The tobacco industry in the mid 1900’s to early 2000’s is significantly more than just a business. For civilians in the southern United States, the tobacco industry was a lifestyle, which was centered around the means of selling the tobacco -- auctions. Auctions are comprised of four main groups, the warehousemen who own the warehouse where the auction takes place, the farmers who grow the tobacco and bring it to the warehouse to have it sold, the buyers who want to buy the tobacco and sell it for profit, and finally, the auctioneers who run the auction. These four groups comprise the auction sector of the tobacco industry and interact in unapparent web of complex and important relationships. Auctioneers are the most important player in the …show more content…
Robert Cage, Jane Squires, Edward Stephenson, and G. Sherwood Stewart were all auctioneers of tobacco and all attribute their first exposure to the industry of tobacco to a parent being involved in the industry. Stephenson, who was born in 1952 recalls that when he was around ten years old, he began to go to work with his father who was a tobacco auctioneer. Having a father in the business meant that Stephenson’s family expected him to carry on the family business and become an auctioneer as well; however, Stephenson didn’t feel obligated or trapped to do this because he quickly fell in love with auctioneering. Tagging along to auctions with his father made Stephenson realize that the flamboyance of the auction greatly appealed to him, because he enjoyed being the center of attention, which is exactly what the auctioneer is. Conversely, the appeal of auctioneering varied from auctioneer to auctioneer as Squires explains that the flamboyance of the auction was not something that appealed to her, rather she enjoyed the travel associated with the auctioneering alongside the challenge of the sale. Squires, who is a female in what is primarily a male dominated industry, naturally didn’t enjoy being the center of attention because she already had more attention on her than her colleagues, since she is a woman, …show more content…
These changes are fueled by a decline in the number of smaller farmers, a rise in the number of large farms, and tobacco being sold on contracts. Specifically, the increase in the number of large farms has been detrimental to the auction system, because it takes buyers away since many groups have combined to form one, rather than a few smaller ones. The company Philip Morris is especially controlling and now dominates the industry, which Stephenson agitatedly describes, “ Now it's three or four buyers and all four of them are buying for one company. You know, you've got one company that's buying 75 % of the tobacco that's grown in the United States. Everybody knows it's Phillip Morris.” Since there are less groups of buyers purchasing tobacco, it takes away from the competition of the auction, which renders the auction useless. This has caused many companies to negotiate contracts with farmers directly instead of purchasing tobacco through auctions, which makes the auctions not necessary. This has caused the relationships between farmers and auctioneers and between buyers and auctioneers to be much less personal because they do not see each other as much. Even though there are fewer buyers and farmers, they meet less often because auctions only happen once a week when they used to happen at least 5 times a week, so it is much harder to build a personal