16 EXPORT AND MANUFACTURING TOBACCOS. 
to levy still higher taxes. For example, Great Britain, which had 
been collecting an import duty of 15 cents per pound on tobacco, 
raised it in 1815 at one leap to 75 cents per pound. Such a great 
increase in the tax of course seriously upset and hindered normal 
trade movements in leaf tobacco for a considerable time, and it was 
not until 1840 that our exports of leaf really began to average higher 
than they did just before the Revolutionary War. In 1840 the ex- 
ports of leaf were 147,828,000 pounds and continued at about this 
average with a slight tendency to increase until just before the break- 
ing out of the Civil War, the maximum figure up to that time being 
recorded in 1858, when 204,213,000 pounds of leaf were exported. 
The greatly increased economic independence resulting from 
national independence, with freedom from the repressive navigation 
laws and colonial policy of Great Britain, had the double effect of 
increasing interest in manufactures (forbidden by the British colonial 
policy) and rendering the Colonies less dependent upon a single agri- 
cultural product. After the Revolutionary War, therefore, from 
about 1800 on, the price of tobacco ruled at a considerably higher 
level than in colonial times. In the colonial period from 3 cents to 
4 cents a pound was the rule. From independence to the Civil War 
the average ranged from 6 cents to 9 cents, and it but once got below 
5 cents (4.9 cents in 1842) and on several occasions went above 12 
cents a pound. 
DEVELOPMENT OF TOBACCO MANUFACTURES. 
Our manufactures of tobacco in colonial times were inconsequential 
and our exports of manufactured tobacco were nothing. We even 
imported considerable smoking tobacco and snuff from the home 
country. With independence, however, and freedom from England’s 
oppressive colonial policy, the development of tobacco manufactures 
in the tobacco-growing States at once became of importance. In 
1790, 28,637,175 pounds were manufactured and used in domestic 
consumption. Exports of manufactured tobacco, however, amounted 
to only 96,811 pounds, but the growth, though gradual in the early 
days, was steady and certain. In 1820 the exports of manufactures 
had grown to 1,377,501 pounds, and in the census year 1859, just 
before the Civil War, to 17,737,232 pounds, the highest record to the 
present time.' 
EXTENSION OF PRODUCING AREAS. 
During the colonial period Virginia and Maryland had produced 
practically all of the tobacco in this country, except a comparatively 
small quantity from the border counties of North Carolina. With 
Ss 1 Basis of foregoing figures, Yearbook, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, for 1908, pp. 683-688, 
244 
