- Potpourri - Janesville Sesquicentennial
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- Tobacco industry big in 1880s
- A new industry grew up in Janesville between the years of
1880 and 1884: the purchase and
- handling of tobacco.
- Tobacco had been raised in Rock County for many years before
1880; the first was near Edgerton
- by a Mr. POMEROY in the 1850s and the cash crop still
thrives there. Later it was grown closer to Janesville.
- According to a 1908 history of the county, "Tobacco
raising had become quite universal prior to
- 1880, 3,746 acres having been raised in Rock County in 1879,
but it was mostly sold to Chicago dealers. POWE &
STEVENS, who had a warehouse on the corner of Wall and
Madison streets, were heavy buyers of the 1881 crop at Janesville,
and the firm of BAINES, HEDDLES & Co. was organized
about the same time. F. M. HIBBARD, J. G. DeLONG
and CONRAD Bros. were early buyers."
- In 1880, 5,100 cases of tobacco were handled in Janesville,
and by 1908, there were 30 leaf
- tobacco warehouses in the city, and "more leaf is packed
here than in any other city in the United States, excepting Lancaster,
Pa."
- Janesville dealers invested more than $2 to buy the 1906
crop, and more than 950 men and women
- worked sorting and handling the leaf for several months.
The city's tobacco dealers went far afield to buy their leaf,
notably in Dane and Viroqua counties.
- Stemming lower grades of tobacco for export became quite
an industry in the city, and in 1907,
- M. F. GREEN & Co. spent some $30,000 to build
a "mammoth brick warehouse" on Academy Street just
north of their old warehouse to handle that branch of the industry.
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