Oral History Interview with Lawrence C. Newman

[Begin Tape #1, Side #1]

KLEE: The following is an unrehearsed interview for the Kentucky Oral History Commission by John Klee with Mr. Lawrence Newman, who is the Regional Director of the Tobacco Inspection Service for the United States Department of Agriculture here in . We're conducting the interview at his office in on . Mr. Newman, I always start these by just asking a little bit about yourself. Could you tell me a little bit about your background? Where you born and raised, and those kind of things.

NEWMAN: Well, actually born in , down near a little village called . Let's see, what else could I tell you?

KLEE: Your parents were involved in agriculture?

NEWMAN: My . . . my father was primarily a farmer 'though he worked at other things part of the time, and I grew up on the farm. So I . . . I've actually been on the farm practically all my life.

KLEE: Yes.

NEWMAN: This position that I occupy here is full-time at present, but up until the past two or three years, I worked a seasonal job and traveled to all the tobacco markets in the Carolinas and , and and and . I've now been with the tobacco grading service or inspection service for almost thirty-one years.

KLEE: Okay. How did you . . . how'd you first get into that business?

NEWMAN: Well, I guess, curiosity. I'd hauled a crop of tobacco to the market over at Cynthiana and just noticed that there was people grading tobacco and people asking questions about it and so forth. So I decided I'd like to try it and I applied for a job, and two years later they hired me and I've been with them ever since.

KLEE: Okay, now grading tobacco at that time you began, was that a seasonal job at that time?

NEWMAN: That was seasonal job, and I only graded burley at that time.

KLEE: Just doing the . . .

NEWMAN: The first . . . first four years, I just worked the burley region and graded burley tobacco.

KLEE: In here?

NEWMAN: In .

KLEE: Were you at more than one market at that time? Or just the one market?

NEWMAN: Well, one market per year. But I started at Maysville and worked on that market the first four seasons. And then they moved me down to Harrodsburg and I stayed three seasons. And then I . . . during this time, I started going to the flue-cured region, which was in the eastern part of and and . Started going down there. And then I worked, I believe, three years at Harrodsburg after the training process was pretty well complete. Then they transferred me back to Maysville for a couple of years, and then to . So I've been all around during these thirty years.

KLEE: Okay. When did . . . course obviously to get to this position, the regional director, you've had promotions along the way. What steps do you take? You were a grader to begin with, and then, I guess, you supervised graders?

NEWMAN: Right. You start out as a . . . let's say a journeyman grader. After they train you for two or three seasons, you're what is known as a journeyman grader. And then for each set of buyers that there is on the various markets, we have a group of graders to go with these buyers and each set of graders has a head grader. So that's the next step up in the line from a journeyman grader. And from there, you progress up through the ranks as . . . circuit supervisor is the next step up the line. And with our present set-up or chain of command, you go from a circuit supervisor to an assistant regional director, and then finally to the regional director. And that's the last step in the field. You go any higher than that, you've got to go to .

KLEE: I see. Okay. [chuckles] So you're right below that step to . Let's go back to that beginning, then, and talk . . . tell . . . tell me what a grader does. Now you're hired by the United States Department of Agriculture?

NEWMAN: Right, we're U.S.D.A. employees, under Civil Service. And we're hired primarily to examine and describe the farmer's crop of tobacco once he puts it on the market for sale. In describing it, we look at various aspects of the tobacco. We have actually ten elements of quality that we use to describe the tobacco. Now we don't need all ten elements for every pile of tobacco we look at to arrive at a grade.

KLEE: Right. But you've got . . . these ten things are your criteria?

NEWMAN: Right. We have a few of those and we have . . .

KLEE: [inaudible]

NEWMAN: . . . [inaudible] things. Well, primarily I will say, we like to say they're all equal but the basic things that you look to is the body of the tobacco, the color intensity of the tobacco, and the amount of injury that it might have from insects or from handling. And the maturity of the tobacco is very important, how ripe that tobacco was when it was taken out of the field. Whether it was just barely mature or was it ripe or was it overripe, and that sort of thing.

KLEE: Well, describe with me through each one of those. Now when you talk about body of tobacco, you're talking about how . . .

NEWMAN: When we talk about that, we're talking about the thickness of the leaf, how heavy it would feel in your hand, or how thick the leaves feel. And if you're familiar with a plant of tobacco, you know, generally speaking, the leaves on the bottom of the stalk are the thinnest, and then as you move up the stalk, the leaves get thicker [inaudible]. So that's where we get to when we talk about judging body. We start with the very thin tobacco on the bottom of the stalk, and . . . and then our . . . our range runs all the way from . . . from thin or tissue-y to heavy. So the heaviest tobacco is the . . . we'll say chewing tobacco off the top of the stalk. And then maybe along about the middle of the stalk, you have the medium to thin bodied tobacco, which is primarily cigarette tobacco. And the bottom leaves are extremely thin and they're . . . they're cigarette tobacco too, but they're generally a little lower quality than the rest of the stalk.

KLEE: Okay. So you got body. Now you . . . now you . . . then you have color. Describe the color.

