Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / Aug. 29, 1968, edition 1 / Page 1
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HIS CROWN UNEASILY AS 1968 TOBACCO SELLING SEASON OPENS v • ? • '* by Jack Rider For over 4' half century King Nicotiana Tabacufai has ruled the economy of Eastern North Carolina, and to an only slightly lesser .degree has held sovereign ty over a very large part- of Dixie. But this year the aging ruler sits uneasily on his throne, plag ued by a multitude of problems from within and without his realm. : Most publicized of his enemies is a coterie of statisticians . . . some posing as doctors who are blaming use of tobacco for every disease known to man from dan druff to ingro’wn toenails, i Some of the many billions of dollars pumped itttp the action’s economy by tobacco is being used to spread the wildest kind of anti-tobacco propaganda. And as Joseph Goebbels proved in Hitlerian German; a big enough lie told frequently and loudly enough ultimately becomes the truth in the minds cf people who refused to think for themselves or simply cannot think for them selves. But these medico-statisticians are not the only problem King Nicotine suffers. There is trou ble in the palace. Buying and THE JONES COUNTY ■mtA NUMBER 18 TRENTON. N- c., THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 1988 VOLUME XXI Sorry Tobacco Selling Fabulously as Market Opens 1 >Av i This was the seme this week on one of Kinston tobacco sales floor as buyers paid good prices for good tobacco and fabulously high prices for the sorriest kind of trash on the floor. Well over a Akent average was paid for tobacco that once was used for bedding in stables and is now converted to fast-burning, flavorless filter for filter-tipped cigarettes. Farmers were not complain ing, but many reflected on what high priced beds their mules once slept on when the scrap tobac ce was put to less expensive. . ifag Private Elementary School Opening September 16th in Pollocksville; Students and Teachers Are Needed A private elementary school has been chartered and will be gin operating September 16th in Pollocksville under the name: Jones Academy, Incorporated. C. R. Hughes of Maysville is president of the-recently chart tion will be $300 plus book costs and insurance and the registra tion fee, of course, will be pari 5f the total tuition cost, v Children will have to be pro dded with their own lunches md transportation. The actual location of the school has not yet been decided aiton, insofar as building is con dents between now and opening day of the school may contact Mrs. R. L. Bryant of MaysviUe, who is secretary to the corpora tion. .V Mrs. Jesse Eubanks of Pollocks vilie is treasurer of the organi zation. 'Teachers who are interested in working in the school are urg ed to contact Hughes at his i home. His phone number is 743 6376. I^ho would like to be members of the so by paying a gives them the ■ processing companies are busily trying to cut the throats of to bacco sales warehousemen and somewhere in the middle of this palace brawl the poor peasantry who tend King Nicotine in the fields are caught. Perhaps even worse than the combined wounds inflicted by the witch doctors and the pai ace feuding is the almost unbe lievable pain of inflation thal has hit tobacco farmers. The worst area is in labor costs which have had an inverse ra tio: The more labor is paid the sorrier it becomes in both qua! ity and quantity of total output In 1939 it took 415 man hour: of labor-to produce an acre 01 tobacco. In i964 it took 493 mar hours of labor per acre of to bacco. True, production per acre increase from 886 pound! to 1880 pounds in that period This was enough increase ir productivity per man hour tc keep the tobacco farmer aboul in pace with the overall infla tion of taxes, fertilizers, oil, seed insurance and the other factors that add up in the production oJ this fabulous weed. In 1965 a lid was put on th« increase of tobacco productior per acre, but nobody botherec to put a lid on labor, or taxes or any of the other things tha go into production of a pounc of tobacco. And in addition to the price o: tobacco going up and its quality going down, labor, to a very large extent, is not available a any price. During the same time tha man-hours per acre of tobacc< production went up other East ern North Carolina crops begai to react morp. favorably. "Coni, for instance, which i the biggest crop in North Care lina in acres, required 28.1 mai hours per acre in 1939, but onl; 6.8 man hours in 1964 and th< decline