ville,
Clarksville and others were once merely convenient landings or
locations for tobacco warehouses. Even today the fragrant aroma of
cured tobacco still exists in a number of these places during the
tobacco marketing season. The tobacco trade was largely responsible for
the birth and growth of Alexandria, Dumfries, and Norfolk into
important export-import centers. For her birth, growth, and colonial
leadership, Virginia pays her respect to John Rolfe and the other brave
settlers at Jamestown.

Tobacco is still a vital factor in Virginia's economy. Of approximately
2,000,000 acres of cropland (pastureland excluded) in 1949, 115,400
were planted in tobacco which produced 124,904,000 pounds valued at
$55,120,800 or twenty-three percent of the total value of all
agricultural crops. Of the four largest agricultural products--poultry,
tobacco, meat animals, and milk--tobacco ranked second only to poultry
in terms of income in 1955. Poultry produced an income of $99,935,000,
tobacco $84,128,000, meat animals $80,564,000, and milk $70,681,000.
Peanuts and fruits were tied for fifth place, each producing an income
of about $21,000,000.

Of the many different industries in Virginia today only five--food,
textile, wearing apparel, chemical, and the manufacture of
transportation equipment--employ more workers than the tobacco
manufacturers. In 1953 a total of $40,000,000, in salaries and wages,
was paid to production workers in the tobacco manufacturing industry in
Virginia.

Although tobacco is no longer "king" in the Old Dominion, Virginia
farmers produce enough of the "golden weed" each year to make one long
cigarette that would stretch around the world fifty times.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This is to acknowledge the sources for the following illustrations:
Methods of Transporting Tobacco to Market and Plantation Tobacco Houses
and Public Warehouses--William Tatham, _An Historical and Practical
Essay on the Culture and Commerce of Tobacco_, London, 1800; An Old
Tobacco Warehouse--courtesy of Mrs. H. I. Worthington, Directress of
the Ralph Wormeley Branch of the Association for the Preservation of
Virginia Antiquities, Syringa, Virginia; Tobacco cultivated by the
Indians and Tobacco imported from the West Indies--these two pictures
were reproduced by permission of George Arents and courtesy of the
Virginia State Library. The pictures were found originally in _Tobacco;
Its History Illustrated by the Books, Manuscripts and E