NEWMAN: Well, color in that . . . to us, the color isn't . . . well, it's broken down into degrees such as the very best we have, we'll call it bright color. And we have a strong color, and we have a moderate color, and then a weak color, and a pale color. So depending pretty much on the maturity of the tobacco has a whole lot to do with setting the color on the tobacco. If it's cut a little bit soon, it'll have a tendency to be . . . have a little slickish feel to it, and the color will not be as strong or as . . . not a rich color, you know. You see things that have a very . . . well, we'll say a very rich color, and then we have some that has an old sort of a faded, pale color, so that's what we look at when we talk about color and color intensity.

KLEE: Okay.

NEWMAN: And the leaf structure on it's like . . . is what determines the porosity of the leaf. How well it would absorb liquids. Manufacturers might want to put on his leaves and so forth.

KLEE: Well they . . . manufacturers are looking for that . . . obviously . . . that's obvious with chewing tobacco, cause they add those additives. But even with the cigarette tobacco, they have to . . .

NEWMAN: They . . . I don't . . . I don't know. Don't have any knowledge as to what they might add to their cigarette tobacco.

KLEE: Yeah. Right.

NEWMAN: But if the leaf structure, we'll say, is very porous or open, then we'll say that that is a good burning type of tobacco. It would be ideal for cigarettes. Whereas if the leaf structure becomes a little bit close and solid, then we're getting into chewing tobacco and pipe tobacco.

KLEE: Other uses, okay. Different kinds of damaging, this is one of the things, I guess, makes tobacco vary . . . very varied.

NEWMAN: Yeah.

KLEE: Because it . . . depending on what's happened. Describe some of those different kinds of things.

NEWMAN: Well, we speak of injury a whole lot when we're grading tobacco, and by injury I'm talking about how . . . how . . . how many . . . well, we'll say insect holes might be in the leaf or how much of the leaf is torn or begin to shatter off around the edges and so forth. And this injury is brought about by . . . partly by cultivation in the field, partly by insects, of course, where you get a lot of holes in the bottom leaves from, maybe from flea beetles and so forth. And then, course you can have some hail damage . . .

KLEE: Weather, right.

NEWMAN: . . . sometimes, and that sort of thing. Another thing if the tobacco stays in the field too long. By that, I'm saying two or three weeks beyond the wrap stage, it begins to deteriorate around the edge of the leaves. They break off in little pieces and so forth. So that is injury that we're talking about. We have to be able to judge the percentage of that in a lot of tobacco to determine the quality.

KLEE: Where does . . . does disease come in? In . . . I guess it would . . . I guess disease affects color and all these other things?

NEWMAN: Well, disease may affect the color some just by the extent of the disease. If it was very mild, disease of some sort, it won't affect the color very much. But if you get into something like blue mold that we had a bad case of here three or four years ago, now that gets so bad that it does affect color and everything because the leaf becomes colored with little splotches, you know, and it falls out and so forth. You get into a lot of injury as well as your . . . your color being sort of broken up and disfigured and everything like that.

KLEE: So it would affect different parts of the grading.

NEWMAN: Yes, right.

KLEE: Now, we've just gone through three or four of these factors, and under each factor, there are three different . . . three or four different types. We talked about color. We talked about bright and so on and so forth. When you add all this together, you have really literally what? There's dozens of grades.

NEWMAN: Well, yes, for . . . well for the burley tobacco, here we have at the present time, a hundred and six grades. And if we work the other types such as flue-cured, they have a hundred and forty-some grades. So our . . . our graders, it takes a lot of time to train them and get them to the point when they can grade these various types with a minimum of errors, you know.

KLEE: Describe the . . . when . . . when you assign a grade to tobacco, you make a mark, BF4 or . . . describe what that means, a B4F [inaudible] . . .

NEWMAN: Okay. In grading the tobacco, first of all, we try to determine the stalk position, where the leave's been on the stalk.

KLEE: Right. Whether the bottom, middle or top.

NEWMAN: If it came off near the bottom, they're what we call the flyings, and that is described with an "X", as the X group. Then as we move up the stalk, the next group going up the stalk is . . . some people refer to them as cutters, some to . . . refer to them as lugs. But that is the "C" group as far as grades are concerned. And moving on up, then, the heavier tobacco gets, we call it the "B" group. That's . . . that's a leaf part that's heavier bodied tobacco, used for cigarettes and for cigars and pipe tobacco and chewing tobacco and that sort. But once we determine then where the leaves came off the stalk, then we put the . . . the letter there you know, either X or C or B, or we even have a tip group in burley, and the only difference in the tip group and the B group, is the length of the leaves. If it's under sixteen inches, off of the top half of the stalk, they call it a tip. If it's more than sixteen, then it's in the B group.

KLEE: What . . . what are . . . designation does the . . . does the tip get?

NEWMAN: The tip group, we use a "T" to designate the tip group. And once we have decided then what group the leaves belong in, then we look at it from the point of what quality is it? Is it first quality, second quality, up through fifth quality. And this is arrived at by the elements of quality that I was speaking of a few minutes ago, the ten elements of equality. We have to . . . to think of these ten elements and determine what quality this piece of tobacco would fit it. Because, for example, a B1F we'll say, has to be ninety-five percent uniform. That means ninety-five percent of that lot of tobacco has to be plus twenty inches in length. It has to be a bright color intensity. Has to have a smooth finish to it. Cannot have over five percent of injury. So . . .

KLEE: And that all is incorporated into this quality characteristic?

