted by a tobacco 
board of trade rather than by State officials. 
Some Maryland tobacco is sold outright by the growers to local 
dealers known as transfer buyers, by whom it is prized and sold in 
Baltimore as described above. 
The closed-bid auction system as exemplified at Baltimore is open 
to several serious objections: Buyers have no opportunity to view 
the tobacco, except as it is represented by a sample so overdrawn and 
plucked as usually to misrepresent the tobacco in the hogshead; and 
as no buyer knows what other buyers are bidding, there is no oppor- 
tunity and stimulus to raise the bid, which are the characteristic 
features of loose-leaf auctions. The practice of oversampling, coupled 
with the fact that the tobacco remains inthe hogshead as prized on 
the farm, the presence in many hogsheads of inferior tobacco not 
revealed by the official samples, and the resulting uncertainty and 
losses occasioned to ultimate buyers, are believed to have had much 
to do with the great decrease in annual exports of Maryland tobacco.” 
Dissatisfaction with the traditional system of marketing tobacco in 
Maryland led to the opening of auction markets at Hughesville and 
Upper Marlboro in May 1939 ” and at other points in 1940. 
Approximately one-fourth of the 1938 crop was sold at these points. 
Additional markets were established at Waldorf and La Plata and 
approximately 70 percent of the 1940 crop was sold at loose-leaf 
auction. 
CountrRY SALES 
In most of the cigar-leaf tobacco districts the sale of the product is 
consummated on the farm. This may be accomplished by contracts 
entered into during the growing season between the growers and 
11 University of Maryland Experiment Station and Extension Service Report of January 1935, ‘‘THE 
PRODUCTION AND MARKETING OF MARYLAND TOBACCO”’ (mimeographed), (p. 21: ‘‘Defects are apparent 
in the system of marketing tobacco in Maryland, from the standpoint of both buyer and grower. From 
the standpoint of the buyer the principal defects are (1) poor and sometimes dishonest packing of the tobacco 
on the farm, and (2) oversampling on the market. To these causes alone can be attributed a serious decline 
in the foreign demand for Maryland tobacco. * * 
12 Inauguration of auction marketing in Ree was brought about by Crosby Wyche of Charlotte 
Hall, astudent at the University of Maryland. His warehouse, the first to be opened, waslocated at Hughes- 
ville. Robert L. Hall and his associates joined in the movement by opening a warehouse at Upper Marl- 
boro. Others have followed, 
