1 EXPORT AND MANUFACTURING TOBACCOS. 
EARLY HISTORY OF THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY. 
DEVELOPMENT IN COLONIAL TIMES. 
The commercial culture of tobacco in this country was almost 
coincident with the first permanent settlement established at James- 
town, Va., in 1607. The people of Great Britain and of Continental 
Europe had already become familiar with the use of tobacco from 
the numerous expeditions to various parts of the New World during 
the previous 115 years since its discovery by Columbus, and during 
the last 50 years of that period it had become common to include as 
much tobacco as possible in the return cargo from the various parts 
of the New World where it might be obtained from the natives. 
Introduced first because of its supposed medicinal effects, the taste 
and demand for it had already become general in much of Europe 
and the British Isles. 
The Virginia colonists soon found that it was about the only 
commodity which they could produce that would exchange to advan- 
tage against the various manufactured necessities or luxuries which 
they desired from the home country. History records that John 
Rolfe was growing tobacco in the streets of Jamestown in 1612, and 
in 1618 the first official statement of exports is recorded, which. 
amounted in that year to 20.000 pounds of tobacco at a valuation 
of 542 cents per pound. : 
These early settlers found a heavily forested country, which re- 
quired a great expenditure of labor to clear and put into shape for 
planting. Nothing else that could be grown would produce so large 
an exchange value from a given area of land against manufactured 
commodities from home as tobacco. It absorbed almost the entire 
attention of the early settlers, aside from producing sufficient corn, 
wheat, and vegetables for mere subsistence. At first the cultivation 
was restricted almost entirely to the richest river land along the 
James, the York, and the Rappahannock Rivers, where the largest 
yield and highest return for a given amount of effort could be obtained 
New colonists were constantly arriving and the production of to- 
bacco increased with wonderful rapidity. From 20,000 pounds in 
1618 the exports increased in 1627, nine years later, to 500,000 
pounds. 
Tn the later forties the palatinate of Maryland (officially estnbleched 
in 1634 with the first settlement at St. Marys) was also developing 
rapidly in population and in the production of tobacco, which became 
there also the main reliance and most available resource as a commer- 
cial medium for exchange against the necessities and luxuries of the 
Old World. 
In 1639 the total exports for the two colonies reached the large total 
of 1,500,000 pounds, but the value had dropped to 6.08 cents a pound. 
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