NEWMAN: That . . . that's what we go by to set the quality on a piece of tobacco. If the injury picks up a little bit beyond five percent, well then we'd automatically move to second quality, and second quality can carry a ten percent injury.

KLEE: Okay.

NEWMAN: So it's a sort of chain reaction all the way from five percent down to thirty percent. And if it gets real severe, so far as injury is concerned, such as little short tobacco with a lot of insects and injury from weather conditions and so forth, we might even go to what we call a nondescript grade, and that can come from any of the other groups, but it just has excessive injury. Too much to make a standard grade. So we put in what we call a nondescript grade and it can have fifty percent injury.

KLEE: So you have all those . . . there is a . . . kind of an outcast category . . .

NEWMAN: Yes, right.

KLEE: . . . you know, just to let the buyers . . . is there another part of that grade, too?

NEWMAN: There's another part of the grade there that we hadn't mentioned, is the color symbol that goes on the end of the grade.

KLEE: Color symbol, okay.

NEWMAN: And we have . . . have a variety, of course, of colors which is . . . I'm trying to . . . trying to think as we got along, we use a "L" for a buff color. Very . . . that's a very light straw-colored tobacco. And then as you move up the stalk a little bit, the leaves have a tendency to get a little heavier and a little darker, and we go to the "F" color, which is a tan color. And we have a tan . . . a tan color for all groups: X, C, B, and T. Can either be tan color, can be reddish tan which we call an FR or it can be a straight red color and we just indicate this by an "R", using an R symbol for a red. If it gets a real chocolate brown for some reason, then we have what we call a dark red, and we use a "D" to describe it as dark colored.

KLEE: Okay, when you all those different components together, then that's where you come up with this hundred and six grades?

NEWMAN: Yes, right.

KLEE: All those different combinations?

NEWMAN: We . . . you know, we have grades to describe green tobacco, and we have grades to describe tobacco that just has a little greenish tinge to it. So there's a . . . all sorts of things to try to describe in the tobacco. And then some people hand-tie their tobacco, and instead of sorting it out or grading it out into three or four grades which we can . . . or three or four groups which we can handle very easily.

KLEE: That you can handle, right.

NEWMAN: Why they just tie it all up together sometimes and then we have a group of what we call mixed grades to describe where they mix all the groups together or where they mix maybe half of the groups together. We'll say they make two grades out of their crop. When they do that, they generally mix what we call the X group and the C group together, and the B group and the T . . .

KLEE: And the B and the T.

NEWMAN: . . . together. So, we come up with all sorts of mixtures and we have to have grades to describe about anything we come to out there on the market.

KLEE: Obviously this is very complicated. When you . . . you talk about trying to assign a hundred . . . one of a hundred and six different categories to a piece of tobacco, you mentioned that you started out just as a seasonal worker at the Maysville market? Now you were . . . I'm . . . I'm getting into the training aspect of it. You were just . . . you followed around another grader for awhile and he would let you grade awhile, or how does that . . .

NEWMAN: Yes.

KLEE: . . . how did that work?

NEWMAN: Well, back there then, the way they started the . . . the training process, they just told me what day to report to the market and who to report to. So I went to the man they told me which was the market supervisor for the grading at the time. And he assigns me to an old grader to work with. So I go along with this old grader and he does the grader; I just do the pencil work for him. He tells me what to put on the ticket, and I write what he says [chuckle] and that's the way they start training a new man, you know.

KLEE: All right.

NEWMAN: We do it a little differently now. That was thirty years ago, so now when we hire new people, we bring them in to our laboratory here and we'll train them for four or five days, just to get them familiar with all the paperwork, and then we show them some tobacco [inaudible] about two days, and let them understand exactly what we expect them to do out there on the market, when they start the training process. And then, from there, they go about like I did. They'll work with a sea-, an old, experienced grader that season, and at the end of the season then we'll bring them back in here and we'll given them a full week of grading tobacco samples, and even written tests on our book of standards to see how much they've learned this first season. If they've made normal progress, then we'll probably give them a one-grade promotion and bring them back the next year and let them grade . . . the second year, we'll let them grade some tobacco by themselves, but the supervisor will be looking at it all the time.

KLEE: Pretty closely.

NEWMAN: Before they sell it to make sure they get the right grade on it.

KLEE: Oh, okay. Double-checking that [inaudible].

NEWMAN: Yes, right.

KLEE: Now when you said you'd raise it one grade, you were talking about the federal grade classifications . . .

NEWMAN: Federal . . . yes, federal grade classification.

KLEE: Give them a little raise or something?

NEWMAN: Yes, they .

KLEE: Are the graders still seasonal workers for the most part?

NEWMAN: Most of them are seasonal workers, working about six months out of the year.

KLEE: Okay. Talk about that, or describe that to me now. You worked the Maysville market, which is one of the bigger markets in the state. Your length of service during the season depends on how much tobacco there is.

NEWMAN: That's true.

KLEE: Now at that time, you usually . . . you would start usually the week before Thanksgiving? Is that kind of traditional?

