The collection is open for research.
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Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: [identification of item], [box], [folder], Tri-State Tobacco Growers Association Study, Ms1957-001, Special Collections and University Archives, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va.
The Tri-State Tobacco Growers Association Study was donated to Newman Library in 1957, under the title "Tobacco Growers Cooperative Marketing Association Records."
The processing, arrangement, and description of the Tri-State Tobacco Growers Association Study commenced and was completed in February, 2011.
In the course of processing, the collection's name was changed from the original "Tobacco Growers Cooperative Marketing Association Records" to coincide with the official name of the organization and the contents of the collection.
The Tri-State Tobacco Growers Association was formed in 1921 as a cooperative of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina tobacco farmers in response to the falling prices for their crop following World War I. In joining the cooperative, farmers contracted to send their crops to the association, which would, in turn, grade, redry and sell the tobacco to manufacturers. At its peak, the cooperative boasted more than 90,000 farmers among its membership. The cooperative folded in 1925, largely due to membership dissatisfaction with the service.
Sydney D. Frissell served as the publicity officer for the Tri-State Tobacco Growers Association and was also a graduate student in rural social economics at the University of North Carolina, where he made a study of cooperative marketing.
Research locates an instructor of sociology named B. D. Tillett at the University of Georgia in 1936. In that year, Tillett was appointed an associate professor in the university's Department of Rural Organization and Markets. He seems likely to have been the Boone Dowdy Tillett who received a master's degree in agricultural economics at North Carolina State University in 1924, with the thesis "Development and Marketing of Tobacco."
This collection contains a typescript draft for a study and history of the Tri-State Tobacco Growers Association (also known as the Tobacco Growers Cooperative Marketing Association). Written by Sydney D. Frissell and B. D. Tillett, the book was to detail the brief existence of the cooperative and place it in context of general agriculture, tobacco farming, and other cooperative efforts. Papers within the collection indicate that the subject of tobacco prior to the formation of the cooperative was to be written by Tillett, while Frissell, a one-time officer of the cooperative, would write the history of the cooperative itself. The draft is incomplete, and what is present seems to be comprised largely of the subjects assigned to Tillett. Only one file relates explicitly to the cooperative, with the remainder devoted to background subjects. Included are drafts and background materials on the history of American agriculture, tobacco cultivation by Native Americans and the colonists; transportation, consumption, and foreign trade of tobacco; farm tenancy; and agricultural cooperatives. The collection also contains several working outlines for the book, the working title of which was "An Economic and Social Study of the Tobacco Growers Cooperative Marketing Association." Also included are a few pieces of correspondence regarding the project, including an exchange of letters between Frissell and Professor John R. Hutcheson, director of the Virginia Agricultural Extension Service.
The collection is arranged according to document type, then by topic.
The guide to the Tri-State Tobacco Growers Association Study by Special Collections and University Archives, Virginia Tech, is licensed under a CC0 (https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/).