Destroying Suckers.
The planters, who at first cultivated small patches, now planted large fields of tobacco, and such was the greed for gain that some planters gathered a second crop upon the same field from the suckers left growing upon the parent stalk. Tatham[16] says in regard to it:—
"It has been customary in former ages to rear an inferior plant from the sucker which projects from the root after the cutting of an early plant; and thus a second crop has often been obtained from the same field by one and the same course of culture; and although this scion is of a sufficient quality for smoking, and might become preferred in the weaker kinds of snuff, it has been (I think very properly) thought eligible to prefer a prohibitory law, to a risk of imposition by means of similitude. The practice of cultivating suckers is on these accounts not only discountenanced as fraudulent, but the constables are strictly enjoyned ex officio to make diligent search, and to employ the posse commitatus in destroying such crops; a law indeed for which, to the credit of the Virginians, there is seldom occasion; yet some few instances have occurred, within my day, where the constables have very honorably carried it into execution in a manner truly exemplary, and productive of public good."
Fairholt says of the same subject:—
"It was sometimes the custom with planters to reset the suckers, and thus grow a double crop on one field, such conduct was disallowed; for the reason that the crop was inferior, and the more honest grower, who conscientiously cleared his plants, and gave them abundance of room to grow, was dishonestly competed with; and the first rate character of the Virginian crop prejudiced by the action."
Fairholt makes a mistake in speaking of the planter as re-setting the suckers, and his statement shows him to be entirely unacquainted with the habits of the plant. As soon as the plants are harvested, the stump of the plant remaining in the ground puts forth one or more vigorous suckers or shoots, which often in a good season grow almost as high as the parent stalk. In some tobacco-growing sections one or two crops of suckers are gathered besides the first crop.
The Creole planters in Louisiana are said to grow three crops in this manner, the first or parent crop and two growths of suckers. The quality of leaf, however, is greatly inferior, as it is small and thin and lacking in all the qualities necessary for a fine leaf. The planters now adopted new methods of culture, and cultivated several species of the plant known as Oronoko and little Frederick, although they did not fertilize the fields, even when the soil became impoverished, but simply took new fields for its culture.
Hugh Jones says of the kinds of tobacco grown in Virginia:—