When Tobacco Was King
When Tobacco Was King

Author: Evan P. Bennett

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 2014-10-21

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 0813055083

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Tobacco has left an indelible mark on the American South, shaping the land and culture throughout the twentieth-century. In the last few decades, advances in technology and shifts in labor and farming policy have altered the way of life for tobacco farmers: family farms have largely been replaced by large-scale operations dependent on hired labor, much of it from other shores. However, the mechanical harvester and the H-2A guestworker did not put an end to tobacco culture but rather sent it in new directions and accelerated the change that has always been part of the farmer’s life. In When Tobacco Was King, Evan Bennett examines the agriculture of the South’s original staple crop in the Old Bright Belt—a diverse region named after the unique bright, or flue-cured, tobacco variety it spawned. He traces the region’s history from Emancipation to the abandonment of federal crop controls in 2004 and highlights the transformations endured by blacks and whites, landowners and tenants, to show how tobacco farmers continued to find meaning and community in their work despite these drastic changes.

Long Green
Long Green

Author: Eldred E. Prince

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2013-01-01

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 0820344478

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The first comprehensive history of Bright Leaf tobacco culture of any state to appear in fifty years, this book explores tobacco's influence in South Carolina from its beginnings in the colonial period to its heyday at the turn of the century, the impact of the Depression, the New Deal, and World War II, and on to present-day controversies about health risks due to smoking. The book examines the tobacco growers' struggle against the monopolistic practices of manufacturers, explains the failures of the cooperative reform movement and the Hoover administration's farm policies, and describes how Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal rescued southern agriculture from the Depression and forged a lasting and successful partnership between tobacco farmers and government. The technological revolutions of the post-World War II era and subsequent tobacco economy hardships due to increasingly negative public perception of tobacco use are also highlighted.The book details the roles and motives of key individuals in the development of tobacco culture, including firsthand experiences related by farmers and warehousemen, and offers informed speculations on the future of tobacco culture. Long Green allows readers to better understand the full significance of this cash crop in the history and economy of South Carolina and the American South.

The Cigarette
The Cigarette

Author: Sarah Milov

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2019-10-02

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0674241215

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Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist Winner of the Willie Lee Rose Prize Winner of the PROSE Award in United States History Hagley Prize in Business History Finalist A Smithsonian Best History Book of the Year “Vaping gets all the attention now, but Milov’s thorough study reminds us that smoking has always intersected with the government, for better or worse.” —New York Times Book Review From Jamestown to the Marlboro Man, tobacco has powered America’s economy and shaped some of its most enduring myths. The story of tobacco’s rise and fall may seem simple enough—a tale of science triumphing over corporate greed—but the truth is more complicated. After the Great Depression, government officials and tobacco farmers worked hand in hand to ensure that regulation was used to promote tobacco rather than protect consumers. As evidence of the connection between cigarettes and cancer grew, scientists struggled to secure federal regulation in the name of public health. What turned the tide, Sarah Milov reveals, was a new kind of politics: a movement for nonsmokers’ rights. Activists took to the courts, the streets, city councils, and boardrooms to argue for smoke-free workplaces and allied with scientists to lobby elected officials. The Cigarette puts politics back at the heart of tobacco’s rise and fall, dramatizing the battles over corporate influence, individual choice, government regulation, and science. “A nuanced and ultimately devastating indictment of government complicity with the worst excesses of American capitalism.” —New Republic “An impressive work of scholarship evincing years of spadework...A well-told story.” —Wall Street Journal “If you want to know what the smoke-filled rooms of midcentury America were really like, this is the book to read.” —Los Angeles Review of Books