Mark W. Buyck II: The Golden Leaf

Newcomers and those born in the last 25 years are likely unfamiliar with the economic impact which the growing of tobacco had in the Pee Dee region. Generations of Pee Dee farmers cultivated tobacco. The plant was uniquely suited to the Pee Dee’s soil and was the area’s “cash crop” from the 1880s until its rapid decline in the 1990s. Tobacco farming was prevalent from Horry to Chesterfield Counties. Auction warehouses were located in multiple Pee Dee counties and towns including, Conway, Darlington, Dillon, Hemingway, Kingstree, Lamar, and Loris. Some of the larger markets were located in Lake City, Mullins, Pamplico, and Timmonsville. All of these towns had a business infrastructure geared towards the needs of the tobacco farmer. Including banks, agricultural supply stores, storage facilities, rail access, and agricultural equipment dealers. South Carolina’s earliest settlers planted tobacco in the Charleston area beginning with the colonies’ settlement in 1670. By the 1690s, rice cultivation became the dominant crop in the colony and tobacco was all but forgotten. Tobacco was reintroduced to the colony in the 1760s in the upcountry among settlers arriving from Pennsylvania and Virginia. The tobacco grown and cured during this time was generally consumed as snuff, chewing tobacco, or pipe tobacco. The state of South Carolina eventually promoted the crop and established several inspection warehouses to facilitate the production and sale of the crop. Peak production in 1799 reached 10 million pounds; however, farmers quickly discovered a new cash crop. By the 1810’s cotton was king and tobacco had disappeared again. The tobacco century began in the Pee Dee in the mid-1880s. Farmers had discovered the process of flue-curing which produced bright leaf tobacco. Bright leaf was much milder than previous curing techniques. This coincided with the invention of the cigarette rolling machine. Cigarettes were being mass produced and aggressively marketed. Farmers throughout the Pee Dee recognized that tobacco was becoming much more profitable than cotton. In 1895 The State newspaper declared that tobacco was the “Pearl of the Pee Dee.” In 1900 the Pee Dee region planted 95% of the state’s tobacco crop acreage.

The Golden Leaf

The first tobacco warehouse auction in the state was conducted by Frank Rogers in 1890 at the Florence Tobacco Manufacturing and Warehouse Company. 300 persons attended this auction. In 1896, The State described another Florence warehouse: “It is a handsome structure having a floor space 60 by 100 feet, and this is lighted by 20 large ground glass skylights. In front is a 2-story brick structure, 40 by 50 feet in size, containing the offices. It has large sliding doors on all sides and is equipped with the latest improved trucks, etc.” The auction season typically ran from mid-July through September and warehouses were lively hubs of commerce and social activities. The impact of tobacco is quite evident in the growth of several Pee Dee communities. From 1890 to 1900, Mullins grew from 242 to 821 persons. Between 1900 and 1910, Lake City grew from 375 to 1,074 and Marion from 1,831 to 3,844. Florence had a population of 4,647 in 1900, 7,057 in 1910 and 10,968 by 1920. The tobacco boom of the 1910’s gave way to the difficult decade of the 1920s for farmers in South Carolina. The boll-weevil arrived in South Carolina in the early 1920s and decimated the cotton crop. Many cotton farmers turned to tobacco which led to over production and decreased prices. During this time there was little regulation at the state and federal level addressing grade, quality, or general product control. For the most part, agricultural South Carolina did not participate in the roaring 20s. The depression years of the 1930s did see New Deal programs and regulations which attempted to raise prices by controlling production. These programs were not altogether successful; however, they did provide a framework for future government regulation of the agricultural markets. World War II saw a boom in the demand for tobacco products. Cigarettes were routinely provided to servicemen in their care packages. Females began taking up the habit in increasing numbers. In the years after World War II government production controls and price supports and the development of a quota system resulted in another boom for growers. The state produced 197 million pounds of tobacco in 1955, the most ever. The long slow decline of tobacco likely began with the Surgeon General’s 1964 report linking smoking cigarettes with dangerous health effects, including lung cancer and heart disease. Farming was becoming more mechanized and less labor intensive. Tobacco companies increasingly looked offshore for product and the government began reducing quotas. From 1974 to 1992, more than 70% of the tobacco farms in the Pee Dee disappeared or were swallowed up by larger producers. In 1998, a global settlement agreement was reached between 46 United States Attorneys General and the four largest tobacco companies which severely restricted the marketing and sale of tobacco and imposed crushingly high taxes. The next year the manufacturers settled with tobacco-growing states creating a trust fund to compensate tobacco growers for anticipated losses. Auctions, price supports, quotas, etc., ceased to be. What little farming that was conducted was based on production contracts directly between farmers and the companies. The age of tobacco and the prosperity it brought was over. In 2020, the state grew 8.4 million pounds of tobacco, less than the state of Pennsylvania. The value of the crop was 16 million dollars, one-half the value of the state’s watermelon crop.

The tobacco century began in the Pee Dee in the mid-1880s. "

Farmers had discovered the process of flue-curing which produced bright leaf tobacco. "

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