January 8, 2025 • 47 mins
At the turn of the 20th century as the U.S. production of tobacco was on the rise, a group of disgruntled tobacco farmers in small region of western Kentucky and northwestern Tennessee called “The Black Patch” organized against the monopolizing Duke Trust to help protect the income of so many small tobacco farmers. In this episode of the Bear Grease Podcast, hear the little known story of the largest domestic armed uprising in America that had taken place since the Civil War.
Author and former Justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court Bill Cunningham shares the unbelievable story of the Night Riders. Dr. Lloyd Murdock of the University of Kentucky talks about the history of tobacco in the region and why is was so important to the people of the “Black Patch.”
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Of course darkfied tobacco. That was the cash crop. But
you had mostly subsistence farmers that raised what they ate,
raised a lot of to some extent what they wore
all this on the farm. But they needed cash, need
cash paid for the farm. They cashed it by groceries.
They didn't raise. They he cashed, the clothed the children,
and they cashed by mama and new calico dress for Easter.
(00:28):
They needed cash by plow points and need cashed to
maintain their farming operation. How they're gonna make it, They're
gonna go tobacco.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
On this episode, we're gonna hear the true story the
night Rider Tobacco War in Kentucky and Tennessee, when farmers
stood up against America's goliath tobacco monopoly in a five
year reign of strategic terror. But in the Ruckus divided states, communities,
and even families, and the most continuous violent unrest in
(01:01):
America between the Civil War and the race riots of
the nineteen sixties. But I think you might have a
hard time deciding between the bad guys and the good ones,
or at least history has. If you ask people what
they're afraid of, there would be a long and varied list,
but what should be at the top of that list
are the things that divide us, because divisive things make
(01:26):
people do some crazy stuff. We're gonna interview author and
former Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Bill Cunningham, tobacco expert doctor
Lloyd Murdoch, and hear an archival interview from the nineteen
eighties from the.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Last Living Night Writer.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
I really doubt that you're gonna want to miss this one.
My name is Clay Nukem, and this is the Bear
Grease pod Cast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant,
search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell
(02:07):
the story of Americans who live their lives close to
the land. Presented by FHF Gear, American made purpose built
hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged
as the place as we explore.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
You know, it was an interesting thing about Kentucky. You
know what ourmanto is, you know, and we stand divided,
we fall. There's never been a more divided fracture state
in the Union than Kentucky. Civil War divided, politics, divided,
night Writer, movement divided, divided, divide Even today, this county
(02:53):
was divided.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
The things that divide us are always really interesting to me.
Is an ancient point of psychological leverage that can turn
ordinary men into savages and weak men into powerful monsters.
Division is a core tenant inside of most clandestine organizations,
where people rally against an enemy. This sits across some
(03:18):
ideological divide, But ironically, what this does is create a
deep sense of unity amongst the oppressors. And it seems
to be no secret that unity is the key to
accomplishing goals and moving mountains. You hear it in sports, politics, religion,
inside of families and businesses, and even inside of personal relationships.
(03:42):
But the undeniable thread that unites all humanity together is
that we're really good at using division as a weapon.
The voice she just heard was lawyer, author, and former
Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Bill Cunningham from Katahwakan. He'll start
the story by telling us about a man he met
(04:04):
back in the nineteen eighties. And remember, this is the
story about the things that divide us.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Joe's got like I said, when I went out there
to do his will, I knew Joe he'd been on
a grand jury. Good guy, I mean, no jovial guy.
He called me one day. He said, Bill, I want
you to do my will. I said, okay, Joe, when
you want to come in, I'm not coming in. You're
coming out here. And he's the guy guy, Yes, sir,
when can I come out there? I went out to
(04:35):
his house and his wife. He sat there the kitchen,
dangary and tell me I took all the information and
you wrote that book on that night Rider, didn't you.
I said, yeah, Joe, I did. If I can tell
you some things about night Riders and he started talking.
She kept hitting him like this. He was just dying
to talk about it. I got up and left and
(04:55):
went back out to execute the will. Took my secretary
and another witness to witness. He started, you, I made
a few stories, boy, about that book by about the
night Writer, and he just started smiling it all out.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
In the mid nineteen eighties, Bill Cunningham and a friend
went and interviewed the last known living night writer, Joe Scott,
in Lyon County, Kentucky. This interview aired on a local
television station in the nineteen eighties, but hasn't been seen since.
This is some stuff crammed deep in the cracks of history.
(05:29):
Joe Scott was born in eighteen eighty nine. But why
at the age of ninety seven years old? Yep, he
was ninety seven years old in this interview. Was he
finally ready to talk? It was because everyone else was dead.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Wrong. Were you a part of this organization?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
How long were you a knight writer?
Speaker 4 (05:54):
Well?
Speaker 5 (05:54):
I joined in nineteen before nineteen hundred and seventy. I
guess longer to live. How many raids did you go on?
Speaker 3 (06:06):
And I guess, well.
Speaker 5 (06:08):
I went to Hopkins and went to his raid, and
at the end of them, then I went to Bennett's raid.
I no befool raid threefold.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
And how many visits would you say you paid to.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
Individual? You don't know.
Speaker 5 (06:23):
I don't know when they'd say come and go. Never
made two or three visits for whatever may down at all.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Raids and visits, he said.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Joe Scott joined the night Riders when he was eighteen
years old in nineteen oh seven. And if you didn't
get the gist of what the old man was saying,
ninety seven years old, he basically declared that he was
a night Rider for life. This organization built a strong
sense of loyalty, which is given when a group takes
meaningful action towards a cause, giving identity as a side benefit.
(06:58):
The Night Riders were known for their masked nighttime horseback
terror raids as the clandestine strong arm of the Tobacco
Farmers Association, known for threatening, whipping, and beating people into membership,
and at times even murder. In the late eighteen hundreds,
(07:18):
tobacco farmers made good money growing tobacco as a cash crop,
but the turn of the twentieth century in America brought
market domination from the loosely regulated tobacco giants who drove
down the price of tobacco, and in nineteen oh four,
the Dark Tobacco District Planners Protection Association Yep, it's a mouthful,
(07:40):
decided to boycott selling to American Tobacco, which was owned
by the Duke Trust. So remember that name, Duke out
of North Carolina. Yeah, like Christian Latner's Duke. And the
farmers who wouldn't join the association and sold to the
Duke Trust through American Tobacco go were punished and terrorized.
(08:03):
Between nineteen oh four and nineteen oh nine. The Night
Writers would not only terrorize individuals, but they'd be responsible
for taking over entire cities and burning the Duke Trust
tobacco barns to the ground, making their actions the most
continuous violent unrest in America in the century after the
Civil War. But the real thing you'll have to sort
(08:26):
through is this. Were they the bad guys or were
they a needed revolt from the people to smash a
monstrous corporate monopoly. That's what we're here to decide. But
to understand the Night Riders, we first have to understand
tobacco in the region of the country that is to
(08:46):
this day called the Black Patch of Kentucky and Tennessee,
which grows the finest dark fired tobacco in the world.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
It's like wine making in Germany and France. It takes
generations to learn it and to refine it. You can
go out on the front porch sometimes this time of
year and smell it drifting in. But basically one of
the reasons this is the best place in the world
real guard fire to bake and to cure it is
we have all this hickory in West Tennessee and West
(09:19):
Kentucky is cured, but hickory wood strip the hickory wood
to cut it, slats of it have the barns that
are vented, and you go in and you basically dig trenches.
This is the way that he used to do it. Now,
my dad, my grand my dad, my grandfather. He dig
trenches in the barn floor. You fill it up with
(09:40):
the hickory wood, you set afire, and you smother as saudust,
and then it comes up to the tobacco, which is
house goes out and it prevents this special cure to it,
and it comes in order. You'll hear that term coming
in order. And coming in order means that you wait
until it's cured out long enough and there's been enough
(10:03):
rain and there's moistre in there. It's malleable. Otherwise, if
you take it down too earlier, just crumble up the dusk. Here.
