Tobacco may be successfully grown in every county in the State, and there is no reason why Missouri should not at least take a prominent position in the production of this staple. Missouri leads all other States in the manufacture of tobacco surpassing her closest competitors by twenty million pounds and furnishes a market at home for every pound that can be grown.

St. Louis is the largest buyer of leaf tobacco in the world and is closely connected with every section of the State by river or railroad.

The river counties, with their fertile valleys, do not produce an article of such fine quality as the upland, but the yield is enormous. Chariton county produced in one year sixteen million pounds, and the present wealth of Boone, Howard, and many other counties, was accumulated years since in the production of tobacco.

The communities where it is now grown are prosperous, have not felt the effect of the stringent money market, land has advanced in price and the production of tobacco that is bringing large sums of money to these farmers has in no way interfered with the output of cereals and live stock, but is an additional revenue at but little cost.

The cost of producing an acre of tobacco in Missouri, including rent of land, cultivation, cutting, curing, stripping, and delivering to market and allowing good wages for all labor performed is about $33 per acre ; the yield about seven hundred and fifty pounds, and is sold at from five to twelve cents per pound.

At the minimum price the crop will pay good wages and some profit, and at the average price makes profitable returns for the labor expended.

While in estimating the cost of a tobacco crop full wages for good laborers have been allowed, yet most of the work can be done equally as well by children and cheap help, thereby greatly reducing the estimate here submitted.

As the industry develops in the State more attention must and doubtless will be given to the quality of the tobacco. While we have land suitable to the production of all the heavier grades and where enormous yields of from one thousand, two hundred pounds to two thousand pounds per acre are grown, we also have in abundance of soil and other conditions necessary for the production of the very best quality of bright wrapper.

Thousands of acres of our rolling brush land, not now in cultivation, and held at a very low price, will produce a superior quality of White Barley that will frequently bring from $150 to $200 per acre.

A few years since a number of growers in Schuyler county, on land then worth from $20 to $25 per acre, sold their crops at from $100 to $150 per acre.

A tobacco grower in Lincoln county exhibited his tobacco in St. Louis, was awarded first prize for bright wrapper, and sold his crop for $1.25 per pound.

The Lawson Leader in Ray county reports a farmer who sold nine acres for $1,200.

A farmer in Barry county cultivated one acre and allowing himself $1 per day for his work made a profit of $39-50, or about three times what the one acre of land was worth.

The United States Department of Agriculture, census report, 1890, credits Missouri as first for excellence and weight of manufacturing and export leaf.

A hogshead of Schuyler county tobacco exhibited in St. Louis in competition with tobacco from Kentucky and Virginia was awarded first prize.

In 1876 eighty-six counties in the State successfully produced tobacco.

Boone county has produced two million pounds annually, had three factories and shipped direct to England.

Franklin county is noted for the fine quality of its tobacco and has often been awarded prizes in St. Louis.

Our hickory and oak ridges have produced an article of such superior merit as to create a demand and cause special prices to be fixed for it.

The great bulk of work in tobacco culture can be done with cheap labor and when it is not needed in the other crops, and the cutting, curing, and stripping will furnish labor at remunerative prices when otherwise the farmer would be idle, and consuming what he had produced during the summer.

Missouri, without interfering with other agricultural productions and without additional help, can grow all the tobacco consumed in the United States, worth forty million dollars. Our soil, our climate, and all other conditions will enable us to get this vast amount annually if we will only reach out after it.