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VA 
56 EXPORT AND MANUFACTURING TOBACCOS. 
section of eastern North Carolina and South Carolina, has been since 
1890. Its maximum production was reached in 1903, when the flue- 
cured crop exceeded 250,000,000 pounds, according to estimates 
of competent members of the tobacco trade based on market reports. 
Although a modern type in its present development, flue-cured 
tobacco was in its origin closely associated with the old Virginia 
dark type and is a development and offshoot from it, dependent upon 
soil modification and trade preferences. As the cultivation of tobacco 
in Virginia was pushed back upon the poorer sandy lands of the 
southern tier of counties of the State, the character of leaf produced 
was naturally modified, particularly in color and mildness. It 
became very popular for home manufacture and consumption, par- 
ticularly in the shape of plug for chewing purposes. To make it more 
acceptable for this purpose the use of open fires in curing was limited 
as much as possible, and much of the product of this sandy type of 
soil was merely air cured, fires being used only to ‘protect it from 
damage in bad weather. In order to keep down the odor of smoke, 
\charcoal was often substituted for wood. The use of charcoal for 
curing finally became a regular practice, until superseded by the use 
of rock flues and finally by sheet-iron fiues, which still further did away 
with any tendency to smokiness and gave more satisfactory results, 
particularly in obtaining brighter and more uniform colors and greater 
economy of fuel and convenience in firing. 
Under the perfected flue system of curing it is possible, with _ 
tobacco produced on certain soil types, to make beautiful and uni- 
form curings of a very bright, clear, straw, or lemon yellow color 
with hardly a vestige of brown or green shod, the stem often being 
as bright and clear as the leaf itself. 
On the right soils, moreover, these flue-cured types ‘fikan possess 
good life and body ond fineness of fiber, and it is this combination of 
color, body, and fineness, with medium to good size of leaf as a neces- 
sary secondary qualification, usually not difficult to obtain, that 
constitutes the fancy grades of the flue-cured type that bring farm 
prices ranging from 20 cents up to 40 or 50 cents a pound. 
The following stery of the evolution of ‘‘yellow”’ tobacco is ob- 
tained from an account written many years ago by the late Maj. 
R. L. Ragland, of Halifax County, Va., himself a noted grower and a 
well-posted man regarding the tobacco industry. He states that 
particular attention was first attracted to the light-colored piebald 
or mottled tobacco of Virginia and North Carolina soon after the War 
of 1812 to meet an export demand for such types from France, and 
that in the export trade the type was called ‘‘French”’ tobacco. 
Furthermore, the domestic manufacture of tobacco (principally 
plug) began to expand about this time and these mild, light types 
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