EARLY HISTORY OF THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY. 105) 
At the close of the Revolutionary War the production and exporta- 
tion of American tobacco was of course resumed, but under very 
different conditions, as the British colonial policy and navigation 
laws were no longer effective here. 
Almost from the beginning of the commercial trade in tobacco 
“it seems to have been regarded as an available asset for taxation. 
In Great Britain and in many of the continental countries it was 
made to yield a good revenue by duties upon imports and by farming 
out the privilege of trading in it. Indeed, the Colonies themselves 
were able to realize considerable public revenue by means of an 
export tax, which stood for a portion of the time in both Virginia 
and Maryland at 2 shillings per hogshead. This policy of using 
tobacco as a subject for taxation, as 1s well known, has become a 
fixed policy with most of the leading nations to-day, either in the 
form of customs duties or internal taxes or by governmental monop- 
oly, and the revenue exacted is in many cases much more than the 
value of the tobacco itself. 
DEVELOPMENT FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE CIVIL WAR. 
In the half century succeeding the Revolutionary War a number 
of effective causes tended to check the production and exportation 
of leaf tobacco in the United States. The war itself had made it 
impossible for European countries to import their regular supplies of 
American tobacco, and they turned to other sources, particularly to 
Cuba and to the Dutch East Indies. They also tried the experiment 
of producing a portion of their supply at home. The long series of 
_ Napoleonic wars, which for many years absorbed the attention of 
all Kurope and which at times almost prohibited and nearly always 
menaced commerce seriously, tended still further to encourage 
home production of tobacco by the countries of Europe. 
‘From the close of our Revolutionary War to the breaking out of 
the War of 1812 exports of tobacco fluctuated from about 50,000,000 
to 100,000,000 pounds a year, with an average of about 75,000,000 
pounds, except in the year 1807, when the effect of the Berlin and 
Milan decrees made all commerce with England or Europe practi- 
cally impossible and our exports were but 9,576,000 pounds. The 
War of 1812, with President Jefferson’s embargo proclamation for- 
bidding all American ships to leave port, caused our shipments of 
tobacco in 1812 and 1813 to aggregate only 5,314,000 and 3,125,000 
pounds, respectively. 
After the world-wide cessation of hostilities in 1815, following 
Waterloo in Europe and New Orleans in this country, our exports of 
tobacco again immediately rose to fairly large proportions. All 
Kurope, however, including England, found itself financially pros- 
trated, and tobacco was one of the commodities selected upon which 
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