NEWMAN: That's traditional. But when the market opens is the week before Thanksgiving. But . . . well, let's go back to when I started, back thirty years ago. If we just worked the burley region, they paid us for three and a half months. Now the market might run ten weeks or twelve weeks, but they paid us for three and a half months. Once we started cross-typing we call it, going to the flue-cured region as well as the burley region, then they would pay us nine months out of the year if we worked both types. Later on, in later years, they decided apparently that we were being paid too many months and the market was getting shorter all the time. So that brought about a change and for several years now, since about 1965, the graders get paid just exactly what days they're on the market. We might bring them on duty now, say, the fifteenth of July for example, and send them to the flue-cured region. Well, they'll stay down there 'til the last of October or the first week in November. Then they'll come home and we'll give them a week or maybe sometimes two weeks pre-market training we call it, to prepare them to switch from the flue-cured region to the burley region. Then put them on our burley markets here. But soon as that burley market closes for the season, then they're furloughed until the following July again.

KLEE: I see.

NEWMAN: So it's all seasonal work.

KLEE: Now that was . . . at what point, I don't . . . at what point did you decide to go to the flue-cured market? Was that something you wanted to do as soon as you had an offer or . . .

NEWMAN: Well, no. Like I said, I grew up on the farm, and I've always farmed to a certain extent. So I was growing a crop of tobacco and working as a grader here in the burley region. But needed more income and so forth, so I decided maybe I could . . . could grow a crop and go down there too. So I tried going to the flue-cured region and hiring somebody to house my burley crop of tobacco. But that didn't work satisfactorily. Couldn't get it in at the right time. Couldn't get the right help, so I finally had to start renting my crop out. Give away half of it, traded that half for working in the flue-cured region.

KLEE: Flue-cured market. Now, are graders . . . are they kind of like the . . . you had . . . a market has a set of buyers, and you only need as many graders as you have buyers I assume?

NEWMAN: Well, you only . . . we . . . we use . . .

KLEE: Or you don't need as many?

NEWMAN: No. We use three and four graders for each set of buyers. Depends a whole lot on the volume of tobacco that the market sells whether we will need three graders or four graders. Generally we use three. Sometimes we use four.

KLEE: And they'll stay all the way through . . . they won't stay all the way through the market, though, will they? I mean if . . . if . . . you know, if they . . . on a market, if they do away with a set of buyers, for example. If they have three sets and go down to two, will your youngest graders then be furloughed at that point?

NEWMAN: Well, yes. Generally speaking, the ones with the smallest seniority would go off first, you know, in a case like that. Well, we were talking some minutes ago about the Maysville market, which generally had three sets of buyers and graders. Whenever they . . . their volume drops off to where they only need two sets, then we'll take off one set of our graders also, and furlough them.

KLEE: Okay. And so, there . . . there are graders . . . I guess who goes depends . . . does it depend solely on seniority or sometimes the wishes of . . . if you've got someone . . . do we have any people grading up here?

NEWMAN: Oh yes.

KLEE: So they might wanna go home?

NEWMAN: Well, they might want to go home, and at the same time, we have to watch the budget pretty close and when they're out here, or we're down there, we're on a per diem every day, you know. They pay all of our living expenses. So the quicker we can get them home, the cheaper it is too.

KLEE: And you're . . . and you are pretty vigilant about that? You . . . do you want say . . .

NEWMAN: Oh, we have to watch that closely because as you know now, the grading is paid for by a user fee that the farmers pay. And we try to hold the costs down just as much as . . .

KLEE: Save as much money for them as you can. Now you . . . your title is regional director. Does that mean you're just involved now with burley market?

NEWMAN: Yes, right.

KLEE: There's a regional director then . . .

NEWMAN: There's a similar position for the flue-cured region, yes, for .

KLEE: I don't wanna spend a whole lot about the flue-cured market but . . . because the project really deals with Kentucky, but just in . . . just in your own words, how do those two . . . how does the tobacco compare and what were the major differences?

NEWMAN: Well, course we use a lot of the same grade symbols, you know, both types. I mean, we have a B4F in burley and we have a B4F in flue-cured. But they're different colors. Their tobacco is all cured, as you know, with heat, and they don't take the stalk to the barn, they take just the leaves. So it's all cured with artificial heat and if it cures properly, it would be about the color of a lemon or a light orange, and that's the desirable colors. Of course, like our burley tobacco, sometimes it doesn't come out the way you expect it to, [chuckle] and it might have a different color. But flue-cured tobacco is a little more difficult to grade for our people because they have more grades and so many of the grades look exactly alike in regard to color. You have to learn to feel the tobacco and even to smell it sometimes to tell where it came off the stalk, and what group it belongs it. Where with burley, you can generally pretty much by the color, tell where it came off of the stalk.

KLEE: There's more differences than in the burley?

NEWMAN: That's right.

KLEE: To give you some clues?

NEWMAN: Their tobacco down there might be the same color on the bottom of the stalk or the top of the stalk. So you have to learn the feel of the leaves and the shape of the leaves, the texture of them, to determine just exactly where it was grown on the stalk.

KLEE: Most of your . . . most of the graders . . . do most of them work both markets now?

NEWMAN: Most of our graders work both types now. That is one requirement when we recruit new people. They have to agree to work both types or we don't hire them.

KLEE: And the . . . you've already mentioned the flue-cured market runs from like the middle of July to the first week of November maybe.

NEWMAN: Right.

KLEE: And then you begin with November and run through January or . . .

NEWMAN: Generally January to the middle of February on burley.

