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History Lab
How has changes to the use of tobacco contribute to and changed the economy of North Carolina over time?

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History Lab
How has changes to the use of tobacco contribute to and changed the economy of North Carolina over time?

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Standards:
4.H.1.3 Explain how people, events and developments brought about changes to communities in various regions of North Carolina.

4.G.1.1 Summarize changes that have occurred in North Carolina since statehood (population growth, transportation, communication and land use).

4.E.1.2 Understand how scarcity and choice in a market economy impact business decisions.

4.ATOD.2.2 Explain why people are influenced by various marketing strategies employed by tobacco companies.

4.ATOD.1.1 Summarize short-term and long-term effects of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products.

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Global Perspective of the North Carolina Tobacco Industry.
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Global Perspective of the North Carolina Tobacco Industry.
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This article gives an in-depth look at the historical impact of NC tobacco industry has in relationship to the global economy. This is an advanced source intended for advanced level students.

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The tobacco industry has traditionally been one of the most important industries in North Carolina and a backbone of the state's agricultural heritage. Yet as the North Carolina economy continues to transition from an agricultural economy to a manufacturing and, increasingly, service-based economy, the industry faces new challenges, both at home and abroad.

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These 15 Rare Photos Show North Carolina’s Tobacco History Like Never Before
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These 15 Rare Photos Show North Carolina’s Tobacco History Like Never Before
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Fifteen photographs about the NC tobacco industry from the beginning of the 20th century. The photos are captioned and depict all aspects of the tobacco industry.

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North Carolina's tobacco history dates back as far as we can remember. After the Great Depression in 1935 (as part of the New Deal) the Farm Security Administration (FSA) tried to combat extreme rural poverty through the Resettlement Administration. The 'rural rehabilitation' was established to improve the lives of sharecroppers, tenants, and very poor landowning farmers and of course, revolved around two main crops - tobacco and cotton.

The relief system soon came under attack; Farm Bureau deemed it 'collectivizing agriculture' - AKA using and exploiting farmers to work on large, government-owned farms. Over time the Conservative Coalition took control of Congress and transformed it into a program that helped poor farmers buy land, now known as the Farmers Home Administration.

Between the years before and after, tobacco farming dominated North Carolina's history. Aside from farming, tobacco giant RJR headquartered in Winston-Salem with other cities like Durham also known for their high tobacco sales. While today we realize the effects from smoking cigarettes, that doesn't change the deeply rooted tobacco culture that shaped our state. Lucky for us, the FSA and RA are known for their amazing photography program that hired photographers to document and report the lives and struggles of poor farm workers. These photos below give a glimpse into history.

What a unique glimpse into the past and how lucky we are to view it today. Were you a tobacco farmer or raised by one?

For more unique North Carolina history, these photos during WWII in North Carolina are amazing.

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These 15 Rare Photos Show North Carolina's Tobacco History Like Never Before

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North Carolina's tobacco history dates back as far as we can remember. After the Great Depression in 1935 (as part of the New Deal) the Farm Security Administration (FSA) tried to combat extreme rural poverty through the Resettlement Administration.

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Smoking
By Virginia B. Silverstein , Alvin Silverstein , Laura Silverstein Nunn
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Smoking
By Virginia B. Silverstein , Alvin Silverstein , Laura Silverstein Nunn
Secondary Source

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A on grade level book that identifies the serious health problems related to cigarette smoking and explains how cigarette smoking contributes to more than 400,000 American deaths each year. The book is an excellent source to frame the change in attitudes about tobacco use today compared to the past. I qualified this a source because it gives historical data about smoking related illness and deaths.

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Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession by Dave Jamieson
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Before There Was Bubble Gum: Our Favorite Pre-World War I Baseball Cards by Dean Hanley and Allyson Hamlin
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Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession by Dave Jamieson
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Before There Was Bubble Gum: Our Favorite Pre-World War I Baseball Cards by Dean Hanley and Allyson Hamlin
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Both books cover the historical connection between trading cards and the tobacco industry. How trading cards were used as a marketing tool to promote brand loyalty. The first "got to collect them all" campaign. This would be a good source to connect students' interest to the subject.

