To: Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2004 6:50 AM
Subject: Re: [VA-SOUTHSIDE-L] Another Question for Paul Drake


Your question is difficult, since now we have quotas, farmers have an assigned a quantity that they may grow, and we know much about treating the soil with fertilizers.  Still though, I am told by tobacco growing friends that the land could produce about the same quantity per acre as now (if the highly intensive labor needed was available), but the soil quickly became depleted.  Unlike now, the stems and waste were strewn on the fields as the only fertilizer available, fields were allowed to "rest every four to 6 years", and the tobacco "patch" was moved every couple years to another area on the property.  

Incidentally, tobacco was the medium of settlement here because Britain kept us in a ongoing trade imbalance; we owed them for 150+ years.  Britain also set - "pegged" - the value by which that "weed" traded at 2 pence per lb through most of the 17th century.  By virtue of that trade imbalance, we had only VERY limited specie except paper (which nobody wanted), and thus came the myriad fines, appraisals, debt settlements, bargains, and daily exchange in lbs. of that commodity.  Actually that system worked very well.    Paul         
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: [log in to unmask] 
  To: [log in to unmask] 
  Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 10:56 PM
  Subject: [VA-SOUTHSIDE-L] Another Question for Paul Drake


  Paul,

         The courts in colonial Virginia often fined people hundreds and even 
  thousands of pounds of tobacco, depending on the offence. Do you have any idea 
  of how much tobacco one acre of land in eastern Virginia could produce during 
  the colonial period?
  ....


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