KLEE: And have both of those markets constricted a little bit now? I mean, as far as the time frame?

NEWMAN: Well, yes they have, and that creates some problem for us in employment with our graders, you know, because . . . well, in recent years the quotas have been reduced so much that the market gets a little bit shorter all the time. And if we have a normal curing and stripping season, why burley may . . . ninety-five percent of it will be sold by the first week of January. So it gets to be more of a problem every year to occupy our people and to . . . to hire good people because of the seasonal employment.

KLEE: And they . . . they are only hired for those time periods too?

NEWMAN: Yes.

KLEE: They just . . . okay. There's . . . are . . . are there any of the graders that go to other markets? I know there's, you know, the market and . . .

NEWMAN: You mentioned the market, but you know a few years ago, they voted up there to do away with quotas . . .

KLEE: Oh, that's right.

NEWMAN: . . . and the grading, so we don't grade anything in anymore. But now we do have a group of people that grades the dark fired tobacco down in western and , and we have another group that grades the dark air-cured in western and .

KLEE: And they're a little . . . they're a little later than us, their season's [inaudible].

NEWMAN: They're . . . they're later than the burley and course they're operated out of this office here, but they are later and the dark fired markets usually don't open 'til January. With the dark air-cured, we'll open about a week after the burley opens.

KLEE: I see. Let me . . . let me . . . from your . . . from your experience in this administrative position, and also your experience as an actual grader out there, discuss with me [beeper sounds] . . .

NEWMAN: Excuse me. [pause in tape]

KLEE: I was gonna ask you about your experience. Graders have to deal with a lot of different people. We talked about some of the different . . . some of the administrative kinds of things that they deal with but when a grader's out there on . . . on a burley warehouse floor, he's liable to have farmers come up to him and look over his shoulder or say things to him. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

NEWMAN: Well, like you mentioned, it is a part of the job. It goes along with it, I guess, dealing with the public and we have all sorts of encounters with the producers and the warehouse operators and this sort of thing. And generally speaking, it's . . . it's a pretty good relationship between the graders and the producers. But like everything else, you're always gonna have some disagreements, difference of opinion as to what grade you think goes on that pile of tobacco. And a lot of people would like to tell the graders what grade to put on there because they realize that whatever grade he puts on there has a price support that goes along with it. And the better grade they can get, the higher the price support is gonna be, so naturally, everybody wants the highest grade they can possibly get on that tobacco.

KLEE: Why . . . since you brought that up, and we haven't really talked about that, what constitutes a good grade? Obviously the better the quality . . . first quality is better than fifth quality.

NEWMAN: Right. The higher . . . the higher quality, as far as the grade is concerned, is the one that carries the biggest price support. Like you say, for example, a B1F may have a price support of $1.63 or $1.62, I've forgot which. But a B4F may be $1.55, so . . . so there's an eight or ten dollar spread there in a lot of grades, and even more than that in some of the greener grades of tobacco and so forth.

KLEE: What about the . . . where the . . . where the tobacco came from? The flyings versus the tip? Does that bring . . . does tip tobacco automatically bring a higher support than . . .

NEWMAN: No, not necessarily. The . . . the best tip grade we have starts at third quality because the first and second quality of tobacco has to be long anyway, so . . .

KLEE: All right. So that would all be the . . .

NEWMAN: So the tips are all short, and the price support will go pretty good on . . . on good tips. It's not as good as our best grades in the flyings.

KLEE: And how does the price relate to color? Is . . .

NEWMAN: Well, very . . . it's a very close range in regard to price and color. For example, an F which is tan . . . a tan-colored piece of tobacco or a reddish tan which is an FR, probably would only be, in a lot of cases, just one penny difference in the price support. So it's not a big . . . big break there in regard to color and price support.

[End Tape #1, Side #1]

[Begin Tape #1, Side #2]

KLEE: This is side two of a tape with Mr. Newman here at the U.S.D.A. office in for marketing . . . U.S.D.A. marketing office. We were talking about the . . . the relationship between price and this grade. And we're talking about the problems of a grader. Do you remember any specific incidences of . . . where you've have particular problems with producers or . . .

NEWMAN: Well, you know, certain crops bring about their own problems, and some years we have dry weather crops and wet weather crops and green crops and this sort of thing. But the ones that probably give us the most trouble is the crops of tobacco where we have a lot of rain during stripping season, and people bring their tobacco to market with too much moisture in it. And then when that happens, then it's got so much moisture in it that we think it's in doubtful keeping order, why we have to put a "W" after the grade that we put on there. For example, we might grade a pile of tobacco B3FW indicating that it has too much moisture to be in safe keeping order because we never know how long it has to keep until it's gonna get through the redryer. And at the same time, if it gets too much moisture then it sometimes becomes stained and it changes the color of it. But I do recall some instances where the farmers are very displeased if we put a "W" on their tobacco, and I remember going in a warehouse one time in Maysville, and as I went in the door, met the supervisor coming out of the door. He said, "Marked a crop of tobacco back there that is maybe on the breaking line so far as moisture's concerned." Said, "You use your own judgment as to whether you think it needs a W on it or not." So I looked at the tobacco and the tobacco had been sold a few days before and had been rejected because it was too high an order, and I put the W on it again, and the farmer approached me about it and apparently unconsciously I smiled at him or something and he said, "That's all right, you don't need to laugh about it. You haven't heard the last of it yet." So . . . so he was pretty [inaudible] and I didn't intend it that way. I just thought the tobacco had too much moisture in it, you know. So we have all sorts of things like that come up.