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The Tobacco Farm Life Museum
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The Tobacco Farm Life Museum
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The Tobacco Farm Life Museum is a historically preserved Easter North Carolina tobacco farm. The museum provides guided education tours in line with NC Essential Standards. The museum also provides cross subject grade specific resources for teachers use.

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Tobacco Farm Life Museum | Kenly, North Carolina

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The Tobacco Farm Life Museum has been preserving the history and cultural heritage of Eastern North Carolina farm life. The museum was started by a group of local families who had pride in their past and a strong volunteer spirit.

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North Carolina & Tobacco: Historical Background
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North Carolina & Tobacco: Historical Background
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Article covers the history of North Carolina from the colonial period to today. The article also coves the effect on the states GDP. The article is supported by primary source artifacts.

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North Carolina & Tobacco: Historical Background

Tobacco and tobacco growers put North Carolina on the map. Since the colonial era, the economy was fueled primarily by agriculture, and for the past century tobacco was North Carolina's key product. Farming and industry in the state were built around the crop, and two of the four largest cities developed as company towns for the world's largest tobacco companies.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, North Carolina's economy was dwarfed by Virginia and South Carolina, states that developed more diverse industries, such as cotton and rice. Farms in North Carolina were disadvantaged by the quality of soil in the coastal plains, which was unsuitable for growing grain on a large scale, and most farmers scraped by at subsistence levels until the mid-19th century. Many of these "yeoman" farmers produced some tobacco, but the quality was poor, and very little was exported. In contrast to other southern states, large plantations were rare, and agriculture was less dependent on slave labor than in the Deep South -- a condition that made North Carolinians reluctant to join the other states of the Confederacy.

Ironically, the innovation that led the state to become a tobacco-growing powerhouse came from a slave, a man named Stephen who worked on the farm of Captain Abisha Slade. While curing a batch of tobacco in a smoky barn, he let the wood fire go out, and quickly restarted it with charcoal. The intense heat cured the tobacco quickly, turning it a vivid yellow. When this "brightleaf" (or flue-cured) tobacco was sold, it proved appealing to smokers, and within a decade, flue-cured tobacco became one of the most common varieties in production. The rapid curing process was also particularly well-suited for tobacco grown in the sandy soil of the coastal plains. Suddenly, farms that were producing other crops turned to tobacco.

Signs for Bull Durham Tobacco once covered walls all over the country. Photo: Jack E. Boucher, National Park Service.

At the same time, tobacco users' tastes were changing. In the 17th and 18th centuries, most of the crop was processed into snuff or heavily flavored pipe tobacco. The 19th century saw the development of a new fad in tobacco consumption: the cigarette became popular in Spain, where Turkish tobacco was readily available. The new flue-cured tobacco produced in North Carolina was similar, but cost much less for American and British consumers. Sensing a vast business opportunity, American growers began processing their own tobacco in small factories. These businesses thrived, prompting the development of improved transportation and trading centers in the burgeoning cities of Durham (serving growers in the eastern part of the state) and Winston (serving the western regions).
Auctioneer, buyers, and farmers during tobacco auction sale. Warehouse, Durham, North Carolina, 1939. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USF34- 052894-D
North of Durham, a small farmer named Washington Duke opened a small factory on his homestead, producing loose tobacco for rolling cigarettes. Through an intense marketing effort, Duke managed to earn substantial profits from a relatively small output of flue-cured tobacco. With his son James Buchanan "Buck" Duke, he later moved the business to downtown Durham, close to the tobacco warehouses where small farmers sold their crops. Duke's biggest rival was W.T. Blackwell and Company, which marketed a popular "Spanish" blend of tobacco that later gained fame under the trade name Bull Durham.

While a handful of large farms produced much of the state's crop during this period, small farmers were able to survive because of the increasing popularity of tobacco. Smoking became a truly national habit during the Civil War, when both Union and Confederate armies were supplied with regular rations of tobacco. Soldiers from around the country developed a taste for the brightleaf variety, creating a nationwide demand in the 1870s. Manufacturers responded by building larger factories, employing thousands of workers and spurring the rapid industrialization of Durham and Winston.

