Robert

The Tobacco Kingdom: Plantation, Market, and Factory in Virginia and North Carolina, 1800-1860 by John Clarke Robert (Durham: Duke University Press, 1938), Pp. vii, 286.

Joseph C. Robert, who served as Professor in History at Ohio State University, authored this economic history of the Old, Upper South, particularly Virginia and North Carolina, in 1938. Robert “traces the story” of tobacco in the Upper South in an era that saw the rapid growth of cotton production in the Deep South (viii). Robert does not hide his thesis in historical or economic jargon; he contends that though cotton replaced tobacco in much of the South as the region began to view slavery as a positive good, and though the value of that cotton became “seven times as valuable as that of tobacco,” tobacco, far from diminishing, remained a constant source of revenue and a dominant staple crop for the Upper South. Robert prefaces his work by revealing several fascinating statistics: that by 1860, in the eleven states that would secede from the Union, tobacco factories employed more hands than did textile factories, and that of the “four basic” southern industries (lumber, grain, tobacco, and cotton), tobacco employed the second-most number of hands, ranked third in “value of product,” and fourth in capital investment. In 1938, The Tobacco Kingdom represented a significant leap in scholarship concerning the economy of the Old South, for Robert’s illumination of tobacco production in the pre-war years of the nineteenth century reminded scholars lost in the rise of cotton of tobacco’s staying power as a cash crop, its role in the economic formation of the Old South, and its lasting influence into the Civil War Era.

John Rolfe experimented successfully with tobacco in 1612. As the author notes, that European tastes became inclined towards the tobacco leaf as much as a decade before its introduction to the New World meant a certain economic boom once entrepreneurs began to realize the crop’s potential in seventeenth-century Virginia. Robert speaks for much of Virginian historiography when he labels the marriage of tobacco and Virginian soil as the “most momentous fact” in the early history of the colony (4). Between its inception as a colony and the War of 1812, Virginia experienced the brief decline of its tobacco industry as the West, well suited for the growth of cotton, opened.

A great strength of Robert’s work is the attention and detail he pays to the intricacies of tobacco production. Operating within a well-defined geographical scope, the Piedmont—or, as it appears in the work, “the Virginia district”—Robert discusses the many challenges presented in the growth of tobacco. “Careless handling,” the author notes, “was perhaps more costly [in tobacco production] than in the case of any other staple.” Tending the crop required “diligent supervision” (18). Robert also devotes attention to agricultural reform, and with good reason. Tobacco placed heavy demands on soil, extracting nutrients from the earth more quickly than any other crop. By 1830, landowners began to realize the severity of their situation as slave labor in Virginia decreased with the availability of good land. Farm improvements, diversification, and crop rotation became more important than ever before (23). Tobacco of the Civil War Era largely resembled the crop raised in the Colonial period, though methods of farming, managing, and marketing the crop evolved. Much of Robert’s work devotes itself to describing this evolution. The author spares little detail; even modes by which farmers and planters transported their crop to market make an appearance in this work. As late as the early nineteenth century, the marketability of tobacco was influenced heavily by the availability of feed for mule teams (55). The rise of internal improvements naturally sustained the tobacco industry, and most shipments of tobacco raised in the Piedmont came to Richmond, Petersburg, and Lynchburg for inspection by way of train, canal, and mule. Also contributing to the strength of the work is the authors description of the warehouse auction system.

Thoroughly researched, this work stands in Old South historiography as a high achievement in informative and lively economic history. Legible charts and images combine with lucid prose (perhaps more common to an erudite age) to portray, quite vividly, the tobacco industry from 1800 to 1860.

Texas Christian University Mitchell G. Klingenberg

The Tobacco Kingdom: Plantation, Market and Factory in Virginia and North Carolina, 1800-1860. By Joseph Clarke Robert. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1938) ix + 286.

The Tobacco Kingdom is essentially an economic and social history of an agricultural product. While told largely through traditional narrative, the story of tobacco in the Virginia-Carolina Piedmont is also story of changing habits, of fads, trade names and advertising .

