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The Strange Night Rider “Tobacco War.”Days LiKe the Ku Klux Rian Seemingly Revived by the Bitter Hostility Between the Organized . - Planters and the TobaccoBuyers.■Stories of night-riders raiding and burning the tobacco plantations and storehouse of Kentucky have found al-most dally place in ttie newspapers to be revived In the South, and all bemuse of a strange fight upon the Tobacco Trust.Tobacco, the moat historic amongyear's tobacco crop la made on credit, those who do the work getting advances from landowners and factors. Thus there is pressure to sell almost as soon as the crop la safe in the barn. Sale through the association has meant a long wait—a full year often. Meanwhile, the men who raise It, going rag-Amerioan agricultural staples, has been j ged, even hungry, are affronted with* sight of hill billys flaunting newclothes and jingling money in both pockets. The association can make but scant advances. Since the panic, indeed, it has hardly made any worth the name. With the trust and the* Regie buying from it as fast as tobacco could be fetched in, all that would he changed. Thus the rank and file would be delivered l’rom temptation to have the beneficent organization and turn hill bills for good.What the final issue is to be passes the wisest ken. Throughout the tobacco district feeling is tenser, bitterer than even in the days of the civil war, when neighbor was arrayed against neighbor. Strife over the tobacco situation divides alike churches, schools ‘and general society. The scars of it will go down through at hast two generations. There Is general unrest—people lie down trembling and rise up in fear. Some say the night riders are set on by the trust, which hopes thus to make the best people fall away from the association. The r^sociation. Indeed, goes to the length of Joining with the authorities in offers of reward for the arrest of such evildoers. Still, the weight of authority favors the assumption that the violence, though not wrought in the name of the association, 13 the work of those who are blindly devoted to its cause. —New York World.the first to fall completely within thegrip of a trust, the Tobacco Trust, of course, which, since 11*00, when it captured the English market, has in the matter of prices had things pretty much its own way especially in Southwestern Kentucky and Northwestern Tennessee, which raise the bulk of export tobacco, and have to contend with the Regie in addition to the Trust. The Regie is collectively the machinery through which tobacco is obtained for the four or five foreign nations which make of its importation a highly profitable monopoly The Regie antedates the Trust, but until the Trust came into the export markets was in a degree subject to competition.Tobacco growers assert that competition has been wholly eliminated, if not by actual collusion betwixt Trust and Regie at least by a highly effective understanding. Through this understanding, say the planters, prices were put below the cost of production. This in denied vehemently by men on the other side, who say that prices fell through glutted markets, together with a condition of disorganization in the trade. Truth probably lies between the two extremes. When beliefs crystal-Ize into action, it is Immaterial wheth* er they be true or false.Pour years ago the tobacco growers began to organize. At present the organization comprises more than 27,000 members, through whom it controls the greater part of the export crop.Members pledge their crops to it for three successive years and agree further to limit acreage in strict proportion to the amount of land under tillage. * The aim of the organization, known officially as the Planters’ Protective Association, is to put up tobacco prices and keep them up. This would be ridiculously easy with the whole crop In hand. Here, there, everywhere* men stand out against it. They are know# as hill billys/’ Oddly enough, they were the first to be ben-efltted by the association, in that they sold tobacco and continue to sell It for bigger prices than can be got for thepooled crops. ^yiie reason Is not difficult to find.The Trust and the Regie have naturally a warm heart toward the hill billys, who are at once their allies and their weapons against the association. Hill billy prosperity is as ashes in the teeth of the association hotheads, for hardly anybody likes to suffer delay, privation. actual loss, in the cause of the common good and then see those who refuse to suffer anything reap the earliest and surest reward of the offering.The result Is a situation, poignant, piteous, yet recalling almost humorously the story In the back of the old blue spelling books, in which the farmer pelted the bad boys preying on his apples first with tufts 6f grass, ftfcd only when they were laughed at as ineffectual did he have recourse to stones.First the hill billys were entreated, even besought, to come in the fold; then they were threatened, then finding them persistently stiff necked, they have got the stoning with a vengeance.The stoning has been at the hands of the night rider. He is the moat sinister among recent American developments. a man obsessed, doing evil that good may come, with the ruthlessness of a Cossack and the daring of a crusader.Officially the association disclaims him and all his works. It is. however, beyond Question that the fear of him