til it was sold at one-half
this amount.

[Illustration: Destroying suckers.]

The planters, who at first cultivated small patches, now planted large
fields of tobacco, and such was the greed for gain that some planters
gathered a second crop upon the same field from the suckers left
growing upon the parent stalk. Tatham[16] says in regard to it:--

[Footnote 16: Essay on Tobacco, London, 1800.]

"It has been customary in former ages to rear an inferior
plant from the sucker which projects from the root after the
cutting of an early plant; and thus a second crop has often
been obtained from the same field by one and the same course
of culture; and although this scion is of a sufficient
quality for smoking, and might become preferred in the
weaker kinds of snuff, it has been (I think very properly)
thought eligible to prefer a prohibitory law, to a risk of
imposition by means of similitude. The practice of
cultivating suckers is on these accounts not only
discountenanced as fraudulent, but the constables are
strictly enjoyned _ex officio_ to make diligent search, and
to employ the _posse commitatus_ in destroying such crops; a
law indeed for which, to the credit of the Virginians, there
is seldom occasion; yet some few instances have occurred,
within my day, where the constables have very honorably
carried it into execution in a manner truly exemplary, and
productive of public good."

Fairholt says of the same subject:--

"It was sometimes the custom with planters to reset the
suckers, and thus grow a double crop on one field, such
conduct was disallowed; for the reason that the crop was
inferior, and the more honest grower, who conscientiously
cleared his plants, and gave them abundance of room to grow,
was dishonestly competed with; and the first rate character
of the Virginian crop prejudiced by the action."

Fairholt makes a mistake in speaking of the planter as re-setting the
suckers, and his statement shows him to be entirely unacquainted with
the habits of the plant. As soon as the plants are harvested, the
stump of the plant remaining in the ground puts forth one or more
vigorous suckers or shoots, which often in a good season grow almost
as high as the parent stalk. In some tobacco-growing sections one or
two crops of suckers are gathered besides the first crop.