Use of Tobacco once as common as eating grits in the Southland
Folks who were not brought up in the Carolinas or who are too young to have experienced the era when tobacco was king, might be surprised to learn how much tobacco influenced every niche of Southern life until the product fell from grace.
Since colonial days, the whole economy depended on tobacco especially in the eastern parts of both North and South Carolina. Economic life moved around the product. In fact, hogsheads of tobacco were used as currency in the early days of the Southern colonies. Tobacco remained at the economic center until the last few decades when America’s great Smoke-Out got underway.
Tobacco’s demise started years ago when the US Surgeon General first declared that the use of tobacco might cause cancer. Even then, most Southerners trusted the federal government to get it right on things much less important than their health and refused to stop smoking.
If you are younger than 40 years old or if you didn’t live in the Carolinas until recent years, you have no idea how important tobacco was to the everyday lives of Carolina inhabitants. It was a way of life. If you didn’t raise it, your life was still affected by the crop. The entire economy revolved around the tobacco harvest. Tobacco-sales time in the fall was when folks paid their bills; make yearly purchases of clothing, automobiles and other necessities or luxuries of life. Harvest time initiated an entire chain of economic good news as tobacco money flowed through the stream of commerce. Tobacco money was king! It was an excellent cash crop and I went to college with students whose parents paid their tuition and expenses with the proceeds from just one acre of tobacco. Untold numbers of college graduates owe their education to tobacco money.
In short, tobacco was the mainstay of the economy in many parts of the Southland. Taking it away from the economic cycle was the equivalent of eliminating the manufacture of automobiles in Detroit. But there was no federal bail-out for Southern tobacco farmers.
You were considered almost unpatriotic if you did not smoke, dip or chew tobacco and the very idea that anyone would criticize you for doing so was unspeakable. Churches, schools, charitable organizations and other entities were founded and sustained on tobacco money. Duke University and Wake Forest University are just two examples. Preachers, doctors, lawyers and other professionals most often owned tobacco allotments farmed out to sharecroppers. Even if they didn’t, their fees and donations were paid in great part by funds derived from raising tobacco.
The only time you ever saw a “No Smoking” sign was around pure oxygen or explosives. Patients in hospital smoked in bed as many doctors and nurses also lit up while they attended their patients. Even high schools had smoking areas for both students and faculty somewhere on the grounds.
When I got to Wake Forest College (now University) in Eastern North Carolina, smoking was allowed in the classrooms by students and professors. Class sessions were measured in cigarettes – one hour classes were one cigarette long, labs and other longer classes could be measured by at least two and sometime three smokes. You didn’t go outside the classroom to smoke. You just flicked your ashes on the floor and stomped the butts out under your heels on the classroom floor. Cigarettes sold for 15-cents a pack. I promise you, I am telling you the absolute truth!
Some doctors publicly endorsed smoking before tobacco advertising was outlawed and before the US Surgeon General stirred the anti-smoking forces into action. I even knew of a few cases where doctors “prescribed” smoking for “nervous” patients on the assumption that it soothed their nerves. I’m not kidding you! Smoking, chewing and dipping were more or less universally accepted as a way of life and few folks in Tobacco-Land found fault with any mode of tobacco use.
Now don’t get me wrong. Some forms of tobacco use were more socially acceptable than others. Smoking cigarettes was considered “fashionable” and young folks longed for the day they would be old enough to take up the “sophisticated” practice. Chewing tobacco was less acceptable but there were still spittoons in just about every public establishment — including churches, doctor’s offices, courthouses and other public places. Dipping snuff was at the bottom of the socially acceptable scale of activities but, yet, we all had mothers, sisters, aunts, etc. who “dipped.” Many tried to hide their dipping habit and kept it out of sight but the brown stain in the corners of their mouths belied their secrecy. I would venture to claim that more than eighty percent of all adults in Tobacco-Land used the product in one form or another.
You can begin to understand the economic tradition that tobacco still casts on Southern Culture. Coupled with Southern obstinacy at being told what they must do will explain why tobacco still has a hold in the Southland.
But, times have changed. Americans are more aware of their health and tobacco has fallen from grace.
Good riddance!