Thousands Join Tobacco Cooperative, Says Frissell, April 4, 1923

Thousands Join Co-op Movement

By S.D. Frissell

Hundreds of tobacco farmers joining the Tobacco Growers Cooperative Association month by month have brought its total membership in the Carolinas and Virginia to well over 88,000 according to this week’s count of contracts now on file at the association’s Raleigh headquarters. Tobacco growers are now joining the big cooperative at the rate of more than a hundred a week, over 50 from Surry county alone, having signed the five-year contract last week.

Richard R. Patterson this week called attention of the 88,000 members of the association whose leaf sales he directs, to the fact that the present crop of Virginia-Carolina bright tobacco alone will be approximately 78 million pounds larger than that of last year. According to the Tri-State Tobacco Grower, in which Director Patterson’s article appears, the marketing association has already received a large majority of the dark fired Virginia tobacco crop, and is expected to market a majority of both the bright and dark tobaccos of the present Virginia crop.

Association receipts in the dark fired area will be about 27 million pounds and the auction sales about 21 million pounds in the dark fired area, according to recent estimates. The association, according to its officials, has sold about 75 per cent of its dark tobacco in green order, advancing cash payments which already far exceed the prices paid the growers in average years.

Between the Civil war a period of 50 years’ Virginia tobaccos averaged $8.22 per 100, and north Carolina tobaccos brought an average of only $10.30, according to figures recently compiled from government reports and published in part by the official house organ of the marketing association which this week reaches close to 90,000 farmers, out of these small averages tobacco farmers have paid the warehouse and selling costs, which makes the price to them less than 10 cents.

Orderly marketing of a larger tobacco crop this year has unquestionably brought higher prices in spite of the fact that United States tobacco exports in 1922 were 83,445,000 pounds less than in 1921 and combined retail prices for the whole United States dropped 6 per cent according to government reports. Organized tobacco farmers from 127 counties will hold mass meetings in three states Saturday, April 7th, to nominate delegates to represent the entire membership of the association in the election of directors for another year.

From page 3 of The Reidsville Review, April 4, 1923