You take it down when it comes in order and amountable,
so you can strip it off the stalk and pack
it without it breaking the piece.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Coming into order, that's an interesting descriptor for a plant
known for cheap fleeting pleasure that would cause more chaos
and death than potentially any plant in history. What they
call dark fired tobacco starts with growing dark tobacco, which
is a cultivated variety of the tobacco plant cured under
(10:39):
hickory smoke to give it a unique flavor. The Black
Patch region of southwest Kentucky and northwest Tennessee covers thirty
counties and is the best place in the world to
grow it. Dark fired tobacco is typically used in chewing tobacco,
but they also use the dark leaves to wrap cigars
and to make some pipe tobacco and burley tobacco. A
(11:02):
different cults of art is used for cigarettes. Did you
know that tobacco is a completely American thing. It's native
to North and South America and used by indigenous people
here since time immemorial. The plant belongs to the genus Nicotinia,
so all the ancient pipes found in other parts of
the world, those guys were smoking something else. But apparently
(11:27):
it was one of the first things that Europeans picked
up from the native people, because by the mid fifteen hundreds,
really not that long after the first Europeans got here,
there was enough dark leaf tobacco being exported that it
became a global craze. In sixteen oh four, King James,
the first not Lebron of the Lakers, but shout out
(11:50):
to Arkansas's Austin Reeves. King James declared, quote, tobacco was
a nasty weed right from hell they bought the sea.
It fouls the mouth and soils the clothes and makes
a chimney of the nose. Apparently, like emin m, he
liked to rhyme the truth. But by sixteen sixty four,
(12:11):
the colonies were exporting twenty four million pounds of tobacco
per year. And this brings up a timely point. Boys,
I hope you don't think that any of the various
ways someone might soak tobacco's voodoo into their bloodstream gets
the Juju newcom or Beargary stamp of approval, because it doesn't.
(12:32):
But in full disclosure, as a young fool, I dip
some snuff behind Juju's back. But when I was nineteen,
I believe that I heard the voice of God himself
tell me to quit. I'm not joking, and so I did. Sorry, Juju,
but tobacco is an interesting part of our history and
(12:52):
of society today. But back to the hard hitting history.
Here's why it became so important to these poor a
Mayamerican farmers. This is doctor Lloyd Murdoch of Princeton Kentucky.
He has a PhD in agronomy soils and happens to
be tobacco expert. Well.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
Kentucky is probably the second largest tobacco state in the
United States, and it's very traditional and it's very very
important to Kentucky and has been. It was the best
crop that one could have as far as when you
were subsistence farming. You had your your hog that you
killed every year, and you had your milk, and you
(13:35):
had the beef but in your chickens, and so you
could subsist, you know, and you didn't make much money.
You'd settle hay or something like that, and maybe you
would sell milk, you know, in town or to somebody
and get the cream off, but you didn't make much money.
And tobacco you could sell it and you could make
some money. So it was the thing that's that sustained
(13:58):
you as far as having something subsistence, and that was
extremely important to tell a person in different people at
that time. And if they didn't have that, you know,
you have trouble by the car, you know, they have
trouble any any of the things that would take you
up one step in society. You know. It wasn't there.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Of course, dark fired tobacco, that was the cash crop.
But you had mostly subsistence farmers that raised what they ate,
raised a lot of something extent what they wore, all
this on the farm. But they needed cash, need cash
pay for the farm, need cashing buy groceries. They didn't raise.
They had any cash to clothe the children, and need
(14:40):
cash to buy mama new calico dress for Easter. They
need cash by plow points. They need cash to maintain
their farming operation. How they're gonna make it, They're gonna
go tobacco.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Here's Bill Cunningham getting an answer of how important tobacco
was in the early nineteen hundreds, straight from the horse's mouth,
mister Joe Scott. Sometimes the recording is a little hard
to understand, but just bear with him.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
The back, of course was your only cash crop.
Speaker 5 (15:27):
Was five o'bacca cross was a name call on the
clock might as shall I say?
Speaker 1 (15:31):
And if you didn't make any money on every.
Speaker 5 (15:33):
Body couldn't have a hole, you know that trumpers couldn't
have And the sure covers said it was a little
hell holes on the place in art.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
So you didn't make it.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
The back you almost literally starved that if you.
Speaker 5 (15:46):
Couldn't, you couldn't.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
You couldn't you could get a job an it wore.
Speaker 5 (15:49):
If you didn't, if you didn't have a crop with
what did you did? Work for three to five cents
on days maybe something like that. Now you didn't get
nothing to to work.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
He said the going rate for manual labor was twenty
five cents a day, and a crop of tobacco would
yield a lot more than that.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
We'll learn exactly how much.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Doctor Murdoch said something interesting too, that tobacco allowed people
to live quote above subsistence. And this is an important idea.
It seems to be an inalienable human right to subsist,
to just make it, but to get more than you
need to simply survive. That's a plan filled that makes
(16:30):
humans get crazy, greedy, ambitious, create divisions and start wars.
Having more than just enough isn't just an American dream.
It's the global dream. It's the ancient dream that pushed
men across continents, mountain ranges, and oceans in search of riches.
It's what makes people strategize and work hard, and some
(16:51):
to steal and kill, like winemakers that have vineyard in Sicily.
This region of Kentucky and Tennessee built a culture around tobacco,
and in the black patch, the way for the common
man to get ahead was by growing that dark fire tobacco.
So how do you grow it?
Speaker 1 (17:11):
The Baca farmers started in February. He would take his
tobacco seed and he'd find a nice place on the
hill that gets a lot of sun. And they go
out there and they clear the bacca bitch. I've heard
my dad say many times. You know, in February we
always get a big warm spell, perfect time to make
(17:32):
our tobacco bitch.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
So what they would do would they would kind of
work the ground a little bit and smooth it out
in the oh late winter, put a lot of wood
on top of that, set of the fire. And when
you set it a fire, then you raise the temperature
in the top several inches, say let's just say maybe
three to four inches enough that you would all the
(17:58):
seeds that were a live would perish.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
And they go out and clear the baca bed to
make it real fine, and then they get the bacco
seed and the planet the bca seeds very very small.
In fact, you can get it. You'd buy it you
could buy in pouches, you know, and almostly whole cup
would be in a little pouch. It's so fine, and
you throw it out and then you cover it with
a canvas protect you from the cold. Weather's gonna go.
(18:25):
And it grows and it grows tobacco plants. And when
the weather warms up and the plants come into being
about this high, you go out and draw your plants,
transform the field and shut them out, and then hope, hope,
for the best. And then it grows and you cultivate
it and you hold it out.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
So tobacco plants have to be started in a protected
seed bed, and once they grow to four to six inches,
they're dug up by hand and replanted in the main
tobacco field.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
I read an article one time. It would take like
nine hundred hours or one acre. So you had fairly
good sized families. The kids started working in tobacco when
they were fairly young. You didn't have herbicides, you didn't
have insecticides, you didn't have anything like that that was
later on used. Didn't make tobacco farming much easier. So
(19:18):
you had to walk the fields and look to see
if there are any insects there. And if they were
insects there, you had a little can that you threw
it into and it had some little poison stuff in it.
It would kill those insects. And so consequently you would
take and you would go down the road, she'd pull
the weeds out.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Used to be you would you sucker it. I think
they got defoliates now that sucker. The sucker comes like
if you grow a garden with tomatoes, you sucker your domatoes. Yeah,
same thing with the bat and then topping it when
it goes late in the summer. He has a big bloom.
Blooms on any plant. Make know your trees whatever. It
sucks the energy out of the plant. Same way to
(19:59):
bloom on off with dibico plant. He's really beautiful. I
grow tobacca here sometime and so then you top it.
And it's very very labor intenship. That's why my grandfather,
my dad would want to grow four or five acres
and you had to depend on family to grow it.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
So it was just continuous. It was the thing that
they needed to take him up Annchal society. But it
demanded a lot and it was a sacrifice to grow it.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
It's clear to see that this was more than a
meaningful crop to these poor dirt farmers, but it was
also important to some other people, especially the Duke family
of North Carolina, and specifically James Buck Duke, who was
a major player in this story.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Though he never was physically involved.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
With James B. Duke, he grew up there three Bole
with James, Rody and Ben. They grew up poor much
in Durham area of North Carolina. James was born like
eighteen fifty seven, he was old enough to remember, so
he grew up pretty poor. But then after the Civil
War tobacco. Up to that time tobacco was pretty much
(21:16):
his hand roll, the invention of the cigarette maker and
all this. And after the Civil War tobacco ust started
moving north because during the Civil War there's a lot
of economic intercourse between the two. They have a truce
and a trade coffee for tobacco and cigarette smoking. Cigarette
only came about. You won't see you don't see Civil
(21:40):
War movies or Civil War general therap smoking a cigarette
like you do. In World War Two, it didn't have it,
but cigarette's consumption started to go up.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
According to Bill Cunningham's book on Bended knees about this night, writer,
Tobacco War, which is where I learned all of this stuff.
