BUSINESS BUSINESS
The
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
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VIPMagSC.com
December 2021
Golden Leaf
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.