continues as mechaniza tion increases and per acre pre duction goes higher. In 1939 it took 3.2 man hour to produce 100 pounds of pork and this had fallen to 2.1 mai hours in 1964, and this ratio i still falling. Even more amazing as tech nology moved into the chickei business was the drop from 8.1 man hours per 100 pounds o broilers in 1939 to only .9 mar hours for the same result ir 1964. Man hours per 100 eggs fell ii the same period from 1.7 to 0.6 Man-hours per 100 pounds of milk fell from 3.4 to 1.3 in this same 15 year period, and all of these production figures in'lhe realm of corn and meat produc tion are still falling, while to bacco’s scot per 100 pounds in many hours is frozen, while the price of those man hours of labor has skyrocketed. The modern tobacco farmer has had these very hard facts of life forced upon him over a per iod of about 25 years — roughly since the end of World War II, and each year a growing per cent of farmers who once limp ed uneasily along on that single crutch of tobacco are balancing their production with less cost ly-to-produce, more readily mar ketable, less controversial items. At the turn of the century Kinston’s main- industrial life blood was textiles. There were five large processors of cotton, and in that day Cotton was King of the Dixie economy. Today only one textile plant of that five survives, and it processes more synthetic fibers than cot ton. From the end of World War I until the early sixties tobacco processing plants were a major part of the industrial activity in Kinston. At their peak there were five major tobacco proces sing plants in Kinston. Today only two survive. This year the treasury de partment reports a slight drop in gross sales of cigarettes. Is this a trend, or just a nervous reaction of the public to the propaganda of such organiza tions as the United States Public » Health Service, the American - Cancer Society, The American i Heart Society and the National Tuberculosis Association? > Billions of dollars hangs on - the answer to these questions, l but nobody knows the answer. ' Only one thing is surely known: ■ That in this year of his reign - His Imperial Nicotinish Majesty - wears his crown less surely than at anytime since he snatched it > from aging hands of King Cot , ton some 50 years ago. i The King is not dead ... far : from it . . . but Crown Prince Corn is growing restless and the - feeling among those familiar i with the palace politics agree • that the King shall not rule for ' ever, and the Crown Prince is i anxious to take over and bring i to his subjects a much better life than was ever provided by his aging, and still respected fa ther. Three Massachusetts College Beys and Kinston Teenager Killed in Traffic Accidents in Kinston Area Last Week The tragic traffic toll in the Kinston area for the week end ing Saturday grew to seven dead with the Thursday death of a 13 year-old Kinston youth and the Saturday morning death of three college students from Massachusetts. Donald Lloyd Price, son of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert H. Price, who live just north of Kinston off of NC 91 died Thursday from in juries he suffered when he swerved his bicycle into the path of a car driven by Elbert A. Murrill of Brooklyn, N. Y. A two-vehide crash at 12:45 Saturday morning just east of Wyse Forks on Highway US 70 claimed the lives of Glen Law ton, 20, Elmer Slasioski, 22, and. Thaddeus William Mi^s, 20,, right to vote on all school mat ters. Also it is stressed strongly that donations of any she from anyone will be greatly appre ciated. ' "• ■ Lawton, driver of a Volkswag en camper, was dead on arrival at Lenoir Memorial Hospital. Slasioswki died about an hour after reaching the hospital. Both were from Falls River, Mass. Miss, fromJSwansea, Ma$s., died in Pitt Memorial Hospital at Greenville at about Noon Satur day. John Cederberg, 20, of Rocky Mount was driving a small sports car that crashed into the col lege boys’ camper. He suffered numerous serious injuries, for which he received emergency care in Kinston before being transferred to. a Rocky Mount Hospital. -i » Patrolman R. R. Mason says Cederberg’s car headed west toward Kinston drifted over into the eastbound lane and caused the tragedy. These four deaths made a total of seveo in the. Kinston yicinity from Saturday'the 17th through Continued on Page 8 mm
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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Aug. 29, 1968, edition 1
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