Civil War expanded tobacco use in America when Yankee soldiers
started using Southern tobacco. But by eighteen sixty nine there
were less than two million cigarettes being manufactured and sold
(22:11):
in America. Two million, But by eighteen ninety there were
two point one billion, with the b cigarettes made in America,
and this became the heyday of American tobacco. Imagine the
draw to smoking or chewing if there was almost no
knowledge of the health risks, and combine that with the
radically addictive nicotine, and as we're about to see, the
(22:35):
strong arm of a new philosophy of capitalism and marketing,
America blew up into a tobacco nation. In eighteen ninety,
the state of Kentucky alone produced two hundred and twenty
one million pounds, making it the leading tobacco producer in
the country. Today, the leading state is North Carolina. But
just after the Civil War, the Duke Trust Company started
(22:59):
by the father Washington Duke, who when he started was
a single mule tobacco farmer, but his new company was
rapidly growing in the global tobacco trade. But in eighteen
eighty nine, the middle son, James Buck Duke, started the
American Tobacco Company, which was the beginning of an empire,
(23:20):
but still part of this Duke.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Trust, and the business took off and Washington. Duke and
the three boys were devout Methodists, but James B. Duke
wasn't as devout, and he was more of a capitalist.
He saw the money making and he just took it
from there, and the cigarette making machine really opened it up.
(23:42):
James Buck Duke became the tycoon in Washington. Before he died,
he was already feeling pain. So maybe we made it
too big. Maybe some of the baco farmers were suffering.
So he was kind of a conscience when he died.
You know, he was kind of unbridled James B.
Speaker 6 (24:00):
That just.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
It's inborn. I'm convinced a successful entrepreneur's a lot of
us DNA. Well, he's still got his money floating around today.
I don't think James Duke was ever of the corrupt
tycoon you see in movies. I don't think he ever
potentially really, I think I never see any He was
(24:25):
Ruth's and standpoint that he would buy out and didn't
think too much about the impact.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
James Buck Duke may not have been overtly corrupt, but
showed an insatiable desire for money, power, and success in
a time in America when this was becoming something attainable.
He was in his early twenties when he started working
for the business, and at age thirty two he started
this American tobacco company.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
It was said that he.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Believed sleep and leisure were the enemies of man. He
was charismatic, cunning, and a business wizard. According to Bill Cunningham,
this company would be the first to give free samples,
use billboard advertising, and use personal endorsements of celebrities and
athletes to promote their product. In many ways, America learned
(25:15):
full throttle capitalism from tobacco companies, but with the rise
of the Duke Trust, tobacco Empire, and even monopoly, tobacco
farmers got less and less for their crops. Here's Josh
Spilmaker asking doctor Murdoch a question.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Get ready for some math.
Speaker 6 (25:36):
What would be a typical yield for an acre of tobacco?
Speaker 4 (25:40):
Probably about four thousand pounds somewhere along four.
Speaker 6 (25:43):
Thousand pounds, So quick, math, do you have any idea
of what the going rate would have been kind of
before the Duke Trust kind of started pushing prices down.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
Probably before they started pushing prices down, it was probably
seven eight nine cents a pound.
Speaker 6 (26:00):
Okay, so you have three hundred and fifty to four hundred
dollars per acre, which would have been pretty substantial.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
That's a lot of money. Then you know, I got
to work all day for a dollar.
Speaker 6 (26:10):
Right, but the I think the cost to produce was
about six cents is what that's probably right. Yeah, So
you know they're making anywhere from two to four cents
per pound per acre, which was significant.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
To summarize that, in the late eighteen hundreds, a farmer
was making one hundred and twenty dollars profit per acre
on tobacco, and the average farmer was only growing about
two acres. But that's two hundred and forty dollars a year,
So nine hundred man hours per acre works out to
an hourly rate of thirteen cents per hour. Another way
(26:48):
to look at this is if a family as a
whole could raise two acres and the father could work
making a dollar a day, elsewhere, a family could almost
double their yearly income of raising two acres of tobacco.
But that was before the Duke's American Tobacco Empire showed up,
(27:08):
because after that the prices would plummet, even down to
farmers producing tobacco at a deficit, sometime only making two
to three cents per pound.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
This destroyed the farmer's way of life.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
And I bet you see that this is building into
a story that got some people really upset.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
But so it was a cash crop and if anything
happened with their cash crop, they really put a oral hurt.
So what happened when you monopolize the buyer then come
and take, give you a take or leave it price?
And it was costing the tobacco farmers six cents a
pound to row tobacco, and they were being off three
(27:51):
cents a pound. So they began to struggle and getting angry.
And this being a cash crop, and that itself to
this antamossi of anger between farmers because if the farmer
who didn't go along with the association sold his tobacco
to the trust because they had up the price with him,
(28:11):
but there wasn't the others, then they they Mama got
the calico dressed, their kids had the good shoes for school,
and it's caused a lot of resentment. This is when
I got so violent tobacco. Felix show and out of
Robertson County, Tennessee. He was a big plantation on it.
There grew a lot of tobacco. He organized them and said,
(28:34):
list former association. He was the brains, the Moses of
the black patch, that's what he's called. He was the brains.
So they held a meeting over in Guthrie, Kentucky, in
September nineteen oh fourth. See what can we do? And
he said, we can form association. If they monopolized the buying,
wood monopolize the selling, we'll establish warehouses and sell or
(28:54):
to buy the tobacco up to the prices go up.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
They were going to monopolize the selling to cause tobacco
prices to go up. But what I haven't told you
is that the Duke Trust started paying more money to
buyers who weren't members of the Tobacco Association. Did you
hear that they penalized the association members And this became
a massive point of division.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
It was a good concept, but when the American Buyer
Company kind of countered by raising it would go out
and try to lure the farmers not into buying it
and giving them a little bit more. So a lot
of indefendant farmers didn't buy into it and the resentment,
and so a year later in nineteen o five when
they met, the numbers went up from five thousand farmers
(29:47):
gathered to ten thousand, and they were getting angry.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
So the original Dark Tobacco Planners Protection Association meeting, led
by Felix Ewing this Moses of the Black Patch, had
five thousand farmers show up in support to join that
first year, but a year later ten thousand showed.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Up and joined.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
The movement against the tobacco Giant was gaining momentum.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
So about two weeks after that meeting, they had a
little meeting at a little Stainback schoolhouse and a group
of about thirty farmers got together there and started talking
about what we're going to do about these independent farmers,
and they came out with the Stainback resolution was basically,
so we're gonna go visit these people at night because
they worked during the day, and we're gonna go visit
(30:34):
with them and see if we can't talk them into joining.
And a lot of implications there and take whatever, do
whatever it takes to get them to join. So when
that happened, it just throw fuel on the fire. They
go at night. Farmers are independent cousts anyway. You know,
you don't tell me what to do. And so you
(30:55):
had that clag You had this navally feeling where we
want to get to get and help each other. And
then you had the other independent feeling, You're not gonna
tell me what I'm gonna do. So founce broke out,
you spread like wildfire.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
This Steinbeck resolution branded the Duke Trust as a criminal organization.
So the Tobacco Association's mission was fighting this corporate criminal.
