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Tom Chaney: Possum Hunters and the Tobacco Trust Of Writers And Their Books: Possum Hunters and the Tobacco Trust. Tom says that previously company buyers competed with each other, bidding on a farmer's tobacco crop either in the field or in the curing barn. Now the companies had divided the area so that only one company offered each farmer a price. This column first appeared 21 August 2005. The next earlier Tom Chaney column: Night Rider: Idealism's Coil By Tom Chaney Possum Hunters and the Tobacco Trust On September 24, 1904, one thousand tobacco farmers of the black patch met in Guthrie, Kentucky, to form the Dark Tobacco District Planter's Protective Association or PPA. Felix Ewing and Joel and Charles Fort were the organizers who spoke that day. Those farmers were protesting the low prices received for dark fired tobacco. That year they were being offered around three dollars per hundred-weight for their crop. The price for tobacco was set by the tobacco trust under the leadership of James B. Duke and his American Tobacco Company who had led the effort to industrialize and monopolize the tobacco trade. Other factors contributed to the declining price for dark tobacco. The introduction of manufactured cigarettes was beginning to replace the hand rolled cigarette. These new fags used more of the burley tobacco and the Carolina leaf. Cigars were becoming less popular, so that less of the dark leaf for wrappers was needed. By 1904 Duke sold most of his dark fired leaf for the Italian snuff industry. To depress prices even further, the tobacco companies had divided up the growing area. Previously company buyers competed with each other, bidding on a farmer's crop either in the field or in the curing barn. Now the territory was divided amongst the companies -- one company had Todd County, another had Christian, another Logan, another Caldwell, and so on. Any given farmer had only one company who would buy his crop. The PPA proposed to enroll farmers in a cooperative marketing plan. They pledged to hold their tobacco in association warehouses until the desired price was met. The association would assist the farmers with money for food and necessities until the tobacco was sold. Within a few days five thousand farmers had signed the contract. But many refused to sign. Association members called these holdouts, "hillbillies." The trust, of course, refused to negotiate with the association and raised the price of hillbilly holdout tobacco to around nine dollars the hundred-weight. The response of the association was to escalate the conflict to a level of violence that caused the Black Patch Wars to be among the most serious occurrences of armed conflict since the Southern rebellion of 1861. In October 1905 a meeting was held at the Stainback school house near the Kentucky-Tennessee line. Oaths were taken on the Bible. The oaths resembled those of the Ku Klux Clan and the Masons, organizations familiar to many of the farmers. They were sworn to secrecy. The members of "the Silent Brigade" or "The Inner Circle" were divided into bands of ten, each with its leader or captain. They were also known informally as "Possum Hunters." Later, when former Senator A. O. Stanley, who had initially supported the association, resigned and spoke in denunciation of the Possum Hunters, he called them Night Riders. The name stuck. At first the Night Riders tried verbal persuasion. When that did not work, threatening letters and switches were left for the holdouts to find. By the spring of 1906 the Night Riders, masked and on horseback, visited the holdouts and scraped half or all of their plant beds. Often the farmer was forced to scrape his own bed. Often beds were salted. This escalation caused another ten thousand to join the association. But many refused to join. In the fall the violence escalated. Curing barns were burned by either torch or dynamite. The dynamited barn would collapse onto the curing fires and totally destroy the crop. The first organized attack on the middle men of the industry occurred at Trenton. The warehouse and stemmery of a man who had bought non-association were burned. On the night of December 1, 1906, two hundred night riders rode into Princeton, seized the town and leisurely burned the largest tobacco factory in the world, filled with British tobacco. Hopkinsville was terrified at the Trenton attack. Its mayor was warned and the police chief recruited a contingent of armed citizens to defend the town. Possum hunter spies were in the town and warned their fellow night riders. A year later the guard was relaxed and the night riders struck. On December 7, 1907, the night riders struck with little opposition. About 2:00 a.m. the Illinois Central Railroad depot and telegraph were seized. Bridges were taken. The telephone office was occupied and the operators were taken away. A unit surrounded the police station and took captive those on duty. The fire department was similarly occupied as was the Louisville and Nashville Railroad depot. In short order the town was completely occupied by the masked night riders. Two large tobacco warehouses were fired. The flames spread, destroying the association's own warehouse and a number of residences. At the conclusion of the raid, the night riders left the town in formation singing "My Old Kentucky Home." Similar raids brought destruction to Guthrie and Princeton. The state militia was called in. Dr. David A. Amoss, the reputed leader of the night riders, was arrested and tried and acquitted for his part in the raid at Hopkinsville. Violence simmered on for several years. I have heard hints of similar activity in the burley belt, but have not been able to pin down any facts. Some years ago an elderly farm widow of Hart County was telling about the first year of her marriage in 1924. She made the off hand remark that her husband engaged a hand on their place to sleep on their porch on the nights that the husband was out possum hunting with the night riders. The struggle continued, not with the intensity of the black patch violence, until the tobacco support program was established in the mid-1930s. That program did much to end the monopoly of the tobacco companies. The radical change in tobacco marketing of the past few years gets the tobacco marketing system back to the pre-association days of a century ago. I wish to consider the finest novel to emerge from the black patch wars, Night Rider, Robert Penn Warren's exciting first novel. Warren, a native of Guthrie, was born the first year of the night riders and grew up hearing stories of that most violent time. Editorial note: The review of Warren’s book is the next earlier Tom Chaney column on Columbia Magazine. Tom Chaney can be found telling stories, planning his next meal, and occasionally selling books at THE BOOKSTORE Box 73 / 111 Water Street Horse Cave, Kentucky 42749 270-786-3084 Email: Tom Chaney - bookstore@scrtc.com http://www.alibris.com/stores/horscave This story was posted on 2016-01-24 06:16:50
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