Tobaccoliday

A long tin shed. On its floor piles and piles of brown leaves, rows and rows of piles. Down the long rows slowly moves an auctioneer chanting numbers, numbers and more numbers, singsong fashion. Behind him trail the buyers. Every eight, ten. fifteen seconds comes the only refrain that breaks the monotony of the chant: "Sold to this company" or "Sold to that." Thus every autumn since before the Civil War the U. S. tobacco crop has gone to market. Last week, however, singing auctioneers were silenced in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina.

Three chief kinds of tobacco grown in the South are "bright (flu-cured)," "burley," and "dark fired." Over three months ago when "bright" tobacco started to market in North and South Carolina prices were down around 10-c- to 12-c- a lb. In August North Carolina's Ehringhaus proclaimed a holiday, stopped proceedings for three weeks to give Federal Farm restriction efforts time to finish plans for next year's "bright" crop, to give other Federal agents time to get U. S. cigaret companies to agree to a minimum price of 17-c- per pound. When the markets reopened prices were about 50% higher for the better grades.

Fortnight ago the "burley" markets opened. Prices again were down around 12-c- per lb., with poorer grades even lower. Disgruntled growers became angry. For four years during the 1920's they had a co-operative but it broke up when growers ceased to cooperate. During that time "nightriders" had killed some non-co-operators, destroyed the crops of others, smashed their windows. Kentucky growers threatened to start nightriding again. Governor Laffoon proclaimed a holiday. The Governors of Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina followed suit in an effort to do for "burley" what a holiday had done for "bright."

Reason for the tobacco growers' plight is loss of foreign markets. Of a normal one and one-half billion pound crop less than half is consumed in the U. S. During Depression England and other overseas buyers have clamped on import duties, cut U. S. consumption. With U. S. stocks on hand already amounting to two billion pounds, prices for this year's crop depend on next year's crop restriction.

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