This was a righteous mission. It's interesting but this original
group of men in nineteen oh five sent to convince
the Independence to join the Association weren't supposed to be violent,
(31:35):
and they were actually called possum hunters. You should remember
that because that's likely gonna be on a bear grease
render quiz. But these possum hunters, who did all their
work at night, turned into the night writers, which was
a name that would stick. And this produced a real
conundrum inside this region, a real division, and that's what
(31:57):
this story's about. The majority of tobacco farmers and the
black patch, as much as seventy percent became members of
the association, and interestingly included a very high number of
African American tobacco farmers, many of which were sharecroppers.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
But thirty percent of tobacco farmers, for whatever reason, rejected
the selling boycott and were rewarded by American tobacco. The
people who sold to them were seen as traders and
sellouts and ironically were labeled as hillbillies.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
The people who sold to the trust were known in
Kentucky and Tennessee as hillbillies. Even old Joe Scott still
called them hillbillies in the nineteen eighties. This is a
good place to slow down for a minute and think
about what you would do.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
Here's doctor Murdoch.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
We talked about how impoor I was and so so
we're just talking about ourselves being putting ourselves in that time.
You know, my neighbor, we all have to get together
and get this price up. You know, we've got to
do something. And so we decide. Most of the people
come together and they volunteer and they say, let's let's
(33:20):
do it. And so we've got a big majority, and
we feel like we have almost everybody, and so if
we don't do this, we can't we can't do it.
You know, we're going to be down to nothing as
far as living and you know close for kids too,
that's important. And so but these people aren't cooperating, you know,
so you plead with them to do this, and if
(33:43):
just a few do it and cooperate with the with
the trust, you're okay. But you've have almost everybody and
they refuse to do it, and so you talk to
them and well, maybe they just need to be moreminded,
and so you take that next step if all what
I'm trying to say, And then that requires another step
(34:03):
because they become defiant also against your in your your position,
and so all of a sudden, it's kind of like
a war. You know, you find yourself in something that
you didn't ever expect to be when you stuck it
to them here and how far do you go? And
what do you do? And so who was it faulled?
(34:26):
What was the injustice? You know, in which ones had it?
And it becomes very concuism.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
It became very confusing.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
If you joined the association, you're basically hurting your family's
immediate financial future for a hope that the plan would
work and the monopolized selling would drive the prices back up.
But on the hillbilly side, those who sold to the trust,
maybe they thought it wasn't going to work at all.
Maybe it was futile to stand up against a giant,
(34:56):
and you could sell your crop at a higher price today.
Take care of your family, which was your primary obligation.
Are you more committed to your family or are you
more committed to your community?
Speaker 3 (35:09):
What would you do? Who were the bad guys?
Speaker 4 (35:13):
But I can see I can understand one of the
person that had ten kids and was just making barely
a living, just subsistence and didn't want to send their
kids to school with no shoes or clothes with holes
in them or something like that. I can understand why
that would be really important to them and why they
might take that next step, you know, and go a
(35:36):
little bit further than they probably should have. But then
the other people, you know, he's on the other side,
They were down there with what these people were talking
about that took this stand. But now they had an
opportunity to sell because the trust was trying to break
the Tobacco Association. So I think I'll do that because
(35:57):
you know they need shoes, they need you can understand
why they might want to do it, and so it's
a difficult, difficult thing. I think that there was a
lot of consternation. I think there was a lot of
people that didn't sleep at night because they were wondering
if they were right or wrong, or if they took
the wrong step, and that they felt because you're you're
(36:19):
harming your neighbor, the guy that next door that you
know you've barred the tractor from, or you know he
came over and he got your wagon for a while,
and that's hard.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
That is hard. Would you have joined the association?
Speaker 2 (36:36):
And if you're tempted to jump into quickly into whichever
side you think was righteous, it might help to hear
a story from someone who was there. Let's listen to
what The Last Living Night writer Joe Scott said when
he was asked why he joined.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
This might put it into perspective.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
Then I didn't.
Speaker 5 (36:57):
I didn't go into it about my obtainion. Nineteen seven.
Speaker 7 (37:01):
Let's that's that's year. That's year I might have this
nineteen seven.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Why did you join? Why did I joy.
Speaker 5 (37:09):
I stuck a gun my face and asked, God, when
you go?
Speaker 4 (37:13):
Huh? I didn't want to.
Speaker 6 (37:15):
I didn't want to where long will?
Speaker 5 (37:17):
The old man said this, you better be there when
they came and told you that.
Speaker 4 (37:24):
You made a man.
Speaker 5 (37:25):
Why you lad another man come here daytime and looked
at and told you that he told the night we'd
have a mask on.
Speaker 6 (37:31):
And he said, you don't know who.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
You told him?
Speaker 5 (37:34):
What there is from Trade County, Lyon County. Hurry from them.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
So so they threatened you, and that's why you enjoyed.
Speaker 7 (37:42):
A lot of them had the certain lot of them
didn't have to.
Speaker 5 (37:45):
But I told her, I said, I said.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
I'm a young fella. I ain't got nothing. I don't
need to go.
Speaker 5 (37:50):
Yeh if you could go when we need we need
to know, we need more men.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
He said, they came at night with masks on and
threatened him, forcing him to join. He was just eighteen
years old, and he did what most men in the
black patch did. You See, it wasn't just tobacco farmers
that joined, but people from all walks of the community.
Because a cash crop affects everybody, store owners, doctors, cities
(38:18):
collecting taxes. This wasn't just about farmers. It's about farming communities.
And this is where it makes sense to introduce an unsuspecting, charismatic,
militant leader and potential villain, the medical doctor David Amos.
He would become a key player in this story that
delivered a deep sense of mission to the night Writers
(38:42):
and would become the arch nemesis of James buck Duke.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
And then David AMers, a little country doctor or gob
service these people. He knew their misery, he knew their area,
and he have I don't know what we're having to it.
I was able to go through doctor Amos's account book
and a lot of fields weren't not paid, and a
lot of them paid with cams chickens. This that he
(39:09):
was kind of a frustrated army general. He grew up.
He think he was born in nine fifty seven. He
grew up here. This is something were going to take
this on. Joined the association, and I'm convinced. Although I
never failed any hard conference that was in direct conference
with Felix Hue and photixs Hoan always kept the nut
writers you know, like this. But I think the night
(39:33):
Rider activity, David Amis activity was probably at least got
tested approval from the association, and AA became the militant
arm and organized started doing their visits on farmers and
reading Princeton and warehouses and trying to make a difference.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
So the Night Writer's connection to the Dark Tobacco Planners
Protection Association wasn't official. Wasn't official, but there was little
doubt who these night Riders worked for. These guys were
always masked and no one really knew who they were.
But doctor Amos was an unlikely villain, and to most
people in Kentucky even today, he's not a villain at all.
(40:16):
He was born in eighteen fifty seven in Cobb, Kentucky.
His father was a compassionate, well respected doctor known for
treating the recently emancipated black patients without charge. David Amos
attended a military high school, but in eighteen eighty, at
the age of twenty three, he became a doctor.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
Following the footsteps of his father.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
Long before being a doctor was financially lucrative, the profession
was primarily connected to service. His piercing blue eyes and
a trendy handlebar mustache gave him some charm, and he
had charisma to boot. He lived horses, pistol, shooting, the military,
and service to his country community in Cobb. He didn't
(40:58):
even grow tobacco, but he cared for There are a
lot of people who did so. Around nineteen oh five,
doctor David Amos became the unofficial, under the radar, militant
minded leader commanding a branch of the Tobacco Association that
would become known as the Night Writers. He was a
night writer by night and country doctor by day. This
(41:21):
is the same group that old Joe Scott eighty years
later still pledged his allegiance to, and the night Writer's
sole job was to convince people to join the association
and punish those who didn't. I wonder if Joe Scott
ever met doctor Amosamus. What kind of fell about doctor Amos.
Speaker 5 (41:42):
I don't know much about dog famers. I met him
with one time, but no, dawg famous was a now
he is a smart man. Now he hadn't a had
a lot of since he did. He had Hawkins just
asking me to take this thing here. He's arche checkerboard and.
Speaker 7 (42:01):
Every man that he had a He had his men, ever.
Speaker 5 (42:05):
Fella squads, ever fella had a captain.
Speaker 4 (42:08):
He had so many men you.
Speaker 7 (42:09):
Undertown, however one of them them them them places are numbered,
you say, the post office, telephone office, has ever business
place where it was telephone and telephone.
