Hopkinsville Kentuckian. [volume] (Hopkinsville, Ky.) 1889-1918, 1907-10-05

| (ApplauSe.) 1 nave not Jline 10 Iedu
it all.
JNO. s. CUNNINGHAM
Here is the statement of John Cum
bingham, the president of the asso-
citation of North Carolina, that they
were in collision.
John S. Cunningham, North Caro-
lima, states: "As | stated a few min
Iutes ago. MIR. Chairman, competition
has been absolutely destroyed In the
| tobacco business OF course, those
foreign nations, the continental ma
tfOns of Europe, want to buy our to
bacco just as cheap as they can, and
they come here and buy the farmers
tobacco BELOW THE COST OF PRO
IDUCTION, and these countries are
making millions and millions of dol
lars a year off the manufacturers of
this raw material and the tobacco
producers of the United States are
making nothing"
STATEMENT OF r. E. COOPER.
R. E. Cooper, of your own town,
says: To-day instead of having the
forty or fifty buyers, we are without
a tobacco market at ALL The Ameri-
can Tobacco company sends Mr. Nor
man Smith to our town who has
charge of all four of the markets, not
only of the Hopl0insville market His
home is Clarksville. He comes down
there, and we have to lay out our line
Of tobaccos. and instead of having
competitive bids he says: Cooper,
win use that lot of tobacco for you
after it is priced and put in the hogs
head That is the old custom-for
it to be priced and delivered-and
that would cost him about half a
cent a pound to pay the expense of it..
He will tell me that he will give me
three and a half to four cents pound
for the tobacco, and | have nobody
else to sell it to and have to accept
| that price"
JOHN WESLEY GAINES.
John Wesley Gaines in that com
mittee, as well as in the House, sta
| ted: "These combines and foreign
| states send their representatives to
our tobacco markets. where they set
the price of tobacco, oftentimes be-
low the cost of production, and pay
what they agree among themselves"
JOSEPH &. WASHINGTON
Joseph E. Washington, for ten years
member of Congress from Tennes-
see. says: "Seventy-fiye or so per
cent of our tobacco goes into those
| foreign countries The balance we
must make use of at home. Here is
the way the combination has worked:
Within the last three years the Re
| gle have allowed their contracts to
| fall into the hands of two syndicates,
who agree to furnish this tobacco,
and agree, in advance, to have it fur
nished at an average, say, of 8 cents
a pound.
"They send their agents right into
the country and come to the farmers
barn and divide a county into two
sections or strips and take an agent
and allot to him 10000 or 100000
pounds in orders. The combination
owns the American and the Continen-
tai companies.
"They crush out the smaller man.
ufacturers who used to go into our
county at Hopkinsville and Clarks'
Vile"
PETITION TO HOUSE OF REPRE-
SENTATIVEs, JANUARY, 1904.
Here is a pathethic statement
speaking of your dismantled factories
and warehouses, of the utter help
lessness of the people, and
signed by the greatest Moses of
his people that has ever risen in the
South, F. G. Ewing prolonged APP
plause), r. E. Cooper, F. w. Dabney,
w. F. Flowers, G. c. Reynolds, J. w.
Dunn, now secretary of the executive
committee of this organization, and
G. p Warfield.
1--WE the tobacco growers and deal
ers of Kentucky and Tennessee in
convention assembled at Guthrie,
this the 2Sth day of January, 1904,
do hereby petition and most respect
| fully represent, that he (the grower)
has no one else to sell his crop to
except the combined agents (of the
| trusD that there is no longer COM
petition in buying, leading tobacco
markets of the world have been aban-
| doned by the army of buyers and
agents from abroad. Who sat daily
around the tobacco board and bid
against each other; that auction
rooms are dismantled and abandoned;
and where activity and prosperity
once reigned is now desolation and
emptiness that a few buyers and cor
porations, ALL IN COMBINATION,
alone remain to fix the price and
take as much or little as they wish;
there is no one else to whom they
may sell-no exemption, no rivalry
ana the TGSulI Is budI the plltSo dlN
barely above the starvation point"
F. G. EWING, President
R. e. COOPER,
f. w. DABNEY,
w. F. FLOWERS,
G. c. REYNOLDS,
j. w. DUNN
G. P. WAKEFIELD.
And in the face of this proof, pub
licly taken in the nations Capitol
with Gaines, and James, and Trimble
and Kehoe, Hopkins, Flood, and forty
others laundering it to all the world,
with this poor resolution of mine
printed in flaming headlines in every
newspaper of the United States, this
miserable, mendacious traducer of my
people comes before you and says
there never was any collision be
tween the Regies and the American
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