Types and Brands of Pipe Tobacco, 1920's to 1940's

[proteus]

We complain, justly so, about inflation.

All the people that personally remember the catastrophe of deflation from 1930-33 are dead.

Look, at the percentage decrease in the price of Prince Albert, Velvet and Edgeworth from the Sears catalogs of 1923 and 1938. And 1933 would have been worse.

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The human toll of misery and despair is beyond our imagination today.

Headline unemployment reached 25%, and only those looking for work counted, just as today.

Real GDP fell 29% from 1929 to 1933. The unemployment rate reached a peak of 25% in 1933. Consumer prices fell 25%; wholesale prices plummeted 32%.

There is a 60 acre field I still own that was sold to my Great Uncle Elmer in 1922 for the bargain family price of $66 an acre. It appraised at $100.

In 1936 Elmer grew weary of fighting against low prices and droughts and had a big auction.

His beautiful sister Eva who’d married a rich man paid $3.50 an acre.

Eva promised my father, a 17 year old kid, that if he’d share rent the 60 she’d sell him the land when he could pay $3.50 an acre himself.

By 1944 when my father had the money, Eva decided she had to have $15 an acre. He paid.

Who knows how much more valuable in constant dollars, that land is today.

I’ve heard all kinds of arguments of why the Great Depression happened.

But none about what ended It.

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Hatbor, that ended it, hopefully forever.

Notwithstanding the arguments of morality and the hell that war is, war is nevertheless good for business. Here in Conn the fortunes of many prominent families were made in WW2.

 

[f4phantomdriver]

Field and Stream was released in 1963, and Carter Hall was a local blend in 1895, but it was bought and produced as corporate product in1950 by John Middleton co. Carter Hall was one of the first to utilize the new flu cured variety known as Virginias, but that was at a local level until bought out.

Carter Hall was manufactured by Philip Morris in 1958. John Middleton acquired it in 1987.

 

[PaulTheScandinavian]

I'm sorry to say that Van Nelle Zware is now a shadow of its glory days, when it was made at the "Black Widow" factory in Rotterdam and really was zware. Same general flavour, but not quite so full and the nicotine much reduced. I think it's made in Spain these days which, given Dutch history, is ironic.

Absolutely true, and other well renowned dutch RYOs went downhill as well, even production for excempt tax sales in aeroports and for the foreign vessel grew members are all the same

 

[anotherbob]

My impression is that there used to be stronger (higher nicotine) tobaccos available.

I believe this because of things I read here and there, including what Mr. Cosmic says above.

I remember, for example, reading on some forum which no longer seems to exist (Christian Pipe Smokers, maybe?) that Five Brothers used to have numerous competitors in the strong over-the-counter burley category. Nowadays it's often said that nothing is like Five Brothers, and insofar as that is true, I believe it's because the times--and tastes--have changed. Blends like that have become rare.

Pipe sizes may also reflect this. I love small pipes, so I was reading about the Peterson "Jr.'s". Turns out these are an old style of pipe, once much more common, that has been brought back. Ropp pipes--which also tend to be small--are made from old stock. I believe that at least one of the reasons there used to be more selection in small pipes is that tobacco used to be stronger.

One of my understandings is that in general farming tobacco has slowly favored flavor over nicotine and all things have gotten a little weaker (commercially speaking). Can't confirm or deny but it rings true to my mind.
I am sure that you're right about the smaller pipes.

 

[anotherbob]

Add to these Dunhill, Three Nuns, Escudo, Capstan in a wider variety of mixtures than just blue and gold, SG 1792, Gawith and Hoggarth ropes and twists, Richmond, various Sobranie Products, various Germain's products, Ardath State Express London Mixture, Laurus&Bro Co Edgeworth Sliced, Carreras' Craven Mixture, Ogden's St Julien, thousands of bespoke tobacconist mixtures, and Wilke, Rattray's, and McConnell, to name just a bit of it.
Of course, the tobaccos of yore bear little resemblance to their descendants. With few exceptions today's tobaccos are the product of a few giant conglomerates pulling from the same suppliers to make their various IPs, not the individual products of a number of idiosyncratic manufacturers often owned by their respective blenders.

from talking to old folks the tobacconists covered so many bases and probably made blends that would seem new and exciting to us. Heard of older smokers getting a new job and hitting the new to them local shops in hopes of something that scratched their itch and either finding new blends that made them forget the old or having to resort to working out some scheme to order their favorite from the previous local tobacco shop. One of the more interesting ones the shop refused to ship the tobacco but offered to sell their secrets to the new locals blender.

 

[anotherbob]

On radios in the Great Depression.

During the twenties radio started to become popular but radios were expensive, and since they were there weren’t many stations.

But although the Great Depression was an unprecedented economic disaster affecting all the modern world, there were still industries that boomed and one was radio.

