I2 4 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



either because he was convinced that it offered no hopes for betterment, or 

 because he suspected the organizers, or because he was already enjoying 

 the benefit of higher prices. Pooling members deeply resented the tend- 

 ency of the occasional independent, or "hillbilly," as he might be called 

 contemptuously, to cash in on the higher prices the holding movement 

 had achieved. Why should one producer join the organization, pay fees, 

 and endure hardships while another who refused to cooperate sold at a 

 fancy profit? 28 



Aroused by this situation, some of the tobacco growers finally decided 

 to employ force in order to achieve conformity. Their "night riders" used 

 the whip or even the rifle on independents or farmers who "talked too 

 much"; they brutally assaulted tobacco buyers, they set fires, sowed plant 

 beds with salt or grass seed, and even dynamited machinery. One terror- 

 stricken farmer found a grave dug in the midst of one of his plant beds. 29 



The effects of these acts of violence on the tobacco country were devastat- 

 ing. As selling tobacco independently of the farmers' association became 

 dangerous, neighbors became suspicious of one another and terror pre- 

 vailed everywhere. Courts of law were paralyzed by perjury, packed 

 juries, or fear on the part of witnesses to testify against known marauders. 

 Hundreds of farmers left the tobacco areas in search of homes elsewhere. 

 So widespread was the disorder that in 1907, the secretary of the Kentucky 

 Board of Fire Underwriters cautioned residents of the affected areas that 

 "unless confidence can be restored, the companies will refuse indemnity 

 to all handlers of tobacco." 30 



While innumerable obstacles had threatened to defeat the elimination 

 program in 1908, in actual fact the acreage devoted to tobacco was held at 

 a low minimum. In the Burley country the estimated acreage fell to 18 

 per cent of normal, and in the dark-tobacco country also sharp reductions 



28. Wisconsin Equity News, June i, 1908, p. 6; Mathews, in Atlantic Monthly, 

 CII (October, 1908), pp. 489-90. 



29. Youngman, in Journal of Political Economy, XVIII (January, 1910), p. 45; 

 C. M. Meacham, A History of Christian County, Kentucky (Nashville, 1930), pp. 

 346-48; J. C. Miller, The Blac\ Patch War (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1936), pp. 16-17. 



30. E. A. Jonas, "The Night-Riders : A Trust of Farmers," World's Wor\, XVII 

 (February, 1909), p. 11217; Marie Taylor, "Night Riders in the Black Patch" (un- 

 published master's thesis, University of Kentucky, 1934), p. 38. 