Speaker 5 (42:21):
And he had all that number though, and here he
gave a man. Uh, he had he had, he had
a captain, so many men, and he gave him a
place one of these.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
In the next episode we're going to get into the
specifics of what the Night Writers actually did, the beatings
and the organized city raids. But from Joe's description you
see that this organization was militant and at times would
take over entire cities with five hundred well organized men
on horseback at the command of the generous Country Doctor,
(42:53):
often with the horses hoofs wrapped with burlap sacks to
make their approach quiet. That's some gangsters, but there was
something much bigger at work on a national scale, something
bigger than tobacco. Mister Cunning anim will now unveil a
larger story happening in America.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
James Duke kind of he represented the capital interest of
this country, and whereas David am was humble, Country Doctor
represented the labor and this struggle of the Night Writers.
It was labor versus capital, and this is going on
all over the country. This was just a little microcosm
(43:34):
of the labor movement in the railroad industry, in mining,
in the factories. It was that time of our country
when these clash between the labor and capital was becoming violent,
hitting head on, and you had to develop the origins
the Labor Union, the night Writers and the Association especially
were basically the Gurian Union members. So each one of
(43:57):
them led this. But that's been the both of this country, right,
capitalism labor. But it's always been a tension between the two.
And it could have very well, like during the Depression,
it could have very well gone south like it did
in Russia, like it did in a lot of other
countries where the Toutarian government took over.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
It's easy to take for granted what has happened in history,
not really thinking much about what could have happened. Mister
Cunningham is saying that this same labor versus capital struggle
happened in other countries and it turned out way different,
way worse. I want to close this first episode with
(44:38):
an interesting clip from Joe Scott when he was asked
if he thought what he did was meaningful.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
Not writers did any good.
Speaker 5 (44:50):
Then this buncle wouldn't have been where it is today's.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
So I asked that.
Speaker 5 (44:55):
They said, well, would you do that again? This is
all help when I says close everything he was.
Speaker 4 (45:00):
So I've said on that in my country and the.
Speaker 5 (45:03):
Poor people that I heard I was doing all, I
do it again, and I do it how Wally I
feel about. I don't believe home on anybody.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
In a way.
Speaker 7 (45:15):
There's just they.
Speaker 5 (45:16):
Didn't They didn't need something. This trust company didn't need
all his money. And then starving the poor folks to death.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
You know, he said that trust company didn't need all
that money and to starve them poor folks to death,
that's what he said.
Speaker 3 (45:31):
And yes he would do it again.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
In the next episode, we're going to look exactly at
what they did and its effect. And here's a question
I'd like you to answer right now, and it's this.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
Do you think the.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Tobacco Association's boycotted selling worked? Joe Scott sure thought it did.
The stories of the common man fighting against a corporate
giant are intriguing because they're the stories that still dominate
and divide the American consciousness even today. The world of
the hunter Gatherer didn't have to consider stuff like this.
(46:05):
He was just too busy trying to subsist. This is
a product of extreme prosperity, which overall we'd have to
say is a really good thing, but it brings many
cancerous pitfalls. After you hear what the Association and the
night Writers did, you'll be able to decide who were
the good guys and bad guys. And actually we'll get
(46:27):
a judicial decision that reflected the temperature of these people,
and it might surprise you the conclusion they came to.
There's one more hot episode about these dang night Riders
coming up, and I can't thank you enough for listening
to Bear Grease and Brent's This Country Life podcast. Our
render schedule is slightly different right now because we did
(46:49):
a render with CrossFit Master Jedi and Hunter Rich Froning,
and that's going to come out next week, and then
the second night Rider episode will come out, and then
we're going to have a render where we discuss all
this night Rider stuff. So between now and then, the
wild Place is wild, and that's where the Bears live.
Of course darkfied tobacco. That was the cash crop. But
you had mostly subsistence farmers that raised what they ate,
raised a lot of to some extent what they wore
all this on the farm. But they needed cash, need
cash paid for the farm. They cashed it by groceries.
They didn't raise. They he cashed, the clothed the children,
and they cashed by mama and new calico dress for Easter.
(00:28):
They needed cash by plow points and need cashed to
maintain their farming operation. How they're gonna make it, They're
gonna go tobacco.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
On this episode, we're gonna hear the true story the
night Rider Tobacco War in Kentucky and Tennessee, when farmers
stood up against America's goliath tobacco monopoly in a five
year reign of strategic terror. But in the Ruckus divided states, communities,
and even families, and the most continuous violent unrest in
(01:01):
America between the Civil War and the race riots of
the nineteen sixties. But I think you might have a
hard time deciding between the bad guys and the good ones,
or at least history has. If you ask people what
they're afraid of, there would be a long and varied list,
but what should be at the top of that list
are the things that divide us, because divisive things make
(01:26):
people do some crazy stuff. We're gonna interview author and
former Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Bill Cunningham, tobacco expert doctor
Lloyd Murdoch, and hear an archival interview from the nineteen
eighties from the.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Last Living Night Writer.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
I really doubt that you're gonna want to miss this one.
My name is Clay Nukem, and this is the Bear
Grease pod Cast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant,
search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell
(02:07):
the story of Americans who live their lives close to
the land. Presented by FHF Gear, American made purpose built
hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged
as the place as we explore.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
You know, it was an interesting thing about Kentucky. You
know what ourmanto is, you know, and we stand divided,
we fall. There's never been a more divided fracture state
in the Union than Kentucky. Civil War divided, politics, divided,
night Writer, movement divided, divided, divide Even today, this county
(02:53):
was divided.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
The things that divide us are always really interesting to me.
Is an ancient point of psychological leverage that can turn
ordinary men into savages and weak men into powerful monsters.
Division is a core tenant inside of most clandestine organizations,
where people rally against an enemy. This sits across some
(03:18):
ideological divide, But ironically, what this does is create a
deep sense of unity amongst the oppressors. And it seems
to be no secret that unity is the key to
accomplishing goals and moving mountains. You hear it in sports, politics, religion,
inside of families and businesses, and even inside of personal relationships.
(03:42):
But the undeniable thread that unites all humanity together is
that we're really good at using division as a weapon.
The voice she just heard was lawyer, author, and former
Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Bill Cunningham from Katahwakan. He'll start
the story by telling us about a man he met
(04:04):
back in the nineteen eighties. And remember, this is the
story about the things that divide us.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Joe's got like I said, when I went out there
to do his will, I knew Joe he'd been on
a grand jury. Good guy, I mean, no jovial guy.
He called me one day. He said, Bill, I want
you to do my will. I said, okay, Joe, when
you want to come in, I'm not coming in. You're
coming out here. And he's the guy guy, Yes, sir,
when can I come out there? I went out to
(04:35):
his house and his wife. He sat there the kitchen,
dangary and tell me I took all the information and
you wrote that book on that night Rider, didn't you.
I said, yeah, Joe, I did. If I can tell
you some things about night Riders and he started talking.
She kept hitting him like this. He was just dying
to talk about it. I got up and left and
(04:55):
went back out to execute the will. Took my secretary
and another witness to witness. He started, you, I made
a few stories, boy, about that book by about the
night Writer, and he just started smiling it all out.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
In the mid nineteen eighties, Bill Cunningham and a friend
went and interviewed the last known living night writer, Joe Scott,
in Lyon County, Kentucky. This interview aired on a local
television station in the nineteen eighties, but hasn't been seen since.
This is some stuff crammed deep in the cracks of history.
(05:29):
Joe Scott was born in eighteen eighty nine. But why
at the age of ninety seven years old? Yep, he
was ninety seven years old in this interview. Was he
finally ready to talk? It was because everyone else was dead.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Wrong. Were you a part of this organization?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
How long were you a knight writer?
Speaker 4 (05:54):
Well?
Speaker 5 (05:54):
I joined in nineteen before nineteen hundred and seventy. I
guess longer to live. How many raids did you go on?
Speaker 3 (06:06):
And I guess, well.
Speaker 5 (06:08):
I went to Hopkins and went to his raid, and
at the end of them, then I went to Bennett's raid.
I no befool raid threefold.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
And how many visits would you say you paid to.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
Individual? You don't know.