KLEE: Course you're not into that end of it, but tobacco that was stored like that, could literally . . . it could rot.

NEWMAN: Yes. Sometimes, if it gets to the extreme, it will get hot on the pile and begin to rot, you know.

KLEE: Okay. Another group of individuals you have to deal with, the warehousemen, course they give you the same kinds of, I guess, problems as the . . . the farmer. They're wanting to get the highest price for their . . . for their customers too. Same kind of circumstances there?

NEWMAN: Well, pretty much. Course that warehouse operator is . . . we'll say the middle man. Many times, the farmer, rather than approach a grader himself, will ask his warehouseman, say, "Can't you get a hold of that grader and get me a better grade on my tobacco?" And when he does that, of course, the warehouseman has got to make an attempt to . . . to help his customer, you know, to keep him happy. So we expect that, and so long as they're reasonable with their requests. And we give them every consideration we can, you know, we're glad to go back and re-examine the tobacco and make sure we didn't make any mistake in the first place.

KLEE: Right. Now course on occasion, you will do that just as a courtesy? Go back and look at it or . . .

NEWMAN: Sure. Many . . . many times we know that there's nothing we can do. We've already examined it and . . . but we give them the courtesy of going back and look at it. Many times, the producers might not be there when we grade the tobacco, too. Sometimes, our graders will start in the mornings if the light is good. They'll start grading as soon as they can see real good in order to stay far enough ahead of the buyers to . . . to have time to talk to the farmers and so forth. So if we get some graded before the farmer comes in, and then he is dissatisfied, why certainly we want to go back and talk with him about it, see if there's anything we can do.

KLEE: Now those are primarily the two groups you can talk to. You don't get much . . . don't have much . . . graders don't have much contact with buyers or . . .

NEWMAN: Not very . . . not very much. No.

KLEE: It's just . . . other than they're on the same market.

NEWMAN: Course, you know, over the years in following the same pattern about every year, you get . . . become acquainted with a lot of company's employees and auctioneers and all this sort of thing, so you have some comments from them and some contact with them, but nothing of any importance.

KLEE: Let me . . . let me . . . let . . . let . . . if you will tell me about the volume of work we do, or that a grader does. It seems to me this . . . you've got a very complicated process here, and a complicated ratings system, but your graders get to the point where they can do this very quickly.

NEWMAN: Yes, true. After two or three years experience, three or four years, a grader gets the point where he can move along and . . . well, if you just put him out there by himself, he can probably grade . . . well, let's say a hundred and fifty piles an hour without any problem. But of course that doesn't happen because there's always somebody wanting to stop and ask him about this pile and that pile and so forth. But a normal sale here in the burley region is twelve hundred and sixty baskets per day. And in many cases, due to a changed sales schedule and so forth, we're getting up to fourteen hundred or something like that per day. So if we put three graders out there, you can see they've got three or four hundred piles per person to get graded. And the sales generally will start at, say, and run two and a half hours. Then they'll take an hour break for lunch and go back and sell about another hour after lunch.

KLEE: So your graders are there earlier than that, obviously?

NEWMAN: Yeah, the graders always start at least an hour ahead of the buyers, if the light will permit because they sell it much faster than we can grade it. But it is . . . it's pretty much of a nerve-wracking process, you know, because most of our graders are farm people to start with. They have the farmers' interests at heart, and that's the way it should be. So they're gonna make every effort to see that he gets just the best grade that they can give him, that they can legally put on there you know.

KLEE: Now, I guess there's . . . beside each one of these things, and you talked about a five percent damage and ten percent damage, and then the length of the leaves and so forth, there's certain observable criteria. But over the years, do . . . do grades kind of vary and change and is there any . . .

NEWMAN: Well, very little. If I understand your point exactly. I can't think of any noticeable change hardly in the thirty years that I have worked. There is some change brought about, and I think it's been brought about a whole lot by the change in varieties. You know . . .

KLEE: Like the hybrids and all those different kinds of . . .

NEWMAN: Yes, the hybrid varieties are coming on, and the leaves are not the same shape as they used to be. And then along came sucker control so the top of the plant doesn't spread out like it used to years ago, when we topped it and let it spread, and then suckered it and so forth. So that makes for a difference in the shape of the leaves and the length of the leaves. And then, with the disease problem that many of us have had, you get into such things as black shank and you have to start growing the resistant varieties to try to . . . to take care of that, you know. And many of the resistant varieties don't seem to have the same leaf structure and the same shape of leaves that the older varieties had, so there is some differences.

KLEE: Yeah, those are important for . . . for the purposes of this tape. Let me go through those again, review them real quick. What you're saying is that now with the sucker control, when you hand-suckered the tobacco and topped it, you know, the . . . the top leaves would get larger . . .

NEWMAN: Would normally get larger, much spreadier, you know. And if you got it in the barn at the right time, probably a better quality tobacco for . . . for what they used the top of the stalk for at that time. Like, chewing tobacco and pipe tobacco.