As radios became smaller, cheaper, and better there were more buyers and more stations, until by 1939 only $2.50 down bought a choice of radios from Sears.

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Notice the choices all ran on batteries, some also on household current.

In 1939 the Rural Electrification Administration was one huge war and a decade away from running power lines out to the vast rural communities that still had no electric power except batteries.

But Roy Acuff on the Grand Ole Opry sold a lot of Prince Albert and Matha White Self Rising Flour.

And while $16-24 may not sound like much in 1938 the first minimum wage was passed and wages for covered employees in industrial plants increased from $3-4 a week to eleven dollars a week, 25 cents an hour for 44 hours.

Farm laborers were exempt.

Field hands in Missouri earned about fifty cents a day.

Down further South, it was less.

sometimes when you're broke you have to buy that thing that's going to keep entertaining you.

 

[f4phantomdriver]

I remember well that my father and grandfather both smoke pipes. In the 40s I was too young to notice but in the 50s I was a teenager and noticed everything. I recall, they both smoked Prince Albert. My grandfather also smoked Granger and my father also smoked Revelation. My grandfather was a serious smoker 4 or 5 bowls a day and my father a moderate smoker, a couple of bowls at night, 3 or 4 times a week. I loved the Good Old Days!

My great grandfather had a "pip' in his mouth all day. It wasn't lit all the time but it was there. He smoked more than four or five bowls a day. The living room had that smell all the time, even when I didn't see any smoke emitting from his pipe. Union Leader smelled good in the late 70s and early 80s. That was his brand with the occasional can of Prince Albert if the stores didn't have Union Leader. My Step father's Dad and brother smoked a pipe too. His Dad smoked Pall Mall cigarette butts that were left over in his ashtrays in the house in a cheap Dr Grabow and his brother smoked Captain Black Royal and Original. I miss the old days too. There was a Russian Orthodox church up the street from my house. A lot of Polish and Lithuanian immigrants from WW2 went to that church. Every year they had a Polish fair and had horses, a big flea market and lots of Balkan food. The guy that brought the horses was an old farmer, him his wife and daughter would bring the horses and give horse rides to the kids. He would sit in his old lawn chair and smoke his pipe. He also chewed Apple Jack plug. I think he liked apples because he smoked Middleton Apple Pipe Tobacco. His pipe smelled so good! I would sit with him just so I could smell his pipe smoke and listen to his stories of when Moore Road was dirt and the houses in my neighborhood were built for the returning men and their families from WW2. It's a shame, all these people that I remember are all long gone.

 

[Briarcutter]

This jogged a memory. When I was a kid I would accompany Pop to the local Sears and I remember the tobacco department. Completely forgot about that.

What years do you remember tobacco departments at Sears?

 

[sablebrush52]

What years do you remember tobacco departments at Sears?

I can't give you precise years, but the era would have been the late '50's thru the mid '60's

 

[f4phantomdriver]

Ok so F&S outside of my time period. For CH most likely not mainstream then until after 1940s.

Carter Hall came out in 1956

 

[f4phantomdriver]

I would imagine SWR was one of the blends that went through WW2. I never saw ads for it from the 40s.

SWR came out in 1937

 

[Bub]

If you have a subscription to the Saturday Evening Post, you can look at all the old issues online. In the 20's through 50's you will find ads for pipes and tobaccos you've probably never heard of. Some of the articles are really interesting too.

 

[Bub]

Here is an ad from 1942 Saturday Evening Post.

 

[Bub]

Here's another from 42.

 

[Bub]

And one more.

 

[Briarcutter]

Thank you Bub for posting these ads! I was hoping you would do so.

 

[Briarcutter]

And one more.

Assuming this is 1942, I did a quick search and found in 1942 15 cents would equal $3.05 in 2025. Average hourly factory wage in 1942 was $1.00/hour.

 

[Bub]

Assuming this is 1942, I did a quick search and found in 1942 15 cents would equal $3.05 in 2025. Average hourly factory wage in 1942 was $1.00/hour.

When I was pumping gas part time in '58 that's how much I was earning.

1942 was the first year of WWII for the US. Going through that year's articles and ads gave me a real feeling of what it was like during that time.

Current issues of the Post aren't much. But, if you are interested in history, the subscription is worth it for the access to the archives. If I come across anything I think would be of interest here, I'll post them.

 

[Sobrbiker]

“The majority of pipe smokers use a pipe regularly - that is, nearly every day - accounting for well over 80% of pipe tobacco consumption.

About a fifth of the pipe smokers use a pipe occasionally.”

I wonder if the latter “occasional” smokers nowadays account for twenty percent or more of purchases.
Just from what I’ve seen on this forum (and others) there are many that only claim to smoke occasionally yet make lots of purchases. I’d posit that those that smoke regularly or heavily 60yrs didn’t concern themselves with the near hoarding volume we see today.

 

[Sobrbiker]

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This is the post I quoted from, re:1964 usage