History of commercial tobacco in the United States

However, in areas of the American south, where tobacco grew well, capital was needed in order to grow this highly demanding crop.

This failure was due to lack of crop rotation, which depleted the soil of the nutrients needed by the tobacco plants.

Those who created large plantations in the more fertile regions, however, saw great prosperity, even at the low price per pound of tobacco.

Although tobacco began to find favor amongst certain societies, the American Revolution would become a temporary setback for some, and a permanent one for others.

In South Carolina, there was a shift toward rice plantations; while in other areas other sorts of much needed vegetation was grown for sustenance of the nation.

These latter two were considered a more coarse form of taking tobacco and, as such, were deemed very "American" in nature by Europeans as spitting was a trait attributed to their usage.

In an attempt to civilize anything that seemed coarse or uncivil, much of Victorian society would adapt cultural items to suit their tastes.

A feministic culture dominated smoking at this time as well as much tobacco, giving further rise to this "dainty" cigarette, bearing a feminine name.

[17] It is a false myth that a slave named Stephan discovered how to cure the leaf, according to Drew Sawnson.

[18] Instead bright tobacco was the historical product of decades of experimentation with various curing methods, seed varieties and soil types.

The farmers realized that consumers would pay more for the sweeter and more aromatic qualities of the bright yellow leaf.

Their efforts showed that the sandy, nitrogen-poor soil of the Piedmont region in south central Virginia and neighboring North Carolina worked best for creating the mild flavor tobacco chewers craved to the point of addiction.

[19] The process was refined further to include a furnace in which heat from the charcoal was applied through flues, so that dark soot and off flavors did not come in contact with the tobacco.

Cigar rolling and even the creation of pipe tobacco at the time was labor-intensive and, without slave labor, innovation needed to occur.

Many other forms of tobacco quickly lost popularity as men switched to easy to inhale cigarettes.

[24] The main producer was American Tobacco Co., which consolidated many small companies into a monopoly of every form except cigars.

It was at this point, that the cigarette became an integral part of American culture, which lasted until scientific discoveries revealed the health consequences of smoking.

According to Sharon Cook:[26] The pathfinders who first articulated women’s right to smoke were members of the middle and upper classes who were “untrammelled by conventional notions of decorum” for women, such as actresses, intellectuals, and “new women.” After all, these were the leaders of the 19th- and early 20th-century enfranchisement campaigns and other public-sphere campaigns which demanded the right to enter the professions, hold membership in artistic associations, and much else.

The same process was at work in the masculine world of smoking with elitist elements arguing first for snuff, then cigars, pipes, and finally cigarettes.

Cook argues that the tobacco companies were looking for large profits which depended on sales to a much larger base of working women.

Thus, "The combination of cheap prices, reliable and theatrical possibilities as a wardrobe prop, [short] duration of the smoking experience and workplace norms of peer associations...explain cigarettes’ growing popularity over cigars and pipes for working women after World War I.