Posted on February 8, 2010.
What Stringing tobacco pouch? In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, families in all regions of tobacco in North Carolina and Virginia much-needed income by sewing strips in cotton tobacco bags. Long forgotten now, put the bag of tobacco was a common activity in many communities. Because the work was physically demanding and could be done at home, work attracted many women, children and others who needed the money to supplement their farm incomes, or who do could not find work in factories and mills nearby.
Empty bag of tobacco with string. North Carolina Collection Gallery.Tobacco bags were used to hold loose tobacco that smokers used in pipes or rolling their own cigarettes. The bags were usually made of cotton or muslin cloth and measured about four by three inches. They were sewn along the entire length of both sides, with an opening at the top left. tobacco bag stringers would thread the string into two parts, allowing the smoker to pull the ends to close the bags. experienced stringers were remarkably effective. A woman in West Durham, North Carolina, recalled working in his spare time, and still putting on more than a thousand bags a day, for which she received about fifty cents.
Much work has received the bag by a longitudinal officer bag, "which was employed directly by the manufacturer. The agent is often a local businessman and county government official who was well known in the community. Distribution of bags of tobacco has become an important responsibility when demand for labor exceeded the number of bags available. An officer bag Leaksville, NC, in 1939, describes the need to work in his community:
The mills have been here a short time running for several years now. And I believe that less than half of those normally employed are now at work. Guests then there is probably one in each household and working part-time [as] a tobacco bag stringer. Everyday hundreds of requests for bags above that I am able to provide. They come to me from all angles, telephone, doorbell and since my business is my home, they will even go around the house and come back in the door, just to say how they are in need, and ask me to please get the bags in a string using the little they receive today.
In 1939, three companies have produced the bulk of tobacco bags used in the United States. Of these, only a Golden Belt Manufacturing Company, a subsidiary of American Tobacco in Durham, NC-come with a way to mechanically insert cords. The two other companies, Millhiser Bag Company in Richmond, Virginia and the Chase Bag Company in Reidsville, NC, had to rely on labor rights in the chain of bags. This was no small undertaking: the three companies have reached a billion bags of tobacco per year.
Country Gentleman Tobacco, Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company, Durham, NC North Carolina Collection Gallery.Although many Americans have shown a clear preference for more comfortable machine-rolled cigarettes, loose tobacco was much cheaper and has seen its sales jump in difficult economic times. During the Great Depression, a bag of loose tobacco, from which thirty rolled cigarettes may be sold to a dime, while packets of twenty cigarettes rolled machine cost five cents.
Stringing tobacco pouch and the minimum wage
On June 28, 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt enacted the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, establishing a minimum wage of twenty-five cents an hour. That law threatened to disrupt the lives of homeworkers, whose activities were largely unregulated. Because the tobacco bag stringers were paid according to how many bags.
