PRINCIPLES OF VALUE AND PRICE 483 



altogether unfamiliar with proposals to combine, nor has he always 

 turned a deaf ear to pooling schemes which have been developed for 

 his benefit. Lately the farmers in the tobacco-growing districts of 

 Kentucky and Tennessee have been aroused against a monopoly, one 

 of the most powerful of the industrial trusts, the American Tobacco 

 Company. The farmers complain, whether justly or not, that each 

 buyer confines himself to a particular region, so as not to compete 

 with his fellow-buyers; that the prices at which the leaf will be pur- 

 chased are agreed upon after conferences among the buyers; and that 

 even the agents of foreign companies are in collusion with the American 

 Tobacco Company. The farmers of Kentucky and Tennessee assert 

 that this company, by its rank as buyer, can dictate the amounts that 

 it will give for leaf, and they further allege that it has used its power 

 to depress prices to so low a point that it has been made impossible 

 for the tobacco grower to obtain a living. 



Without doubt the price of leaf tobacco has fallen, but it is ques- 

 tionable whether the trust can be regarded as entirely responsible for 

 that fall. Kentucky, which produced approximately 220,000,000 

 pounds of tobacco in 1890, raised over 314,000,000 pounds in 1900, 

 and Tennessee increased its production nearly 13,000,000 pounds dur- 

 ing the same period. Notwithstanding an increase in per capita 

 consumption from 4.6 to 5.5 pounds, it is probably true that an 

 excess of supply, quite as much as pressure exerted by the buying 

 monopoly, was responsible for the marked drop in prices that occurred 

 after 1900. Still, when the trust, or, more specifically, the tobacco 

 trust, absorbs all of their buyers and buying agencies and constitutes 

 itself purchaser of the farmer's product, he feels abused apart from 

 any consideration of the actual injury done him. Here are many 

 sellers and only one buyer. He sees no way of making effective his 

 cherished ideal of competition. The only way to obtain an equality 

 of bargaining power, therefore, is to diminish the number of sellers 

 and, to the one powerful buying organization, to oppose a single sales- 

 map. So, curiously enough, the farmers' movement has not been 

 undertaken with design to crush the American Tobacco Company. 

 Instead, an attempt has been made to emulate trust methods and 

 thereby to demonstrate that the farmers' pool can be made a redoubt- 

 able opponent of the tobacco monopoly. 



The first association of farmers in the dark tobacco district 

 the Planters' Protective Association was organized at Guthrie, 

 Kentucky, in 1904, and was incorporated as a mutual pool with a 



