Evening star., 1914-11-20
TOBACCO.
By Frederic J. Haskin.

My Lady Nicotine. sung by the poets
as a good fairy and set forth in the
doctor books as a dangerous siren. has
a larger part in the worlds goings-on
than the Turing of her votaries from
present pains into real or fancied ease.
My Lady Nicotine has business affairs
quite similar in proportions and por
ten to those of such workaday sis
ters as the Necessity girls-Food, Shell
ter and Raiment. And her business
affairs have been quite as much upset
by the smoke of battle abroad as any
body else's.
To father, as he puffs his after dinner
cigar; to mamma. who indulgently
pokes a finger through the smoke rings
he so cunningly puffs forth from his
pursed lips; to little Johnalbert, who
sincerely fatters by sucking a bit of
cross-vine: even to Maby Mittyo Mae,
who condemns as silly and futile the
whole tobacco trade except the cou
pons which mean open-and-Shut-eye
dolls or a miniature piano, u good
cigar is smoke and nothing more.
They have not yet paused to think
that My Lady Nicotine is now wrnkling
her fair. ever-young brow over war
taxes. suspended credits, collapsed mar
kets, war risks, bills of exchange and
warehouse receipts. regarded reserve
bank assets.
Yet those are but suggestive of the
now smoking
Bottom Drops Out over the half
of Export Market. half 6s H',op - score of !
seas. and in the far. quaint corners of
nj
grades of American tobaccos. grown al |
most exclusively for export. the bottom !
of the market dropped out y valua- !
BILE crop, just reaching maturity. was
in the twinkling of an eye made for
the present into so much almost useless
vegetable matter. Buyers representing |
great corporations and even great ma |
tions, who would in a few days have |
been bidding for the crop, vanished |
from Tobacco Land.
For a time 1t seemed that only that |
part of our domestic tobacco would
be sold which the people of the United |
and inhale as snuff. Great Britain,
Italy, Germany. France, Spain. Aus
tria. Belgium and Japan seemed en-
tirely eliminated from the tobacco
trade in which Italy. FraIce, Spain, !
Austria and Japan are known as re
gle purchasers, those governments eX- |
ercising monopoly on tobacco and buy |
ing their supplies in the United States |
and elsewhere through specially COM
missioned agents.
This slump in the export trade depre |
ciated almost to nothing such tobaccos
as the Maryland. which is light, mild |
and of good burning quality, useful in
admixtures. and the heavy. dark, fire.
cured tobaccos which are most popular |
In the foreign trade. And here it may
be noted that the tobacco habit is as
strong nationally as it is individually;
nations like the kind they are used to-
The popularity of Maryland tobaccos in
Holland and France dates from the set |
tlement of Maryland under palatinate
government which made that colony,
though English. free to ship its prod
ucts to other countries than England,
while other colonies We're restrai ined |
under their charters to ship their !
products only to the mother country. +,
But all the tobaccos-the Burley,
whose drinking" or absorbent quality !
makes 1t admirably adaptable to treat !
ment with artificial "sweetening' and ,
other sauces: the mild, fine, bright" |
tobaccos of the Carolinas and Virginia, |
and the several tobaccos which grow |
in the Connecticut valley. Wisconsin, |
Ohio, the gulf states and in other sec |
tions of the United States-were af- !
fected by the war. AS trade has tended !
to approach It's normal in distribution, |
the tobacco market has eased some |
what, but even now it is not strong or |
steady.