| Abstract |
Benjamin Robert Bostick (b. ca. 1910) was raised in New York state and traveled to Argentina ca. 1928 with Gale Murphy, an executive of the British-American Tobacco Company. Bostick describes the lengthy train rides from a suburb of Buenos Aires to a firm of livestock brokers at Tablada to whom he was apprenticed (p. 1). He later worked at a BAT experiment station at Bonpland, a town in the northeast corner of Argentina on the Parana River. He describes their goal as improving the type of tobacco produced on small farms and notes the fear of the German immigrant farmers that the flue-curing barns would catch on fire (p. 2). He also describes the baling process and such local entertainments as drinking rum in the tavern, sitting in the plaza watching the boys and girls go walking, and an occasional farm dance party (p. 3). In 1929, Bostick joined the Export Leaf Tobacco Company, a BAT subsidiary, and worked in a redrying plant in Rocky Mount, N.C. He relates that when the plant closed in 1933, he and one other person were the only ones left to receive tobacco and reship it to their other plant in Wilson, N.C. (p. 4). In 1933, Bostick took a position with BAT in China. He describes his train trip to Seattle, Washington, in a first class compartment(p. 5), his steamer trip to Shanghai, China (pp. 5-6), cabarets in Shanghai, and the bathroom facilities at the Astor House Hotel there (p. 6). |
| General note | Interviewer: Donald R. Lennon. Interview date: March 22, 1978 and April 12, 1978. |
| Access restriction | No access restrictions. |
| Cite as |
Robert Bostick Oral History Interview (#OH0063), East Carolina Manuscript Collection, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, USA. |
| Terms of use | Repository does not own copyright to the oral history collection. Permission to cite, reproduce, or broadcast must be obtained from both the repository and the participants in the oral history, or their heirs. |
| Acquisitions source |
Joyner- Gift of Robert Bostick. |