Speaker 5 (06:23):
I don't know when they'd say come and go. Never
made two or three visits for whatever may down at all.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Raids and visits, he said.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Joe Scott joined the night Riders when he was eighteen
years old in nineteen oh seven. And if you didn't
get the gist of what the old man was saying,
ninety seven years old, he basically declared that he was
a night Rider for life. This organization built a strong
sense of loyalty, which is given when a group takes
meaningful action towards a cause, giving identity as a side benefit.
(06:58):
The Night Riders were known for their masked nighttime horseback
terror raids as the clandestine strong arm of the Tobacco
Farmers Association, known for threatening, whipping, and beating people into membership,
and at times even murder. In the late eighteen hundreds,
(07:18):
tobacco farmers made good money growing tobacco as a cash crop,
but the turn of the twentieth century in America brought
market domination from the loosely regulated tobacco giants who drove
down the price of tobacco, and in nineteen oh four,
the Dark Tobacco District Planners Protection Association Yep, it's a mouthful,
(07:40):
decided to boycott selling to American Tobacco, which was owned
by the Duke Trust. So remember that name, Duke out
of North Carolina. Yeah, like Christian Latner's Duke. And the
farmers who wouldn't join the association and sold to the
Duke Trust through American Tobacco go were punished and terrorized.
(08:03):
Between nineteen oh four and nineteen oh nine. The Night
Writers would not only terrorize individuals, but they'd be responsible
for taking over entire cities and burning the Duke Trust
tobacco barns to the ground, making their actions the most
continuous violent unrest in America in the century after the
Civil War. But the real thing you'll have to sort
(08:26):
through is this. Were they the bad guys or were
they a needed revolt from the people to smash a
monstrous corporate monopoly. That's what we're here to decide. But
to understand the Night Riders, we first have to understand
tobacco in the region of the country that is to
(08:46):
this day called the Black Patch of Kentucky and Tennessee,
which grows the finest dark fired tobacco in the world.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
It's like wine making in Germany and France. It takes
generations to learn it and to refine it. You can
go out on the front porch sometimes this time of
year and smell it drifting in. But basically one of
the reasons this is the best place in the world
real guard fire to bake and to cure it is
we have all this hickory in West Tennessee and West
(09:19):
Kentucky is cured, but hickory wood strip the hickory wood
to cut it, slats of it have the barns that
are vented, and you go in and you basically dig trenches.
This is the way that he used to do it. Now,
my dad, my grand my dad, my grandfather. He dig
trenches in the barn floor. You fill it up with
(09:40):
the hickory wood, you set afire, and you smother as saudust,
and then it comes up to the tobacco, which is
house goes out and it prevents this special cure to it,
and it comes in order. You'll hear that term coming
in order. And coming in order means that you wait
until it's cured out long enough and there's been enough
(10:03):
rain and there's moistre in there. It's malleable. Otherwise, if
you take it down too earlier, just crumble up the dusk. Here.
You take it down when it comes in order and amountable,
so you can strip it off the stalk and pack
it without it breaking the piece.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Coming into order, that's an interesting descriptor for a plant
known for cheap fleeting pleasure that would cause more chaos
and death than potentially any plant in history. What they
call dark fired tobacco starts with growing dark tobacco, which
is a cultivated variety of the tobacco plant cured under
(10:39):
hickory smoke to give it a unique flavor. The Black
Patch region of southwest Kentucky and northwest Tennessee covers thirty
counties and is the best place in the world to
grow it. Dark fired tobacco is typically used in chewing tobacco,
but they also use the dark leaves to wrap cigars
and to make some pipe tobacco and burley tobacco. A
(11:02):
different cults of art is used for cigarettes. Did you
know that tobacco is a completely American thing. It's native
to North and South America and used by indigenous people
here since time immemorial. The plant belongs to the genus Nicotinia,
so all the ancient pipes found in other parts of
the world, those guys were smoking something else. But apparently
(11:27):
it was one of the first things that Europeans picked
up from the native people, because by the mid fifteen hundreds,
really not that long after the first Europeans got here,
there was enough dark leaf tobacco being exported that it
became a global craze. In sixteen oh four, King James,
the first not Lebron of the Lakers, but shout out
(11:50):
to Arkansas's Austin Reeves. King James declared, quote, tobacco was
a nasty weed right from hell they bought the sea.
It fouls the mouth and soils the clothes and makes
a chimney of the nose. Apparently, like emin m, he
liked to rhyme the truth. But by sixteen sixty four,
(12:11):
the colonies were exporting twenty four million pounds of tobacco
per year. And this brings up a timely point. Boys,
I hope you don't think that any of the various
ways someone might soak tobacco's voodoo into their bloodstream gets
the Juju newcom or Beargary stamp of approval, because it doesn't.
(12:32):
But in full disclosure, as a young fool, I dip
some snuff behind Juju's back. But when I was nineteen,
I believe that I heard the voice of God himself
tell me to quit. I'm not joking, and so I did. Sorry, Juju,
but tobacco is an interesting part of our history and
(12:52):
of society today. But back to the hard hitting history.
Here's why it became so important to these poor a
Mayamerican farmers. This is doctor Lloyd Murdoch of Princeton Kentucky.
He has a PhD in agronomy soils and happens to
be tobacco expert. Well.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
Kentucky is probably the second largest tobacco state in the
United States, and it's very traditional and it's very very
important to Kentucky and has been. It was the best
crop that one could have as far as when you
were subsistence farming. You had your your hog that you
killed every year, and you had your milk, and you
(13:35):
had the beef but in your chickens, and so you
could subsist, you know, and you didn't make much money.
You'd settle hay or something like that, and maybe you
would sell milk, you know, in town or to somebody
and get the cream off, but you didn't make much money.
And tobacco you could sell it and you could make
some money. So it was the thing that's that sustained
(13:58):
you as far as having something subsistence, and that was
extremely important to tell a person in different people at
that time. And if they didn't have that, you know,
you have trouble by the car, you know, they have
trouble any any of the things that would take you
up one step in society. You know. It wasn't there.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Of course, dark fired tobacco, that was the cash crop.
But you had mostly subsistence farmers that raised what they ate,
raised a lot of something extent what they wore, all
this on the farm. But they needed cash, need cash
pay for the farm, need cashing buy groceries. They didn't raise.
They had any cash to clothe the children, and need
(14:40):
cash to buy mama new calico dress for Easter. They
need cash by plow points. They need cash to maintain
their farming operation. How they're gonna make it, They're gonna
go tobacco.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Here's Bill Cunningham getting an answer of how important tobacco
was in the early nineteen hundreds, straight from the horse's mouth,
mister Joe Scott. Sometimes the recording is a little hard
to understand, but just bear with him.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
The back, of course was your only cash crop.
Speaker 5 (15:27):
Was five o'bacca cross was a name call on the
clock might as shall I say?
Speaker 1 (15:31):
And if you didn't make any money on every.
Speaker 5 (15:33):
Body couldn't have a hole, you know that trumpers couldn't
have And the sure covers said it was a little
hell holes on the place in art.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
So you didn't make it.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
The back you almost literally starved that if you.
Speaker 5 (15:46):
Couldn't, you couldn't.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
You couldn't you could get a job an it wore.
Speaker 5 (15:49):
If you didn't, if you didn't have a crop with
what did you did? Work for three to five cents
on days maybe something like that. Now you didn't get
nothing to to work.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
He said the going rate for manual labor was twenty
five cents a day, and a crop of tobacco would
yield a lot more than that.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
We'll learn exactly how much.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Doctor Murdoch said something interesting too, that tobacco allowed people
to live quote above subsistence. And this is an important idea.
It seems to be an inalienable human right to subsist,
to just make it, but to get more than you
need to simply survive. That's a plan filled that makes
(16:30):
humans get crazy, greedy, ambitious, create divisions and start wars.
Having more than just enough isn't just an American dream.
It's the global dream. It's the ancient dream that pushed
men across continents, mountain ranges, and oceans in search of riches.
It's what makes people strategize and work hard, and some
(16:51):
to steal and kill, like winemakers that have vineyard in Sicily.
This region of Kentucky and Tennessee built a culture around tobacco,
and in the black patch, the way for the common
man to get ahead was by growing that dark fire tobacco.
So how do you grow it?
