The watchman and southron. [volume] (Sumter, S.C.) 1881-1930, 1922-08-16
Tobacco Growers
Organize Industry

Farmers of Kentucky, vir-
ginia and the Carolinas Join
in Movement
Dallas, Texas, Aug. 10.-If ever
an industry was so organized as to
prevent and foil efforts of the
farmer to become permanently
prosperous, that industry is that of
growing and selling tobacco as it is
practiced in Kentucky, Virginia
and the Carolinas.
With the possible exception of
the cotton growers, it is doubtful
if the standard of living of pro-
ducers of any staple commodity is
as low as that of tobacco growers.
In Virginia and the Carolinas,
where bright tobacco is grown, most
of the cultivators are negroes and
poor whites" of the lowest class.
In most instances, they exist in the
most miserable condition, eating
ventilated and unsanitary shanties,
living in ignorance of what is 60
ing on outside their own neigh
borhood, usually in debt to harsh
creditors and facing eviction at the
caprice of mortgage holder or
landlord, preyed upon by those
petty harpies, the '4pinhookers."
Yet year after year they are pro-
ducing product for which there is
steady and increasing demand wide
as the world and practically mex
haustibIe. The golden food of
money that crosses the counter for
the golden fragrant weed is divert
ed, somewhere between consumer
and producer, into someone's pock-
cts. Fortunes have been made in
tobacco, but not by the man who
sweltered in. the tobacco fields
through long summer days.
In Kentucky, conditions were al
most as bad. There were fewer ne
groes, but more of the poor
whites" VINO roam as tenants from
farm to farm, eyer hoping to get a
good price for their labor. There
were more spin-hookers" and more
of the petty graft they foster and
live on.
Such conditions have prevailed
since Bright and Burley tobaccos,
the. kind you smoke in cigarettes
and chew in plug or. twist, were dis
covered in 1852 and 1864 in North
Carolina and Ohio respectively.
Once in three of four years the mo-
guls who sit in. New York or st.
Louis or Winston-Salem and fix
prices Of tobacco to both consumer
and producer, would allow a living
price to the tobacco grower, just
enough often to keep him contin-
ually in hope, just infreqeuently
enough to keep him always poor.
The buyers of tobacco are perhaps
more closely and powerfully organ
lied than the manufacturing con-
sumers Of any other agricultural
product. And always there is the
"pin- hooker" the speculator who
fishes with a bent pin, ready to ex-
act his tribute by real or trump
ed-up "stand-in" with the Company
buyer.
In the COS J. B. Duke manipula-
ted the American Tobacco Conn
pany through its various transfor-
nations until it absorbed the whole
manufacturing tobacco industry,
and held the American, the Eng
Hsh, the German, the japanese and
the Mexican ard other markets in
monopolistic grip. 1t was a mag
nifcent spectacle, this creation of a
world monopoly in fifteen years, but
it meant twice fifteen years Of
poverty for the men on whose backs
the magnificent spectacle was
borne. The dissolution ordered by
the U. S. Supreme Court in 1911
did not help much. What chance
have 100000 ignorant. isolated
farmers against four or five buy
ers, intimately though Informally
organized, controlling vast amounts
of money and the best brains mon
ey can buy?
To those who watched the tobac-
co growers on the auction floors,
leaving with a hopelessly bewilder-
ed misery on their countenances
when their. crop did not bring
enough money to pay: their debts,
much less enough to support a fam
lily decently, or seen them break
into tears in bad years, when they
thought of the suffering their wives
and children must face-to those
who have seen these things, the
whole system seemed rotten and
unworthy of civilized country.
It was condition to provoke ev-
en- the most placid to desperate ac-
ton. And so it did. especially in
Kentucky, with which this story
specifically deals. In 1873, in 1897,
in 1901, the tobacco growers of
Kentucky made impotent efforts to
get on their feet commercials. In
each case, the effort failed, for one
reason and another.
Finally, in 1906, the year in which
the final consolidation Of the Am
erican Tobacco Company was eff
fected, the tobacco growers of Ken
tucky rose in revolt. The American
Ty