KLEE: Yeah. And then the . . . the hybrid varieties, how has that affected . . . the hybrid and the disease-resistant . . . how has that affected the plant? Does it cure differently, or it doesn't . . . the leaves aren't as broad or . . .

NEWMAN: Well, it seems like most of the varieties that we have tried, the leaves don't get quite as broad, and I think that's partly with the variety, and partly with, like I said, spraying them for suckers and so forth so we don't leave it in the field maybe as long as we did years ago. And the top leaves just don't spread out as much as they did without the sucker control on them.

KLEE: What about the care of . . . of the crop that the farmer . . . has that . . . does that affect the grade? Obviously it does because of damage and so forth. In your . . . in your appraisal, is there less care being taken now than there was twenty-five years ago?

NEWMAN: Well I think so. I remember years ago when my father was farming, when I was coming up as a teenager and so forth, he stripped his tobacco in four, five, and six grades, you know. Take out the . . . what we called the very low quality flyings, we just dropped them off and maybe tied them up by themselves at night, and then we had a good . . . what we called a good flying, and then a good lug, and a short lug and so on up the stalk. But we don't do that anymore. I don't know if it's a lack of patience or . . . I think partly what brought it about, the buying companies didn't make enough . . . enough difference in the price for a farmer to afford to sort it out like that, especially after labor got so much higher than it used to be. So just don't handle it like we used to. Everybody seems to be in a hurry to get what they're gonna do . . . get it done quick and get it sold and all that.

KLEE: This government grading system, course . . . this was before you became involved with the service, but is this an outgrowth of the 1938 legislation too? The Agricultural Adjustment Act?

NEWMAN: Probably so. Because they started grading some back there in . . . well the early 30's even they graded a little.

KLEE: There was an act in 1933, and then they updated that.

NEWMAN: Right.

KLEE: So maybe that was the breakpoint.

NEWMAN: And most all of the markets that became . . . or chose to be graded, along about `40 and `41, from there on, you know . . .

KLEE: Oh I see, it was optional there for awhile.

NEWMAN: Yes, for a period of time it was optional. And even back there when it first started, I believe the farmers paid a small fee to have it graded and then when they all came into the fold, so to speak, along about `40 and `41 in there . . . that's when we started grading everywhere.

KLEE: Well there . . . if you want to participate in the . . . in the program, the farmers and warehouses have no option but to have government graders, isn't that correct?

NEWMAN: That's correct. If you want to sell it at public auction, it must be graded.

KLEE: Okay. Well let's get back to that other point. You said now that the growers are paying for this service. That was as a result of this . . . that legislation just happened a few years ago.

NEWMAN: Yes, this legislation, I believe, in `83.

KLEE: I think so.

NEWMAN: As a result of the tobacco bill there in `83, it is now set up to where the farmers pay what we call a user fee or a grading fee to have the tobacco graded on the market. Most other commodities are handled the same way, you know. The producer pays for grading.

KLEE: Now prior to that, was it just a program of the Department of Agriculture?

NEWMAN: Prior to that, it was just an agriculture program that was financed with taxpayer funds.

KLEE: But of course, you know, I guess producers would say, well we pay taxes too, so this is just one of the services that we were getting to . . .

NEWMAN: Sure.

KLEE: . . . but after that point, that was the break point. What about the graders and, you know, I don't . . . they . . . they have government classification you said.

NEWMAN: yes.

KLEE: So what kinds of income or what kinds of pay would a grader make because he's only on the job a limited amount of time?

NEWMAN: All right.

KLEE: Just, you know, rough figures.

NEWMAN: Okay, if we . . . if we go out here and recruit a dozen graders next month for this coming year, their starting salary would be, according to Civil Service regulations and so forth, would be about . . . I don't have the exact figure, about fourteen thousand per year. Now bear in mind that they're only gonna work six months, so they'll only get half of that. And then the journeyman grader's starting salary so to speak, after he has been trained about two to three years, his starting . . . his salary would get up to around twenty thousand. And then he gets maybe . . . say a three percent increase every year for the next three years, and then the increases become a little farther apart as he goes along.

KLEE: But that twenty thousand, that would just be half of that amount?

NEWMAN: That's true, yes.

KLEE: And then of course, per diem, I guess is . . .

NEWMAN: It's not . . . well, you may not be interested in the amount and so forth, but generally speaking, they get twenty-five dollars a day to pay their lodging and their meals. Well, twenty-five dollars for the lodging and twenty-five to pay their meals and their laundry and that sort of thing when they have to stay away from home.

KLEE: Of course you did that for many years, went down to . What's that like, leaving the family and . . .

NEWMAN: Well, course I only give you my own experience. It was very difficult for me. Course I had a young wife and two small boys at home. I went off down there to grade tobacco and it was pretty difficult. Especially for two or three years. After that, you sort of get accustomed to it, you know. It becomes a way of life then, and you don't too much about it.

KLEE: This . . . the fact . . . the idea of the different grades and prices, have you seen . . . graders, are they . . . do they go back and see what the companies are buying? I guess that doesn't have any influence on anything?

NEWMAN: That, I hope, wouldn't have any influence on our graders. Course, you know, once you get this old tobacco in your blood, you're sort of interested in every part of it, and especially if you farm some yourself.

KLEE: Sure. You're gonna see what happens with your own tobacco.

