Tobacco

Tobacco kept the first permanent English colony in America alive. In Virginia around 1612, John Rolfe planted a milder strain of tobacco than the local plant, and it sold well in London. Within a few years colonists were growing it in the streets of Jamestown.

For the next 300 years tobacco was one of the great American crops and one of the great American businesses. Most of it was chewed, smoked in pipes or rolled into cigars for much of the 19th century. Cigarettes were a small part of the trade until a Virginian named James Bonsack patented a cigarette rolling machine in 1881. James Buchanan Duke adopted it, and the cheap machine-made cigarette took over. Duke's American Tobacco Company grew so large that the Supreme Court ordered it broken up in 1911.

Tobacco also produced an enormous amount of printed art. Cigar box labels were among the most elaborate pieces of commercial printing of their time, embossed and printed in many colors with gold leaf, showing everything from pretty women to famous generals. Each label sat inside the lid where the buyer saw it when the box was opened in the shop.

Cigarette cards began as a practical item. A piece of stiff card was slipped into the soft paper pack to keep the cigarettes from being crushed, and manufacturers soon printed pictures on them. They came in sets, actors and actresses, ballplayers, flags, birds, soldiers, and people bought more packs to finish a set. The most famous baseball card of all, the rare Honus Wagner card, came from a tobacco set issued around 1909 to 1911.

A collection like this also tends to show the work behind it. Photographs of tobacco fields, curing barns, auction warehouses and cigar factories show the labor. Worth noticing is how ordinary smoking looks in these pictures. Men smoke in offices, at ballgames and beside their children. Advertising before the 1950s rarely hinted at any risk at all.