WHITE BURLEY TOBACCO. ad 
In point of real tobacco quality, as pungency, aroma, or fragrance, 
Burley is rather negative and weak, but as used this weakness is 
really another point in its favor. This lack of decided character of 
its own, combined with its great absorptive capacity, makes it an 
easy matter to flavor it up artificially in almost any way desired. 
Immense quantities of this heavily sweetened western plug of the 
so-called navy type is manufactured in the great factories at St. 
Louis, Louisville, and elsewhere. Burley is also the principal type 
used in the manufacture of the great array of cut-plug smoking 
tobaccos and of fine-cut chewing tobacco. It is also useful for 
granulating purposes, and some of the best grades make the finest 
cigarette and twist wrappers. In recent years the expansion in the 
use of chewing tobacco has come nearly to a standstill. Very few 
young men become chewers. They smoke instead. Among pipe 
tobaccos those of the cut-plug type, made principally from Burley, 
are increasing very rapidly in popularity and use. 
FOREIGN DEMAND. 
The development in use of Burley tobacco for domestic consump- 
tion since the Civil War has been astonishing and has far outstripped 
its closest rival, the flue-cured type, in this respect among the manu- 
facturing types of tobacco. Nevertheless, it has not attained any 
importance as an export type, and in this regard has been far out- 
stripped by the flue-cured type. 
This lack of progress as an export type is quite clearly due to two 
or three easily discernible factors. Foreigners as a whole chew 
tobacco but little, and furthermore the laws of our most important 
foreign customer, Great Britain, do not permit of the use of any form 
of sweetening or flavoring in manufactured tobacco products. This, 
of course, largely negatives the specific usefulness that Burley might 
have to make it particularly valuable there. Finally, the price of 
Burley, due to a strong, more or less constant domestic demand, has 
been in recent years unfavorable to its purchase by foreign countries. 
In the early nineties of the last century, however, when prices were 
very low, Burley was exported quite extensively, particularly to 
Germany, Belgium, and France. Exports of this type would doubt- 
less again increase should prices drop to a low figure for any consider- 
able length of time. The foreign demand for Burley is mostly for 
the low grades usually designated as common red smokers. Under 
conditions as they are, however, the quantity of Burley tobacco 
annually exported is small and probably does not exceed 5 per cent 
of the crop. 
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