Speaker 1 (17:11):
The Baca farmers started in February. He would take his
tobacco seed and he'd find a nice place on the
hill that gets a lot of sun. And they go
out there and they clear the bacca bitch. I've heard
my dad say many times. You know, in February we
always get a big warm spell, perfect time to make
(17:32):
our tobacco bitch.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
So what they would do would they would kind of
work the ground a little bit and smooth it out
in the oh late winter, put a lot of wood
on top of that, set of the fire. And when
you set it a fire, then you raise the temperature
in the top several inches, say let's just say maybe
three to four inches enough that you would all the
(17:58):
seeds that were a live would perish.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
And they go out and clear the baca bed to
make it real fine, and then they get the bacco
seed and the planet the bca seeds very very small.
In fact, you can get it. You'd buy it you
could buy in pouches, you know, and almostly whole cup
would be in a little pouch. It's so fine, and
you throw it out and then you cover it with
a canvas protect you from the cold. Weather's gonna go.
(18:25):
And it grows and it grows tobacco plants. And when
the weather warms up and the plants come into being
about this high, you go out and draw your plants,
transform the field and shut them out, and then hope, hope,
for the best. And then it grows and you cultivate
it and you hold it out.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
So tobacco plants have to be started in a protected
seed bed, and once they grow to four to six inches,
they're dug up by hand and replanted in the main
tobacco field.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
I read an article one time. It would take like
nine hundred hours or one acre. So you had fairly
good sized families. The kids started working in tobacco when
they were fairly young. You didn't have herbicides, you didn't
have insecticides, you didn't have anything like that that was
later on used. Didn't make tobacco farming much easier. So
(19:18):
you had to walk the fields and look to see
if there are any insects there. And if they were
insects there, you had a little can that you threw
it into and it had some little poison stuff in it.
It would kill those insects. And so consequently you would
take and you would go down the road, she'd pull
the weeds out.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Used to be you would you sucker it. I think
they got defoliates now that sucker. The sucker comes like
if you grow a garden with tomatoes, you sucker your domatoes. Yeah,
same thing with the bat and then topping it when
it goes late in the summer. He has a big bloom.
Blooms on any plant. Make know your trees whatever. It
sucks the energy out of the plant. Same way to
(19:59):
bloom on off with dibico plant. He's really beautiful. I
grow tobacca here sometime and so then you top it.
And it's very very labor intenship. That's why my grandfather,
my dad would want to grow four or five acres
and you had to depend on family to grow it.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
So it was just continuous. It was the thing that
they needed to take him up Annchal society. But it
demanded a lot and it was a sacrifice to grow it.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
It's clear to see that this was more than a
meaningful crop to these poor dirt farmers, but it was
also important to some other people, especially the Duke family
of North Carolina, and specifically James Buck Duke, who was
a major player in this story.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Though he never was physically involved.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
With James B. Duke, he grew up there three Bole
with James, Rody and Ben. They grew up poor much
in Durham area of North Carolina. James was born like
eighteen fifty seven, he was old enough to remember, so
he grew up pretty poor. But then after the Civil
War tobacco. Up to that time tobacco was pretty much
(21:16):
his hand roll, the invention of the cigarette maker and
all this. And after the Civil War tobacco ust started
moving north because during the Civil War there's a lot
of economic intercourse between the two. They have a truce
and a trade coffee for tobacco and cigarette smoking. Cigarette
only came about. You won't see you don't see Civil
(21:40):
War movies or Civil War general therap smoking a cigarette
like you do. In World War Two, it didn't have it,
but cigarette's consumption started to go up.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
According to Bill Cunningham's book on Bended knees about this night, writer,
Tobacco War, which is where I learned all of this stuff.
Civil War expanded tobacco use in America when Yankee soldiers
started using Southern tobacco. But by eighteen sixty nine there
were less than two million cigarettes being manufactured and sold
(22:11):
in America. Two million, But by eighteen ninety there were
two point one billion, with the b cigarettes made in America,
and this became the heyday of American tobacco. Imagine the
draw to smoking or chewing if there was almost no
knowledge of the health risks, and combine that with the
radically addictive nicotine, and as we're about to see, the
(22:35):
strong arm of a new philosophy of capitalism and marketing,
America blew up into a tobacco nation. In eighteen ninety,
the state of Kentucky alone produced two hundred and twenty
one million pounds, making it the leading tobacco producer in
the country. Today, the leading state is North Carolina. But
just after the Civil War, the Duke Trust Company started
(22:59):
by the father Washington Duke, who when he started was
a single mule tobacco farmer, but his new company was
rapidly growing in the global tobacco trade. But in eighteen
eighty nine, the middle son, James Buck Duke, started the
American Tobacco Company, which was the beginning of an empire,
(23:20):
but still part of this Duke.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Trust, and the business took off and Washington. Duke and
the three boys were devout Methodists, but James B. Duke
wasn't as devout, and he was more of a capitalist.
He saw the money making and he just took it
from there, and the cigarette making machine really opened it up.
(23:42):
James Buck Duke became the tycoon in Washington. Before he died,
he was already feeling pain. So maybe we made it
too big. Maybe some of the baco farmers were suffering.
So he was kind of a conscience when he died.
You know, he was kind of unbridled James B.
Speaker 6 (24:00):
That just.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
It's inborn. I'm convinced a successful entrepreneur's a lot of
us DNA. Well, he's still got his money floating around today.
I don't think James Duke was ever of the corrupt
tycoon you see in movies. I don't think he ever
potentially really, I think I never see any He was
(24:25):
Ruth's and standpoint that he would buy out and didn't
think too much about the impact.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
James Buck Duke may not have been overtly corrupt, but
showed an insatiable desire for money, power, and success in
a time in America when this was becoming something attainable.
He was in his early twenties when he started working
for the business, and at age thirty two he started
this American tobacco company.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
It was said that he.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Believed sleep and leisure were the enemies of man. He
was charismatic, cunning, and a business wizard. According to Bill Cunningham,
this company would be the first to give free samples,
use billboard advertising, and use personal endorsements of celebrities and
athletes to promote their product. In many ways, America learned
(25:15):
full throttle capitalism from tobacco companies, but with the rise
of the Duke Trust, tobacco Empire, and even monopoly, tobacco
farmers got less and less for their crops. Here's Josh
Spilmaker asking doctor Murdoch a question.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Get ready for some math.
Speaker 6 (25:36):
What would be a typical yield for an acre of tobacco?
Speaker 4 (25:40):
Probably about four thousand pounds somewhere along four.
Speaker 6 (25:43):
Thousand pounds, So quick, math, do you have any idea
of what the going rate would have been kind of
before the Duke Trust kind of started pushing prices down.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
Probably before they started pushing prices down, it was probably
seven eight nine cents a pound.
Speaker 6 (26:00):
Okay, so you have three hundred and fifty to four hundred
dollars per acre, which would have been pretty substantial.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
That's a lot of money. Then you know, I got
to work all day for a dollar.
Speaker 6 (26:10):
Right, but the I think the cost to produce was
about six cents is what that's probably right. Yeah, So
you know they're making anywhere from two to four cents
per pound per acre, which was significant.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
To summarize that, in the late eighteen hundreds, a farmer
was making one hundred and twenty dollars profit per acre
on tobacco, and the average farmer was only growing about
two acres. But that's two hundred and forty dollars a year,
So nine hundred man hours per acre works out to
an hourly rate of thirteen cents per hour. Another way
(26:48):
to look at this is if a family as a
whole could raise two acres and the father could work
making a dollar a day, elsewhere, a family could almost
double their yearly income of raising two acres of tobacco.
But that was before the Duke's American Tobacco Empire showed up,
(27:08):
because after that the prices would plummet, even down to
farmers producing tobacco at a deficit, sometime only making two
to three cents per pound.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
This destroyed the farmer's way of life.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
And I bet you see that this is building into
a story that got some people really upset.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
But so it was a cash crop and if anything
happened with their cash crop, they really put a oral hurt.
So what happened when you monopolize the buyer then come
and take, give you a take or leave it price?
And it was costing the tobacco farmers six cents a
pound to row tobacco, and they were being off three
(27:51):
cents a pound. So they began to struggle and getting angry.
