Plug Tobacco in North Carolina

Plug Tobacco in North Carolina

"As a professor of history, I do not know where subscribers got the idea that in the 19th Century there was no difference between chewing and smoking tobacco. It is true that some late 19th Century tobacco manufacturers sold their smoking tobacco in small cans that were marked "For smoking or chewing" but these were not really considered chewing tobaccos by the average person. They were just an "emergency" source. Plug tobaccos were always intended solely for chewing and the process to make them goes back to the 1500's. The Days O Work brand is one of the oldest brands of plug tobacco, having its origin in the 1700's. Plugs were intended to fit in a man's vest pocket and were consumed by Eastern gentlemen cutting off a small piece at a time with a tiny tobacco knife. Pioneers carried the tradition westward where the common pocket knife took the place of the specialty pocket knife. The inner tobacco has always been Grade B but included smaller leaf stems, while the outer wrapper (described as paper here) was made from the finest cigar wrapper leaf. Original manufacture was by stacking leaves in a door sized form and covering it with a flat board. Weights were then added to press the tobacco over several weeks time, where it could then be cut into plugs with a roller knife before wrapping in the finer grade leaf. Today they use hydraulic pressing to speed up production but the remainder of the process remains the same as in the 1700's."

Source: Tobacco Reviews  [accessed 12 March 2023].

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Plug tobacco is made up of tobacco leaves that have been pressed together and bound by some type of sweetener, resulting in a dense, square tobacco mass. (Some compare the look of plug tobacco to a brownie or similar pastry.) One can then bite directly from the mass or slice the tobacco into portions. Some types of plug may either be chewed or smoked in a tobacco pipe, and some are exclusive to one method of consumption or the other.

Plug tobacco was once a much more common product, available to many American consumers during the 19th century. Two tobacco companies that historically manufactured plug are Liggett and Lorillard. (The latter was known for its Climax brand of plug.)

Modern brands of chewing plug include "rustic" and simple packaging, as is the case with popular plugs like Apple Sun Cured, Brown's Mule, Cannon Ball, Cup, Days Work, and Days O Work. Some well-known loose leaf chewing tobacco brands, such as Red Man and Levi Garrett, have their own versions of plug tobacco, as well.

Source: Public Encyclopedia  [accessed 12 March 2023].

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"Outside Intervention in Monopolistic Price Warfare: The Case of the 'Plug War' and the Union Tobacco Company" by Malcolm R. Burns in The Business History Review, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Spring, 1982), pp. 33-53 (23 pages). https://www.jstor.org/stable/3114974 [accessed 12 March 2023].

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Workers making plug tobacco (chewing tobacco) in a Winston, North Carolina tobacco factory. Several men in suits observe. Boxes, possibly finished product, are stacked on both sides of the room. Reproduced from: Heimann, Robert K. “Tobacco and Americans.” New York : McGraw-Hill, 1960. 173. Date of photograph: 1880-1910. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/945# [accessed 12 March 2023]; https://library.ecu.edu/specialcollections/2007/08/10/storm-center-of-plug-tobacco/ [accessed 12 March 2023].

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Chewing Tobacco [accessed 12 March 2023].

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Reynolda  [accessed 12 March 2023].

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R. J. Reynolds 1850-1918  [accessed 12 March 2023]. In the late 1880s he added saccharine to plug chewing tobacco.

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Chewing Tobacco  [accessed 12 March 2023].

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Plug Tobacco Mill Patent Application  [accessed 12 March 2023].

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Plug Tobacco Cutter Patent Application  [accessed 12 March 2023].

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Plug Tobacco Press Patent Application  [accessed 12 March 2023].

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North Carolina Tobacco Factories Pre-1865 

There were 97 tobacco factories in North Carolina reported in the 1860 Census, with $646,730 in invested capital, and producing $1,117,099 in goods annually. These companies employed 1,461 people. The total number of firms include one cigar manufacturer in Forsyth County, and two stemmery operations in Person County.

In 1860, tobacco manufacturers were located in the following counties: Alamance (4), Burke (2), Caswell (11), Chatham (1), Davie (3), Forsyth (2), Granville (16), Iredell (3), McDowell (1), Orange (2), Person (2), Rockingham (25), Rowan (1), Stokes (17), Surry (5), Wilkes (1) and Yadkin (1).

Source: North Carolina History  [accessed 12 March 2023].

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Glass, Brent, Editor. North Carolina, An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites [North Carolina] (1975). Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation, Historic American Engineering Record.