Warehouse built for the Tobacco Growers Co-op in 1922 at Nashville, N.C.
Photo courtesy of the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office, 2024

During the early 1920s, Pittsylvania County’s tobacco was largely sold via an auction‑based warehouse system controlled by a few large buyers. For families who had invested a year’s labor into their crop, the auction floor could feel more like a roulette wheel with the little control they had over pricing. In response, the Tobacco Growers Cooperative Association was organized in 1922, with headquarters in Raleigh, N.C. and Virginia branch offices in Richmond. The association promised to stabilize prices by uniting farmers under a five‑year marketing contract. Members pledged to sell all their leaf exclusively through the co-op. In return, the association promised to store tobacco in leased or purchased warehouses, sell to manufacturers at negotiated prices, and ensure the farmers get a better profit from their collective sales. A booklet published by the association, described all of its upsides and gives an in-depth perspective at farming over a century ago. 

Within its first two years, tens of thousands of tobacco growers had joined the co-op and managed over 200 warehouses across the three states. One section of the booklet, titled “What the Association Has Actually Done,” provides some accomplishments thus far, noting that two payments had already been made to Virginia growers for the 1922 crop, with more to come. The co-op considered warehousemen and speculators as its main opposition To make its case, the association published a comparative table of prices from five key Virginia markets that included both Danville and Chatham paired with South Boston, Chase City, and Brookneal, who altogether handled more than half of Virginia’s bright leaf crop. In 1921, the average auction prices in Danville were up to 19.3 cents per pound (equivalent to about $3.50 today) and the co-op would pay 20.4 cents per pound (~$3.70) to its customers. In Chatham auction prices were slightly higher at 19.5 cents (~$3.54) and the co-op paid 21.1 cents (~$3.85). After selling several hundred pounds, the gains were significant. It also noted the scale of the 1922 harvest: roughly 104 million pounds of bright tobacco was grown in Virginia as compared to about 67 million pounds in 1921. Prices held despite the much larger crop, which the association highlighted as proof that they had a stabilizing influence.

For farmers in Pittsylvania County, warehouses in Danville and Chatham were directly involved in the cooperative program. Trucks and wagons carried tobacco along the old dirt roads to be weighed, graded, and stored under the association’s system. Tobacco co‑ops faced certain limitations, as with how many stayed loyal to the auctioneering system, and competing companies sometimes broke agreements by offering higher spot prices to non‑members. In other parts of the tobacco belt, enforcement of pooling resulted in vigilante justice (as with the Night Riders in Kentucky and Tennessee) against non‑members or buyers who refused to cooperate. An amusing early newspaper advertisement from the co-op read: “Ask Your Wife— If she is satisfied with the “auction system” of selling tobacco? If she would not like to live in a good home, such as “auction buyers” own? Ask her if she enjoys working in the fields making a crop of tobacco to give away in the fall? Ask her if she doesn’t believe 70,000 farmers and their wives can lick [or defeat] a handful of speculators? Then sign up for her sake…”

The story of the Tobacco Growers Cooperative Association is historically a brief chapter. After six years, the organization had its downfall due to a combination of company over-expansion, contract breaches from customers, disagreements among management, and ultimately a forced liquidation of the company in 1926. Yet for a few seasons, the cooperative represented a flash of collective hope: that small tobacco farmers might claim a spot on the market long dominated by the warehousemen. In 1927 the company was bought by Nashville Building Supply in Nashville, North Carolina.