Most cigarettes incorporate flue-cured tobacco, which produces a milder, more inhalable smoke.

Much of the tobacco produced by the European estates was a low-grade, and the decline in flue-cured tobacco intensified throughout the 1920s.

Some survived until a drastic fall in prices for flue-cured tobacco after 1927, but then took up whatever employment they could find.

The state is the nation's largest grower of the flue-cured tobacco, which makes up about 60 percent of most cigarettes made in the United States.

By 2008, analysts predict, it will produce 82 million pounds of flue-cured tobacco a year.

That point has been driven home throughout North Carolina, where production of flue-cured tobacco has fallen by nearly half since 1997.

Already, American production of flue-cured tobacco has declined and constitutes just 9 percent of the world market.

About 40 percent of flue-cured tobacco, the kind produced here, is exported.

The decline in flue-cured tobacco intensified throughout the 1920s.

Most of the dominant variety, flue-cured tobacco, is grown in the Southeast.