Why Do Farmers Get 25 Cents a Pound for Tobacco When Cigarettes Are $2.50 a Pound? July 12, 1921

The Difference in Raw Tobacco and Cigarettes

It is of some interest to farmers at least to know why it costs a person $2.30 to buy one pound of Chesterfield cigarettes. It is said by those who know something about tobacco that the price the farmer receives for the grade of tobacco that goes into Chesterfields runs about 25 cents per pound, which is the cost to the manufacturer. The wholesale man who handles and sells them to the merchant gets about 16 cents and the retail dealer gets about 40 cents, all added makes a total of 81 cents. The revenue tax is about 30 cents, making a total to the grower, wholesale, merchant, the retail merchant and the government of $1.11, which leaves the manufacturer $1.19. Why not look a little further and see who is doing the biggest part in producing this pound of cigarettes?

The farmer is the first investor. He furnishes the land, team, tools, fertilizers, barns and packhouses. He has to go out early in January and labor diligently to prepare the seed bed at a great expense in both labor and material. After making ready the land, in April he begins setting the plants. From that day he has to bend low to replant, worm, sucker, top, prime, cure, turn, watch, grade and haul into town at which he sells for any price he can get from a buyer who gets every command from some fellow higher up until if finally develops that far less than a dozen persons say just what price shall be paid for tobacco. After it is bought by the “Big Companies” at their own price, they take it through the various processes of manufacture and finally send it back to be sold to the very people who raised it. We should look at the amount of work and capital required in manufacturing. Look over the factories and count the people laboring in them and count the cost of all equipment engaged in the manufacturing of tobacco and you will find that twice as many people and twice as much property are engaged and used in growing the pound of tobacco for 25 cents than are used in the manufacture of it for $1.19. No wonder people who raise tobacco are poor and ignorant and those who manufacture it are rich and powerful. The fact is we only get what they want to give us, a meager existence. They also give us our line of thought by processes of propaganda and to a great extent our legislation.

From the front page of The Enterprise, Williamston, Martin County, N.C., Tuesday, July 12, 1921