Long Green: The Rise and Fall of Tobacco in South Carolina.

By Eldred E. Prince Jr. with Robert R. Simpson. (Athens, Ga., and London: University of Georgia Press, c. 2000. Pp. [xxiv], 272. $40.00, ISBN 0-8203-2176-1.)

While rice and cotton are the two crops one normally associates with South Carolina, Eldred E. Prince Jr. and the late Robert R. Simpson remind us of the significance of tobacco in the agricultural history of the Palmetto State. In this well-written and thorough volume, the authors demonstrate that tobacco's reign in South Carolina, particularly in the northeastern area of the state (the Pee Dee), has been uneven and was ultimately shaped by market conditions that forced growers to abandon other less profitable staples.

Tobacco, as Prince and Simpson demonstrate, has actually been a major South Carolina commodity in three separate periods. Tobacco emerged in the 1670s as the colony's major crop, until its declining profits forced growers to replace it with rice; tobacco then reappeared in the 1760s, but bleak market conditions forced farmers to turn to King Cotton by 1800; the third era began with the experimentation in Bright Leaf tobacco in the 1880s. As the twentieth century came to a close, tobacco was, as in the periods before, in steady retreat; the authors conclude that without the price support system created during the New Deal, tobacco would probably have disappeared from the scene in South Carolina by midcenturys. Despite the challenges of covering over three hundred years of tobacco's development, Prince and Simpson do so with clarity and sophistication.

The most impressive part of this book is Prince and Simpson's exhaustive recounting of sharecropping, tenantry, and its associated credit mechanisms in South Carolina after the Civil War, which forced Pee Dee growers to consider tobacco their economic savior. The authors are not as thorough in other areas, such as the cultural and racial makeup of Pee Dee tobacco culture. They show how various self-help attempts, such as cooperative marketing, could not overcome the imposing economic hurdles faced by South Carolina growers in the twentieth century. The power and resources of the large tobacco manufacturers stood in vivid contrast to the increasing powerlessness and poverty of tobacco farmers.

This fine book brings to light a heretofore ignored aspect of the Tobacco South. The authors offer a compelling portrait of modern-day growers and the economic, political, and even moral complexities they face in growing a product whose health risks are now widely known and whose financial returns are diminishing. Prince and Simpson's book will be necessary reading for anyone interested in the history of tobacco or the agricultural and economic history of South Carolina.

TRACY CAMPBELL
University of Kentucky