It deals with diverse and disapproving attitudes toward the “weed.” James I found it “Loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit which is bottomless (4). In doing such a thorough study, Robert raises questions about traditional thinking regarding the nature of the institution feeding the system. As sub-text throughout the narrative, Robert contrasts the unique and milder form of slavery evidenced in the Tobacco Kingdom with that of the cotton producing lower South. This milder system “indicated an evolutionary movement away from slavery, which might have resulted in the peaceful granting Negro freedom (vii).”
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Roberts develops his “mild slavery” argument along with what can be described as a standard economic or perhaps a market history of tobacco. In this history Roberts describes a commodity essential to the economic life of the Virginia Piedmont. In times of fiscal insecurity wages and prices might be tied to amounts of tobacco rather than currency (10). Laws were enacted to limit supply and maintain high standards of quality, and Roberts finds the indebtedness of tobacco farmers to Britain a factor “nourishing anti-British sentiment among aristocratic landowners (8-9).

Roberts details the structure and location of the major tobacco producing areas, the nature and content of their production (ratio to food crops) and the percentage of the population made up of slaves. He also describes the minutia of various methods of tobacco production and their change over time. Fads on the part of consumers (demand for various colors and types of tobacco) led to extensive experimentation with methods of curing and breeding of the plants. In addition, many opinions existed as to the best way to preserve or re-invigorate the soil due to the high “burnout” of soil nutrients accompanying production (32-50).

Also described in similar detail is the methods of getting the crop to market. The relationship and costs over time between wagon, canal and rail transport are all discussed in depth. In addition, methods of storage and even the containers used during transportation are examined to and exhaustive degree (chapter 4). Regulation, the systems used to inspect the crop, the taxes and duties imposed by the government are also discussed (chapter 5) as is methods of marketing the product (chapter 6).

The second half of the book focuses on the export trade (chapter 7-8) which provided the impetus for the transition from farm to factory production (chapter 9). It is in these sections that Roberts is able to abandon the pure narrative and develop his “mild slavery” thesis. This claim is the most unique and stimulating part of the book. Roberts careful and extensive research (many pages contain more notes than text), provides a clear and documented description of the peculiarities of slavery in the tobacco industry. As production increases the large economies of scale offered by the factory system do transform the tobacco industry, and along with it the social relations of labor. The extensive division of labor offered by more modern methods led slaves to acquire specific skills. Stemmers, dippers, twisters and lump makers all performed specific tasks not easily transferable. While these skills did enable a measure of coercion available to the slave over the conditions of work, by Roberts own admission this system was “doubly tied to the plantation system (198).” Plantations supplied the leaf, and often the majority of the labor (at least until the 1860). While hired labor (slaves, free blacks and some whites) constituted a majority by the time of the Civil War, Roberts seems to minimize the effect of the link between plantation slavery and tobacco manufacturing he himself documents.

Hired slaves dominated most tobacco factories. They were less subject to strict control and never suffered the kind of physical labor or punishments rendered upon field hands working cotton. Factory owners relied on the skill of the slaves, (at least to some extent), giving each individual more valuable. Because the majority were hired, their value fluctuated with the market, much like that of labor in Northern manufacturing concerns. All of this Robert sees as an indication of the evolution of the institution away from traditional slavery and leaning toward the granting of Negro freedom.

Given the extensive research and documentation, his description of the uniqueness of Tobacco slavery rings true. This much said, Robert fails to demonstrate why his milder from of slavery would choose to extinguish itself. Most factory owners, also owned some slaves, hiring others according to needs and available capita l. Roberts also documents the substitution of white,
free, female labor (in the making plugs) in place of slaves, when slave masters began charging more for their services (208).

Given their distinctly marginal status, it is difficult to see how slave participation in the market necessarily leads to emancipation. It would seem more natural that improvement in the status of hired slaves due to the verities of the marketplace would not result in emancipation but in replacement with other forms of labor. Without a corresponding re-valuation of slaves in other markets, few incentives existed to scrap the system. Although the tobacco industry may evidence the kind of transformation Roberts describes, transfer of slave labor to other industries seems just as likely as evolutionary emancipation.

The plantation system fed both product and labor into manufacturing. Changes in the procurement of labor were possible, but such changes were less possible in the procurement of tobacco itself. Unless the growers were willing to experiment with other methods of production that would ultimately out-strip the slave model, no rational would exist for an evolutionary end to the slave system.