Not one leaf of flue-cured tobacco has sold this week in all North or South Carolina. Nor last week. Nor the week before. Tens of thousands of Carolina farmers could get no ready money. It was like the Midwest in drought time. Banks could not collect fertilizer loans or mortgage payments. Storekeepers were passing out pints of kerosene on credit.
Tobacco's bad year followed a good year. Last December, when tobacco growers were called to a crop-control referendum, they had just finished disposing of a big (800-million-pound) crop at the satisfying average price of 22¢ per pound. They sneered at the compulsory quotas Henry Wallace wanted them to vote and proceeded to plant a far greater acreage this year than quota allotments would have permitted. Fine weather favored the growing, and up sprouted 1,014,000,000 pounds of fat tobacco, 200 million pounds more than a maximum year's consumption.
When the crop came to market late this summer, prices staggered "under the surplus. By September 8, farmers were in a funk; the bellowing auctioneers were knocking down the tobacco at 14½¢. Then Britain's big Imperial Tobacco Co., which normally buys a third of the flue-cured crop, stepped out of the market. For one more week the farmers hung on and watched their crops going at ever lower prices. When prices broke through 11¢ (half of last year's price), they desperately closed the markets.
Immediately, indefatigable Henry Wallace called a conference. All through the South, the sheepish growers wondered what their ransom was going to be. North Carolina's big, handsome Commissioner of Agriculture William Kerr Scott suggested sadistically that the markets be reopened, the farmers left to squirm. Henry Wallace announced in an AAA pamphlet: ". . . It would not be sound to undertake price-supporting measures for the 1939 crop unless farmers indicate a desire to regulate marketings for the 1940 crop." Warehousemen held meetings, shouted for crop control, promised to use their influence on the farmers.
This week the announcement came that Commodity Credit Corp. had made an arrangement with British buyers whereby $30-to-$40,000,000 would be given them to proceed with normal purchases. The tobacco would be held in the U. S. and the British would have an option to buy any time before July 1941. The markets then would be reopened on Tuesday, Oct. 10.
But, said crafty Henry Wallace, none of this would be done unless farmers vote for a compulsory quota (660,000,000 pounds) in the October 5 referendum.