WEST VIRGINIA — A familiar site for many driving down rural roads in West Virginia is the name Mail Pouch Tobacco painted on barns and bridges. What is Mail Pouch Tobacco? And why is it painted in odd places such as these?
Mail Pouch Chewing Tobacco, according to e-WV, the West Virginia encyclopedia, is considered West Virginia’s most famous consumer product.
Brothers Samuel and Aaron Bloch started the company in Wheeling. The brothers started their entrepreneurship with a small grocery store and a dry goods store with a small cigar factory on the second floor.
When the general store was destroyed by a flood in 1884, the brothers turned their focus solely on tobacco products. E-WV says that the Bloch brothers were progressive employers; by 1890, many of their employees had joined the Tobacco Workers Union, with which the company cooperated.
The company, Bloch Brothers Tobacco Company, offered their employees a health plan and put in place an eight-hour day and five-day work week before it was adopted by other companies.
According to the Ohio County Library, the two noticed that the men working for them often chewed the leftover tobacco pieces that fell from the rolled cigars. The brothers came up with the idea to flavor the scrap cuttings and sell them in paper bags as chewing tobacco, sold as West Virginia “Mail Pouch” tobacco.
According to the Hagen History Center, the Bloch brothers paid farmers $1-$2 a month for the right to use their barns as a form of advertisement. Not only did the farmers get a wall of their barn painted, but they were given free Mail Pouch Tobacco products.
This form of advertisement was hugely successful. Hagen History Center says that upwards of 20,000 barns across 22 states were painted by traveling two-man teams. Located along main roads before highways existed, the ads were seen by millions of people.
The practice of barn advertising ended when the Bloch Brothers sold the company in 1965, but the Highway Beautification Act allowed the Mail Pouch Barns to be grandfathered in as landmark signs rather than billboards.
Although Hagen History Center says none of the barns have been repainted unless it was by the owner, Swisher International, who now owns the tobacco company, still pays barn owners $10 a year for the paintings.
E-WV says that the Bloch Brothers Tobacco stayed in the Bloch family until 1969, when it was sold to the General Cigar and Tobacco Company. The Helme Tobacco Company acquired it in 1983, and it is now under the name Swisher International.
Swisher International is still in production in Wheeling, West Virginia, and during the summer months, the sweet aroma of tobacco permeates the air in South Wheeling.
