Morning journal and courier., 1882-06-10
Price Four Cents.

anything about tohaeeo knows that it cannot be used unless some means are taken to pre- vent It's drying out. If man thrust tobacco | leaves into his pocket they dry and are re- ' duced to an impalpable powder which cannot \ be smoked and which is unfit to chew. Con | sequently before raw tobacco can be carried | in the pocket the leaves must be slightly ! dampened and then tightly twisted together \ But the law says-the officers and judges say ! it says-that tobacco so treated is manufac- tured and the manufacturer, If caught. Ga bls to a penalty. I could pilot in estiga- l tlng committee to the log hut of many an 1 unfortunate, who, to prevent little tobacco of his own raising from being lost. had l twisted it, a handful at time es he needed it, to carry in his pocket, and had been dragged to Charleston and dned out Of all proportion to the alleged ofense or, if sc- quilted by jury that considered such con- struction of the law an outrage, left in @ strange city, without money or friends, to beg his food from door to door, as he tramped his way hundred miles back to his home in the mountains. One thing is eer-
 tain; either the laws regulating the manufac- ture of tobacco were made and are construed by dishonest men, or they never were intend ed to apply to producers who manufacture @ for their own use
 It is worse than useless for the anti-tobac- co people to say that these laws tend to dis courage the use of t"bscco and are, ips0 fdcto, right It Is worse than useless for the adyo cases of a large revenue to say that these laws are warranted by expediency. Neither the logic of the one class nor the sophisms of the other will ever convince the thousands of small tobacco producers in the South that
 tobacco is not a necessity of life and that
 they have not the same right to dispose of
 this crop that they have in the case of their
 timber, grain or anything else which they
 cause the soil to produce with the help of
 Providence in nature.
 So vigilant are the government spies, so
 alIuring are the rewards offered for informa-
 tion and so constant and summary are the
 punishments for these violations of the letter
 of the law, that many man whom l know
 nas abandoned the cultivation of his little
 patch in despair at the loss occasioned by
 using his tobacco untwisted, at the worry consequent upon keeping his practice of
 twisting a secret
 To revert to 8 remark which made above,
 the grand juries of the Federal district
 courts in West Virginia made to serve the
 purpose of revenging every kind of private
 injury real or fRncied and of gratifying malice
 to an extent of which many who read this
 can have no idea. Very few men in these
 mountains are guiltless of any technical vio-
 Iation of the revenue law, and it is easy
 and simple matter for the man who fancies
 himself injured at the hands of another to
 procure his neighbor's arrest on charge of
 the most trivial nature, force him to give
 bonds in a comparatively large amount and to
 make a long and expensive journey to
 Charleston; and when there the chances are as ten to one that the grand jury will
 pooh pooh the whole matter. In thinIy settled district like this such things are not only possible but of everyday occurrence.
 Tn the cities men have other things to think of than the qualification of petty malice. Many city smoker who buys his cigars by the box and allows the empty box to lie around the house is unaware that in formation from a malicious servant or the chance word of an acquaintance would, If he lived in the South, get him into trouble be- cause the stamp on the box was not so utter ly defaced as to be unrecognizable. know of persons at the North who have imported liquor for their own use, and who, finding they had greater quantity than they needed, divided both the liquor and the cost with their friends These people would have thought it very strange if information had been laid against them and 8 United States commissioner had issued his warrant for their arrest on a charge of dd1AH9 fR GottOr without 8 license. Yet were such a transaction to occur in West Virginia heavy fine and possible jail sentence would be sc- cepted as the natural result.
 The methods employed by the agents of the government also leave great deal to- be de- sired. do not know whether there is an act of Congress empowering deputy reve- nue collector to search private houses for contraband goods without a warrant and to drag citizens before himself as before a grand jury and oblige them to tell under oath vheth- CT they know or have heard of any violations of the revenue law. Yet there is in this dis trict deputy collector who eighteen months ago scar he'd. without a warrant, my preu1is- es for contraband tobacco, and who Is and has been ever since he secured his position in the habit of visiting every house in these mountains and of inducing by threats men, women and even children to state upon oath whether they knew of any violation of the revenue law And in case they pleaded ig- norance of the law be would proceed to ask whether they knew of any farmer who had sold tobacco; whether they had seen anyone chewing twisted tobacco, etc, etc As I said, do not know whether there is warrant in law for such proceedings; but nothing would please me more than to be called 5pon to prove them d. w.