Tobacco Warehouse, Durham, 1930s. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USF33- 030672-M2

Smoking began to replace chewing as the preferred means of consuming tobacco, and cigars and cigarettes came to be seen as stylish accessories. In 1880, manufacturers based in North Carolina produced 2 million pre-rolled cigarettes, each of them rolled by hand. Each of the largest manufacturers sought to mechanize the rolling process, but met with little success until 1884, when Washington and Buck Duke signed an exclusive contract to use a machine designed by James Bonsack. Using Bonsack's machine, the Dukes were able to produce more cigarettes than all their competitors combined.

Determined to broaden the scope of his business, Buck Duke invested heavily in advertising and promotion, cementing his company's place as the market leader. By 1890, five firms accounted for 90 percent of the cigarette market. Duke persuaded his rivals to merge, forming the American Tobacco Company, which controlled the majority of the world tobacco trade until it was broken up under a Supreme Court antitrust ruling in 1911. The five companies that emerged from that reorganization -- R.J. Reynolds, American Tobacco, Lorillard, Liggett and Myers and the British-American Tobacco Company -- continued to dominate the market for decades.

Growing was still dominated by larger farms, but demand was so great that even small farmers were able to make profits with tobacco. Sharecropping and tenant farming became common among people who owned no land. Large numbers of African-Americans in the eastern part of the state farmed in this manner, paying a portion of each year's crop as "rent" to large landowners. As late as 1923, nearly half of the state's farmers were tenants.

During the Great Depression, farmers tried to compensate for lowered prices by producing more tobacco, leading to even lower prices. The federal government responded by providing subsidies for farmers. In 1938, a quota system was instituted, establishing strict limits on how much each farm could produce, and providing government-sponsored price supports.

Farming and manufacturing recovered quickly with the onset of World War II, as soldiers were once again supplied with cigarette rations. Postwar prosperity also boosted demand for cigarettes, which grew until the early 1960s, when concerns about the dangers of smoking became a major public health issue. The US Surgeon General issued a report in 1964 arguing that smoking caused lung cancer and a host of other medical problems.

Over the next four decades, as the number of American smokers declined steadily and restrictions on public smoking increased, the large manufacturers began cutting costs and laying off large numbers of workers and relocating their factories to less expensive areas. American Tobacco left Durham in 1987, and R.J. Reynolds moved its corporate headquarters away from Winston-Salem in 1989. Both companies made steep cuts at production facilities throughout the 1990s. In 2000, the last cigarette manufacturer, Liggett and Myers, left Durham. The most profitable market for cigarettes in the past decade has been in Asia, and American companies have invested heavily in overseas factories to lower their costs.

As demand for domestically produced tobacco flagged, the federal quotas were also diminished, leading many farmers to cease growing tobacco. The quota system ended in 2005, as part of a $10 billion package to end federal price supports for tobacco growers. The Tobacco Transition Payment Program (TTPP) will provide farmers a series of annual payments, starting in 2005 and continuing until 2014. This program also ends all restrictions on tobacco farmers, but analysts predict that the majority of growers will cease growing tobacco.

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North Carolina & Tobacco: Historical Background | Bright Leaves | POV | PBS

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North Carolina & Tobacco: Historical Background Tobacco and tobacco growers put North Carolina on the map. Since the colonial era, the economy was fueled primarily by agriculture, and for the past century tobacco was North Carolina's key product.

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History of the Tobacco Industry in North Carolina 
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History of the Tobacco Industry in North Carolina 
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NCPEDIA
Is an educational recourse focusing on the history of North Carolina. The six articles linked below give an overview of the NC tobacco industry, History of tobacco industry in NC, and key figures in the tobacco industry supported by primary source artifacts

https://www.ncpedia.org/anchor/key-industries-tobacco

https://www.ncpedia.org/tobacco

https://www.ncpedia.org/tobacco-part-2-development-and-grow

https://www.ncpedia.org/tobacco-part-3-rise-big-tobacco

https://www.ncpedia.org/tobacco-part-4-legal-challenges-and

https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/slade-abisha

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History of Tobacco use in The Americas 
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History of Tobacco use in The Americas 
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Boston University Medical Center

Gives a timeline of how tobacco use and attitudes in the Americas has changed . Beginning with the Native Americans through present day.

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History of Tobacco Boston University MedicalCenter Community Outreach Health Information System