52 EXPORT AND MANUFACTURING TOBACCOS. 
or often not at all, so that at harvest time the tobacco field is a veri- 
table flower conden of seed heads in bloom. 
Rather en topping and close planting is resorted to in the Mary- 
land sone districts proper in order to keep the colors brighter, 
but not to the same extent as in the eastern Ohio district. In 
Maryland, moreover, the entire plant is harvested and cured, being 
severed close to the ground and speared on the sticks about as 
practiced in most of the cigar-tobacco districts. In recent years 
the proportion of air-cured tobacco produced in eastern Ohio has 
increased greatly, owing particularly to the scarcity and high price 
of Burley, and more than half of the crop is now air cured and 
moves to market not through Baltimore, but through Cincinnati or 
Louisville. The fire-cured portion of the crop, however, continues 
Fig. 20.—Maryland tobacco-curing barn, Upper Marlboro, Prince Georges Co., Md. 
to be sold in Baltimore and during the past few years has ranged 
from 2,000 to 6,000 hogsheads a year. 
The srocknothen of all these Baltimore types of tobacco has tended 
in later years to decrease rather than to increase, and the output 
now ranges considerably below the maximum attained in the periods 
' just before and just succeeding the Civil War. In the seventies 
Maryland proper produced annually from 35,000 to 40,000 hogs- 
heads, instead of 25,000 as at present, and eastern Ohio produced 
15,000 to 20,000 hogsheads, instead of 4,000 as at present. In 
1874 the eastern Ohio production marketed through Baltimore, 
which included practically all of it, was 28,000 hogsheads. The 
cause of this decrease in production has not been due to actually 
lower prices on the average, but rather to an increasing cost of 
244 