NEWMAN: Right. So you're . . . you're interested in seeing what they're paying for certain types of tobacco, cause you say this looks somewhat like mine. I'd like to know what that's gonna bring. You might go back to look at that. But we don't encouraged our graders to go back and look behind the sale, because we're afraid it might influence their judgment, you know.

KLEE: I guess what I was gonna ask, [inaudible] question, has . . . in your experience, have what the companies been looking for changed over the years? Is there any way . . .

NEWMAN: Well I would . . . I would have to think so, yes. Because like I say, I remember back when I first started farming on my own back in . . . well, late 40's, early 50's, the tobacco that brought the highest price was the good, what we called, cigarette tobacco, and that was good flyings, and good lugs at that time. But I believe it was long about `66 that filter tipped cigarettes first came on the market. And with that, just right there in one year, everything went to a heavier type tobacco and they wanted the heavier stuff to go in the filter-tipped cigarettes. So the price shifted a little bit then to the top of the stalk rather than being so much on the bottom of the stalk.

KLEE: And that's where it remains today?

NEWMAN: That . . . it still remains that way, it's true.

KLEE: What about . . . is the . . . of course, you set a support price and if that price, if the buyers don't pay it's a penny more than that, I think . . .

NEWMAN: Yes.

KLEE: . . . then it goes to a cooperative.

NEWMAN: Yes.

KLEE: Is there any relationship, official relationship, between you and that cooperative?

NEWMAN: No, not . . . nothing official. We . . . you know, we work very closely with them, sort of like brothers, but a little different phase of the operation, and our fellows are not really connected with the price support. We just try to describe the tobacco and then the Commodity Credit, through the co-op, has a price support to go along with each one of our government grades.

KLEE: I guess what I . . . I was asking, the way . . . if, say one season or . . . well, say one season that a whole lot of tobacco's going to the pool, would that . . . would that influence next year how you establish the prices for the grade?

NEWMAN: That . . . that does enter into it in . . . under this new tobacco bill and so forth. But now, ASCS and Commodity Credit works out that price support to a scale and we don't have any input into it.

KLEE: Okay. You just . . . again, your people are just technicians grading tobacco. It's up to somebody else to establish the price and . . .

NEWMAN: That's true.

KLEE: . . . what happens to it after that, change the laws and so forth.

NEWMAN: That's right.

KLEE: This is a . . . again, it's a federal position and it's been around now, I guess, a little more than fifty years because of those Depression-era . . . you know, that Depression-era legislation. Do . . . does politics . . . are . . . most . . . most of the people protected by merit. Where does that merit end and begin? Is . . . is your position a merit position? Political appointee?

NEWMAN: My . . . my position is still a merit position. Now once you leave this position and move on up, it becomes more political all the time, even though the director in is not a political appointee. It still takes on the same aspect, so to speak.

KLEE: Politics, I see. You mentioned earlier when we were talking that you had to go to next week, for example. What . . . what kinds of responsibilities . . . what takes you to ? What kinds of things do you have to do there?

NEWMAN: Well, generally, when we have to make a trip up there, in recent years, it's just for a short training session on some new program that has come out or something like that. We're going up there and just take a four-hour course on the way we recruit people and the way we select them from the hiring register and so forth.

KLEE: Now what . . . what . . . how has personnel changed over the last years? Do . . . you've got a season coming up next year, and of course the crops are shorter than they were. The crop seasons are shorter and some of the crops are smaller. Does that mean you won't be hiring very many new people or are . . . is there always constant hiring or . . .

NEWMAN: Well, we generally hire a fire people every year. But, like you mentioned, the smaller the crop gets, the fewer people we need of course. So we have maybe fifteen to twenty people retire or resign about every year. So we hire approximately that many. We may hire ten this year and twenty next year, that sort of thing. But we hire a few every year and we lose a few every year.

KLEE: Is there any . . . the . . . the tobacco community's a fairly small community. As you said, you know people in the co-op and ASCS people and so forth. Is there . . . are you ever called upon or do you . . . are you involved with things like the tobacco program or the existence of the tobacco program . . . that's something that you really stay out of?'

NEWMAN: We . . . we try, as much as possible, to stay out of things like that, you know because the government's always hollering about conflict of interest. So we have to be extremely cautious to what we get involved in [inaudible].

KLEE: Well I guess where that question's going really is, you know, the program, all the positions . . . your position and the people in this department . . . your positions really depend on the program.

NEWMAN: Yes.

KLEE: If it weren't for the program, you wouldn't be graders.

NEWMAN: That's true.

KLEE: You're aware of, you know, the things that have happened the last few years. What . . . what's your outlook for these . . . for this . . . for government graders, for example?

NEWMAN: Well, my opinion of course is worth about two cents, but I tell some of the fellows sometimes I think, well, it looks pretty dark for tobacco, but I came into this outfit thirty-one years ago, and right then I kept hearing people talk about, well we won't be grading tobacco much longer, the tobacco program's gonna go out and this sort of thing. And that was thirty years ago, so I just hesitate to even take a guess, you know.

KLEE: The next century, there might be people saying the same thing.

NEWMAN: Yes.

KLEE: I appreciate you talking to me.

NEWMAN: I enjoyed it. I like to talk tobacco anytime.

KLEE: [chuckle] All right. Thank you.

[End Tape #1, Side #2]

[End of Interview]