_ WHITE BURLEY TOBACCO. 83 
production was in the counties along the Missouri River, mostly on 
the north side. Chariton, Randolph, Howard, and Boone Counties 
were the heaviest producers. In 1876 Chariton County alone pro- 
duced 14,000,000 pounds of tobacco. 
During the eighties much of the acreage shifted to Burley or 
owing to low prices and greater interest in other crops dropped out 
altogether, until the production of all the dark tobacco and nearly 
all the Burley had ceased altogether in the early years of the present 
century. About 1897, however, a Kentuckian named Turner, resid- 
ing in Platte County, Mo., chanced to think that Burley would grow 
successfully in that section. A trial crop was raised near Weston 
with reasonable success and a number of other farmers, assisted 
principally by renters from Kentucky, began to plant small crops. 
The soil in that section is of limestone origin, is very rich and pro- 
ductive, and the land is somewhat rolling and impresses one as 
favorable for Burley tobacco. Up to 1907 the crop near Weston 
amounted to about a half million pounds of tobacco yearly. With 
the cutting out of the 1908 crop of Burley in Kentucky, however, 
there was a considerable immigration of renters to the Weston 
neighborhood. The production expanded very rapidly and the 
1910 crop of Burley near Weston and at local centers in adjoining 
counties amounted probably to 3,000,000 or 4,000,000 pounds. The 
older Missouri tobacco district, particularly in Chariton and Carroll 
Counties, has also greatly increased its production of Burley since 
1907, probably to over 3,000,000 pounds in 1910, which, together 
with a scattered acreage in other parts of the State, means probably 
from 8,000,000 to 10,000,000 pounds of Burley tobacco produced 
in Missouri in 1910. The general character of the country about 
Weston, however, would seem to indicate that that section has the 
best chance to maintain its position as a tobacco country through 
periods of low as well as high prices. 
A scattered acreage of Burley, quite large in the aggregate, is 
grown in a number of States, the most important being where the 
production has spread over into the adjoining One-Sucker and Green 
River districts of Kentucky and in Indiana. The scattered production 
is also considerable in the Greenville and upper Cumberland sections 
of Tennessee and in the Piedmont and valley section of Virginia. 
This scattered production is hard to estimate with any degree of 
accuracy, but if it were all tabulated it 1s believed that it would 
amount to at least 6,000,000 pounds. 
Table XXII shows an estimate of the total average production of 
Burley for the country by States. 
244 
