Tobacco and Robertson County Politics in the U.S. Senate in 1905

Source from:  rctimes.com By J. Mark Lowe 10/11/2007

We continue with the statement of Felix Grundy Ewing before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Finance, United States Senate on H.R. 14896, for the Relief of Tobacco Growers. These statements from the hearings were transcribed exacted as printed in the Congressional Record and published accounts of the activity. Washington, D.C., Monday, February 6, 1905. The subcommittee met 11 o'clock am. Present: Senators Allison (acting chair, Iowa), John W. Daniel (Virginia) and Arthur P. Gorman (Maryland) of the subcommittee; also Senators William B. Bate (Tennessee) , and Edward Ward Carmack (Tennessee) and Hon. John Wesley Gaines, Representative from Tennessee. Statement of Felix Grundy Ewing, Esq. of Glenraven, Tenn., Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Dark Tobacco District Planters' Protective Association of Kentucky and Tennessee. Mr. Ewing: Ours is a tobacco country, a tobacco soil, and a tobacco climate. We can not raise wheat and corn in competition with other sections of the country. Our grass is not spontaneous. We do not raise stock as they do in other sections of the country. We are absolutely dependent upon tobacco. We do raise wheat, corn, and clover. We necessarily rotate, but our yield is not great. Mr. Gaines: That is all you can raise on that ground? Mr. Ewing: Yes. These trusts have broken up our foreign markets. If an independent buyer should come in there and offer to buy any of our tobacco-which has happened, and would happen tomorrow but for this state of affairs-they would quickly give him to understand as soon as he found himself in competition with them that for every hogshead of tobacco that you are going to sell in Bremen [Germany] we will have a hogshead to sell at a lower price. And it happens, without exception, that when independent buyers come in there and buy our tobaccos and ship them to Bremen, which is our largest open market in Europe, they lose money, or at least make nothing, and the enterprise is dying. There have been thousands of hogsheads of tobacco belonging to independent buyers stored in Bremen that they could not sell, because these corporations are simply offering their tobaccos at a lower price to kill competition in buying. Chairman: How much of your product is exported? Mr. Ewing: Fully 80 per cent; frequently as high as 85 per cent. Sen. Bate: That is for the reason that you have not any market at home? Mr. Ewing: We have no market at home. We are most frequently offered one price by one man. There are three large buying corporations there-the Italian Government, the American Tobacco Company, and the Imperial Tobacco Company. The American Tobacco Company means the Continental Tobacco Company and a good many others that are associated with it. Sen. Bate: Is the Italian company what is known as the "Regie?" Mr. Ewing: The Italian company is the Regie; yes, sir. Now, the Italian buyer will come to a barn and offer us one price, and these other men rarely come near us. We often do not see them or hear of them. One thing that has injured our whole tobacco interest is that there are so many of extremely modest means that can not keep up with conditions existing and as imposed upon farmers from the fact that he does not come in contact with all the facts as to the methods adopted by these corporations, who is badly discouraged and who can not appreciate the necessity for being somewhat independent in business, runs after the buyer and says, "I can not sell on one bid; some one else must come here and look at my tobacco. Won't you come and look at it?" And they say, ''No; we can not come;" and they will not go. That has injured us very much indeed. But the greatest injury to us has been the fact that they tell us that this is a nondescript tobacco, and they can not use it anywhere; or that it is overproduction-which, in fact, it has never been-and if an independent buyer buys it and ships it abroad he loses money on it, without exception. If you will remove this tax, or rather unfetter us by not requiring the planter to deliver it in person, but instead give us what is an inherent right to sell through others, we will make a home market for what is termed nondescript or overproduction tobacco. We believe we are entitled to it as citizens, and the country is suffering for the want of it. This would restore competition on open market. Chairman: Have you no market? Mr. Ewing: We have no competitive market, but if you will pass this Gaines-Yerkes bill the Planters' Association will do the rest, and we soon will have a market. Chairman: You can not ship your tobacco anywhere? Mr. Ewing: We can not sell advantageously. Chairman: Is there no market in New York, for example? Mr. Ewing: No, sir; the same market conditions would exist there as to our tobacco at as home. Chairman: None in Richmond? Mr. Ewing: No, sir; I think that tobacco district has grave grievances also. I am informed by prominent and reliable dealers that these Italian buyers that come to our barns and offer us one price for tobacco have a contract with the Austrian Government. That is the Regie system, too. They take the very best of our tobacco at their own prices literally, reassert it and supply the Austrian Government. I was in New York day before yesterday talking to some men who I believe are thoroughly informed as to the system-that a large amount of our tobacco is selected as Austrian tobacco and is shipped to Virginia and exported from there as Virginia tobacco for the Austrian Government. I am informed they supply the Austrian Government a large amount of tobacco. They simply say to them, "You stay out of the market and we will buy your tobacco a great deal cheaper than you can, and we will sell it to you." Enditem