has sent many men scurrying into its ranks. He developed early in the game, hut at first did no more, nor worse, than scrape plant beds, thus destroying all chances of a tobacco crop; warn away offensive tobacco buyers, and leave scrawled coffins or bundles of matches and switches at the doors Of hill billys. Waxing bold and bolder with each year, he has swooped upon five towns, burning or dynamiting tobacco factories controlled by the Regie or the trust, has burned individual in- Gf the pile, puts on the oil and applies dependent tobacco houses, also barns, i match. The lire burns slowly and outhouses, threshing machiues, sacked tats its way through the heart of the wheat in the field, blown up other to the surrounding trees, because the threshers—fiendishly in one or two In- blanket of snow keeps them down, and- . • • ' w _ _ . ^ _ I . •____A WOOD YARD CLEANING.Uncle Sam is Ridding National Forests of Their Rubbish.Unde Sam lias begun a houseclean-ing Job that will probably last twenty years. The old gentleman always did hate to see rubbfsh lying around In the wood yard, bedng mighty neat and particular in his habits, and it wasn’t the work for women folk, and the capitalist hired man couldn’t he trusted, so he just rolled up his sleeves and went to work himself. The national forests is the official name of the backyard space that Uncle proposes to get shipshape within a generation, and then he will invite the neighbors In to have a good time and shoot all the bears and squirrels they feel like. The underbrush and fallen timber accumulated for years are not only*a general Injury to the live trees, but a menace in case of a forest fire, so the tiling to do is to clean up everywhere and burn the rubbish.A thinning out of Inferior trees, leaving the finest and most perfect stand of timber, is going on at the same time. As a matter of fact. Uncle Sam is too shrewd to bend ids own back at the job, but he supervises, through his foresters, the work of private contractors and sawmill men. He lets them cut down the undesirable trees and makes them destroy the waste and old stuff. A ranger goes through the forest and marks the inferior trees, such as have punk knots, spike tops, low forks and scars of fire or frost. These make good merchantable lumber. while their removal betters theenvironment of the choice specimensthat are saved. The sawmill mandoesn’t dare to take anything except the marked treeg; and he must cut them so they will not damage standing trees when they fall, and must leave a low* stump Instead of a high stump, as under the old reckless methods. After settlers have helped themselves to what they want of the waste the rest is heaped up in conical piles. All the small stuff, underbrush and branches, is put in the centre and the heavier pieces stacked on the outside. It wouldn’t do to bu * this mass In dry season, because that would start a forest fire that would clean up too thoroughly. Nature supplies a safe means of solving the problem during the winter by wrapping heavy blankets of snow around the conical heaps. Along comes the forester with a kerosene can, bores his way into the centrestances by concealing ovnamlte or oldiron in the wheat sheaves going through—has shot up sleeping families, whipped helpless and defenceless men, pulled up young tobacco, silt the throats of pasturing s:ock and warned away, under pain of death, those who had incurred his displeasure.Even that la not the worst that can be set down against him. He has virtually paralyzed the machinery of justice, so terrorizing the countryside, that nobody dares to speak out against him. He rides masked and armed,sometimes ten strong, oftencr a hundred—sometimes even three hundred. He is still riding and raiding throughout Southwestern Kentucky, notwithstanding State troops are under arms there and citizens on the alert.He has a definite purpose—It is to make the trust and the Regie understand that fbey must In future do business with the association, and with nobody else. The association has raised tobacco prices until they spell abounding prosperity, notwithstanding its weak spot from the bejRuning has been money. More Ihu halt eachwaste material. The flames don't rise in a few hours a circle of black coals in the snow shows where the pile ofw gate 8tew dAfter cleaning and burning the forest officials look after replanting in places that need it. Sometimes the tops of first class seed trees are shaken over the ground, a rough and ready way of planting.—New York Tribune.Leads Then All.An instructor in the Military Academy at West Point was once assigned to conduct about the place the visit-j ing parents of a certain cadet.! After a tour of the post, the proud and happy parents joined the crowd assembled to witness evening parade, a most imposing spectacle. The march past aroused the'father of the cadet to a high pitch of enthusiasm.There!” he exclaimed, turning to his spouse, isn’t that fine? But,” ho added. “I shall not be happy till my boy attains the proud position that leads ’em all.” And he pointed in rapt admiration to the drum-major.— The Advance.
Newspaper Details
Homer Banks County Journal
Homer, Georgia, US
Thu, Aug 13, 1908
Page 8
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 25 Jan 2022
Other Publications Near Homer, Georgia
Homer Weekly Journal
Homer Farmers Journal
Homer Banks County Observer
Homer Banks County Journal
Homer Banks County Gazette
