FLUE-CURED TOBACCO. 59 
great development in the production of bright flue-cured tobacco. 
There are to-day no other types of tobacco on which fertilizers are so 
freely used as on the bright flue-cured types, except on some of the 
high-priced cigar-wrapper types in New England and Florida. 
USES OF FLUE-CURED TOBACCO. 
DOMESTIC CONSUMPTION. 
In the early days, before the Civil War and soon after, the fore- 
runner of the present flue-cured type was principally an air or ‘‘coal”’ 
cured product. It was mostly red, mahogany, or piebald in color and 
was manufactured largely into domestic plug for chewing. It was 
very acceptable for this purpose and made a mild, sweet, aromatic 
chew. 
The manufactures of this type of plug had not then developed the 
present system of brands nor was it so concentrated in a few large 
factories as at present, and the business was divided up among a 
comparatively large number of independent factories in the larger 
towns scattered throughout the growing districts. 
The product of these factories was distributed largely by wagons, 
which would make long trips into nonproducing sections, peddling 
out the manufactured product at the crossroad stores. On the return 
trip these wagons would pick up such merchandise as might be han- 
dled to advantage in the home town. Petersburg, Lynchburg, Farm- 
ville, Clarksville, South Boston, Danville, and Bedford City were 
among the more noted of these local centers for the manufacture of 
plug chewing tobacco; but the business of nearly all of these towns 
in this class of tobacco has diminished greatly under modern condi- 
tions, and some of them are now almost completely out of the tobacco- 
manufacturing business. 
The primary cause which has led to the decadence of these local 
independent factories is the concentration of manufacturing in the 
hands of a few large firms with large city factories. 
The business of manufacturing flue-cured plug, generally known as 
flat plug to distinguish it from the thicker, more heavily sweetened 
Burley plug made in the West, is now largely concentrated in Winston 
Salem, N. C., where the manufacture of tobacco has had a very rapid 
development. The industry was in its infancy in the early seventies 
of the last century. The quantity manufactured now amounts to 
upward of 40,000,000 pounds of tobacco annually and in gross output 
Winston ranks second only to St. Louis, Mo., among the great manu- 
facturing centers of the country. A few million pounds of flue-cured 
plug are also manufactured at Reidsville, N.C., and at Martins- 
ville, Va. 
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