For North Carolina—At Durham and Winston.
For Virginia—At Richmond.
The warehouse system has the great advantage that the proceedings are open and the prices are recorded and published. Hence growers can know how the market fluctuates and judge the best time for sale. This is not the case when the sale is private between the buyer and seller as is customary in the eastern and northern states. Here the price actually received by the grower is often different from that given out as paid.
The price of tobacco leaf has had many vicissitudes during the past 25 years, the price often having reached so low a point as to discourage producers. Thus at Winston, N. C., the price has gradually fallen from 12.3c per lb. in 1889 to 6.3c in 1896. In the same period Burley leaf at Louisville and Cincinnati fell from 10c to 7½c. Prices similarly dropped in other centers. The price of cigar leaf has latterly increased. In 1900 prices ran from 6 to 15 cents; in 1905 from 8 to 17 cents. Many conditions at home and abroad affect the price, such as bad harvests or inferior grades of produce.
The tobacco trust has been very unjustly blamed by many for the falling price of tobacco. As a matter of fact and record, however, the concentration of buying power by eliminating the middleman and the small dealers has not only placed the grower in a better position by giving him a better price, as recent records show, but it has benefited the consumer also who can obtain the superior grades at a lower price. It is the middleman’s profit that has been cut. Moreover, the concentrated buying power of the large interests here has been an effective force in keeping up tobacco leaf prices against the foreign buyers. It must be remembered that about half of our crop is exported. The buyers of this portion, who are principally the agents of foreign governments (in the cases where tobacco is a government monopoly as in France, Italy, etc.) assemble at the auctions and bid in the usual way. As this competition is very limited there is always an opportunity for such buyers to agree among themselves as to the limit of prices. This has been one of the important factors which has kept the prices of tobacco leaf down. The concentration of American buying power has, however, been a formidable check on it, the prices received by the growers being now fair and reasonable, and such as are the result of a healthy market, where the factors of supply and demand have their full share of effect.
The government statistics show that for 1914 the prices of leaf varied from 5.5c to 20c for common to good varieties.
(For references see [end of Chapter VIII])