Tobacco War Started with Wild Rumors, Theories

Source from:  By CHRIS SMITH • The Leaf-Chronicle • March 30, 2008 03/31/2008

When a group of saboteurs blew up a major Elkton, Ky., tobacco factory in 1905, The Leaf-Chronicle was quick to do two things: First, redirect blame for the bombing away from the one group that might benefit from it - the organization of farmers trying to set their own prices - and, second, stamp down false reports of a 150-strong army of masked men terrorizing the countryside. The beginnings of what came to be called the Night Riders episode are complicated, but it boils down to this: Big corporate tobacco buyers had organized a trust that worked to keep prices low at the expense of local farmers. In response, tobacco farmers organized an association that would allow them to warehouse their tobacco and set a stronger collective price. As the Planters Protective Association was forming, some buyers and sellers were refusing to play ball, and soon found their operations under violent siege. Only a few days before the big explosion in Elkton, the Dec. 9 edition of the Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle had reported two tobacco factory arsons in Trenton, Ky., that morning, first of the S.D. Chestnut & Brothers factory, then of Jos. Russell's factory about 50 yards away. The explosion in Elkton was bigger. So big, in fact, it was heard all over that city. Reported in the Dec. 12 edition, it happened the night before at about 11 p.m. The terrorists had planted dynamite under the three-story tobacco factory operated by American Tobacco Co., which had bought a small amount of tobacco in week prior. Immediately upon hearing word of the explosion, Felix G. Ewing, chairman of the Executive Committee of the Planters Protective Association, sent to the Leaf-Chronicle and other newspapers this telegram: "Say for me: 'I condemn absolutely the excitement in the dark tobacco district and the demonstrations against buyers for large corporations which savor in the least of lawlessness. I shall hurry home, and it shall be my earnest endeavor to allay it before it results in lawlessness." Ewing had been out of town recuperating from an illness. Conspiracy theory Editors piggybacked on Ewing's concerns, admonishing readers that Ewing, of all people, would never condone this sort of violence. In fact, the paper leaped to an interesting conspiracy theory that the saboteurs were actually working to destroy the association through setting it up for blame in the acts. "The Leaf-Chronicle does not pretend to know or say who is responsible for this lawlessness, or what the motive of the men were who committed it; but it does say that an attempt has been made to strike the Farmer's Association an infamous blow below the belt. Does any sane, thinking man believe that any friend of the organization has done these things upon the heels of its recent triumphant victory? Certainly not. It is quite conceivable, however, that enemies of this organization might have done them with a mistaken view of the moral effect it might produce, hoping they might lead to the destruction of the Organization." An interesting theory, but one discounted by Ewing in a letter to members published on the front page Dec. 14, in which he puts the blame on misguided "reckless friends" of the farmers and demands that they promote the association only through lawful means. Masked army On the same night as the bombings, a group of men, rumored to be masked, hijacked a train going from Guthrie, Ky., to Elkton. It's unclear whether this happened before or after the bombing, but it elicited what the Leaf-Chronicle claimed was a bogus dispatch. The paper ran the dispatch, with the following disclaimer on its accuracy: "The following highly sensational dispatch was sent out to-day from Elkton. A careful investigation shows that it is highly overdrawn. The statement that 150 heavily armed and masked men held up a train and declared that they were looking for tobacco buyers is untrue. Ten men or thereabouts boarded a train and stated that they were peaceably inclined and wanted to wait upon certain tobacco buyers, who they had heard were aboard the train. We could not confirm after careful inquiry, the statement that these men were masked and heavily armed." In years to come, such rumors would seem less far-fetched, as bands of Night Riders stormed the countryside, sometimes taking over entire towns such as Princeton, Hopkinsville and Russellville, Ky., in what was called the Black Patch War, according to the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. The violence peaked in 1907-09, then diminished in the next few years. Enditem