Maryland tobacco was especially prized for its slow-burn and smooth taste. The "free-burning" Maryland tobacco was the only kind that could be used "as is," without blending. In modern times, European cigarette makers reportedly used up to 85 percent Maryland tobacco in their products.
My grandfather, Paul Summers, was among the many thousands of Maryland farmers who relied on tobacco farming to make a living for his family. I have vivid memories of his barns filled with sticks of tobacco drying out over the winter for sale in the spring. A 60 to 80 pound stick would weigh only a couple of pounds once it dried out.
In the late 1930's, having suffered through the Great Depression, my grandfather and a few other farmers, developed a new idea for selling tobacco that they hoped would re-invigorate the market for their product. They opened a local auction house--the Marlboro Tobacco Market--where farmers from the five "tobacco counties"--Anne Arundel, Calvert, Prince George's, Charles, and St. Mary's--would bring their baskets of leaf to the auction floor for sale to the highest bidder. This "leaf market" lowered the hauling costs and got payment to the farmers faster. Paul Summers was the general manager of the Marlboro Tobacco Market from its opening in 1939 to his death in 1970. My uncle, Hill Summers, became the manager after his father.
Buyers had complained that the old system of buying in hogsheads forced them to take a chance on an unseen product. They might get some very good tobacco mixed with a lot that wasn't so good.
In this new loose-leaf market, farmers brought in "burdens" of tobacco and displayed them on the floor of the market in huge oaken baskets where buyers and inspectors could handle them, sixty to a hundred pounds in a stack. An auctioneer (chanting the nearly unintelligible sing-song language of bidding) moved down the long aisles and tickets with bids were placed on top of the baskets and the grower decided whether to accept the bid or try for resale at a higher figure. If he accepted the bid, he could take the ticket immediately to the office and get his check.
After a bid was accepted, the "burdens" were packed into hogsheads and shipped to the factories of the winning bidder.
The farmers hoped that this new method of auction sales would help Maryland regain its pride of place among tobacco growers. And for a time, that seemed to be true. In the first auction in 1939, the Marlboro Tobacco Market sold more than 632,000 pounds of tobacco for over $98,000, an average of about 16 cents a pound. In 1942, according to the Sun, farmers were elated by a high price of 50 cents per pound. About 30 million pounds of tobacco were sold that year in Maryland. By 1948, the Marlboro Tobacco Market sold 1/6 of the Maryland crop.
By 1971, even though tobacco prices were up to about 80 cents per pound, and sales seemed good, farmers were not making much money because of the higher costs of the difficult hand labor and the increasing costs of their equipment, as well as competition from increased job opportunities in other fields. Many farmers dropped out of the market. At the time, the head of the Maryland Tobacco Authority insisted that the Surgeon General's report from the mid-60's had "no appreciable effect" on Maryland tobacco sales, but it seemed that the handwriting was on the wall and the once-lively auctions gradually died out by the early 2000's with just a few buyers and elderly farmers selling their crops.
Today, the Marlboro Tobacco Market is no more. I can remember visiting there as a child, hearing the auctioneer and smelling that rich, earthy aroma. In its later years, the market became as well-known for the annual Antique Show that filled the huge space every fall as for its tobacco auctions.
Update: My cousin Scarlett Sasscer gave me this picture of her father, Wally Sasscer working his first job at the Marlboro Tobacco Market. He is sitting at the scale where the burdens of tobacco were weighed.
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