And this being a cash crop, and that itself to
this antamossi of anger between farmers because if the farmer
who didn't go along with the association sold his tobacco
to the trust because they had up the price with him,
(28:11):
but there wasn't the others, then they they Mama got
the calico dressed, their kids had the good shoes for school,
and it's caused a lot of resentment. This is when
I got so violent tobacco. Felix show and out of
Robertson County, Tennessee. He was a big plantation on it.
There grew a lot of tobacco. He organized them and said,
(28:34):
list former association. He was the brains, the Moses of
the black patch, that's what he's called. He was the brains.
So they held a meeting over in Guthrie, Kentucky, in
September nineteen oh fourth. See what can we do? And
he said, we can form association. If they monopolized the buying,
wood monopolize the selling, we'll establish warehouses and sell or
(28:54):
to buy the tobacco up to the prices go up.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
They were going to monopolize the selling to cause tobacco
prices to go up. But what I haven't told you
is that the Duke Trust started paying more money to
buyers who weren't members of the Tobacco Association. Did you
hear that they penalized the association members And this became
a massive point of division.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
It was a good concept, but when the American Buyer
Company kind of countered by raising it would go out
and try to lure the farmers not into buying it
and giving them a little bit more. So a lot
of indefendant farmers didn't buy into it and the resentment,
and so a year later in nineteen o five when
they met, the numbers went up from five thousand farmers
(29:47):
gathered to ten thousand, and they were getting angry.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
So the original Dark Tobacco Planners Protection Association meeting, led
by Felix Ewing this Moses of the Black Patch, had
five thousand farmers show up in support to join that
first year, but a year later ten thousand showed.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Up and joined.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
The movement against the tobacco Giant was gaining momentum.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
So about two weeks after that meeting, they had a
little meeting at a little Stainback schoolhouse and a group
of about thirty farmers got together there and started talking
about what we're going to do about these independent farmers,
and they came out with the Stainback resolution was basically,
so we're gonna go visit these people at night because
they worked during the day, and we're gonna go visit
(30:34):
with them and see if we can't talk them into joining.
And a lot of implications there and take whatever, do
whatever it takes to get them to join. So when
that happened, it just throw fuel on the fire. They
go at night. Farmers are independent cousts anyway. You know,
you don't tell me what to do. And so you
(30:55):
had that clag You had this navally feeling where we
want to get to get and help each other. And
then you had the other independent feeling, You're not gonna
tell me what I'm gonna do. So founce broke out,
you spread like wildfire.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
This Steinbeck resolution branded the Duke Trust as a criminal organization.
So the Tobacco Association's mission was fighting this corporate criminal.
This was a righteous mission. It's interesting but this original
group of men in nineteen oh five sent to convince
the Independence to join the Association weren't supposed to be violent,
(31:35):
and they were actually called possum hunters. You should remember
that because that's likely gonna be on a bear grease
render quiz. But these possum hunters, who did all their
work at night, turned into the night writers, which was
a name that would stick. And this produced a real
conundrum inside this region, a real division, and that's what
(31:57):
this story's about. The majority of tobacco farmers and the
black patch, as much as seventy percent became members of
the association, and interestingly included a very high number of
African American tobacco farmers, many of which were sharecroppers.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
But thirty percent of tobacco farmers, for whatever reason, rejected
the selling boycott and were rewarded by American tobacco. The
people who sold to them were seen as traders and
sellouts and ironically were labeled as hillbillies.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
The people who sold to the trust were known in
Kentucky and Tennessee as hillbillies. Even old Joe Scott still
called them hillbillies in the nineteen eighties. This is a
good place to slow down for a minute and think
about what you would do.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
Here's doctor Murdoch.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
We talked about how impoor I was and so so
we're just talking about ourselves being putting ourselves in that time.
You know, my neighbor, we all have to get together
and get this price up. You know, we've got to
do something. And so we decide. Most of the people
come together and they volunteer and they say, let's let's
(33:20):
do it. And so we've got a big majority, and
we feel like we have almost everybody, and so if
we don't do this, we can't we can't do it.
You know, we're going to be down to nothing as
far as living and you know close for kids too,
that's important. And so but these people aren't cooperating, you know,
so you plead with them to do this, and if
(33:43):
just a few do it and cooperate with the with
the trust, you're okay. But you've have almost everybody and
they refuse to do it, and so you talk to
them and well, maybe they just need to be moreminded,
and so you take that next step if all what
I'm trying to say, And then that requires another step
(34:03):
because they become defiant also against your in your your position,
and so all of a sudden, it's kind of like
a war. You know, you find yourself in something that
you didn't ever expect to be when you stuck it
to them here and how far do you go? And
what do you do? And so who was it faulled?
(34:26):
What was the injustice? You know, in which ones had it?
And it becomes very concuism.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
It became very confusing.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
If you joined the association, you're basically hurting your family's
immediate financial future for a hope that the plan would
work and the monopolized selling would drive the prices back up.
But on the hillbilly side, those who sold to the trust,
maybe they thought it wasn't going to work at all.
Maybe it was futile to stand up against a giant,
(34:56):
and you could sell your crop at a higher price today.
Take care of your family, which was your primary obligation.
Are you more committed to your family or are you
more committed to your community?
Speaker 3 (35:09):
What would you do? Who were the bad guys?
Speaker 4 (35:13):
But I can see I can understand one of the
person that had ten kids and was just making barely
a living, just subsistence and didn't want to send their
kids to school with no shoes or clothes with holes
in them or something like that. I can understand why
that would be really important to them and why they
might take that next step, you know, and go a
(35:36):
little bit further than they probably should have. But then
the other people, you know, he's on the other side,
They were down there with what these people were talking
about that took this stand. But now they had an
opportunity to sell because the trust was trying to break
the Tobacco Association. So I think I'll do that because
(35:57):
you know they need shoes, they need you can understand
why they might want to do it, and so it's
a difficult, difficult thing. I think that there was a
lot of consternation. I think there was a lot of
people that didn't sleep at night because they were wondering
if they were right or wrong, or if they took
the wrong step, and that they felt because you're you're
(36:19):
harming your neighbor, the guy that next door that you
know you've barred the tractor from, or you know he
came over and he got your wagon for a while,
and that's hard.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
That is hard. Would you have joined the association?
Speaker 2 (36:36):
And if you're tempted to jump into quickly into whichever
side you think was righteous, it might help to hear
a story from someone who was there. Let's listen to
what The Last Living Night writer Joe Scott said when
he was asked why he joined.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
This might put it into perspective.
Speaker 4 (36:56):
Then I didn't.
Speaker 5 (36:57):
I didn't go into it about my obtainion. Nineteen seven.
Speaker 7 (37:01):
Let's that's that's year. That's year I might have this
nineteen seven.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Why did you join? Why did I joy.
Speaker 5 (37:09):
I stuck a gun my face and asked, God, when
you go?
Speaker 4 (37:13):
Huh? I didn't want to.
Speaker 6 (37:15):
I didn't want to where long will?
Speaker 5 (37:17):
The old man said this, you better be there when
they came and told you that.
Speaker 4 (37:24):
You made a man.
Speaker 5 (37:25):
Why you lad another man come here daytime and looked
at and told you that he told the night we'd
have a mask on.
Speaker 6 (37:31):
And he said, you don't know who.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
You told him?
Speaker 5 (37:34):
What there is from Trade County, Lyon County. Hurry from them.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
So so they threatened you, and that's why you enjoyed.
Speaker 7 (37:42):
A lot of them had the certain lot of them
didn't have to.
Speaker 5 (37:45):
But I told her, I said, I said.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
I'm a young fella. I ain't got nothing. I don't
need to go.
Speaker 5 (37:50):
Yeh if you could go when we need we need
to know, we need more men.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
He said, they came at night with masks on and
threatened him, forcing him to join. He was just eighteen
years old, and he did what most men in the
black patch did. You See, it wasn't just tobacco farmers
that joined, but people from all walks of the community.
Because a cash crop affects everybody, store owners, doctors, cities
(38:18):
collecting taxes. This wasn't just about farmers. It's about farming communities.
And this is where it makes sense to introduce an unsuspecting, charismatic,
militant leader and potential villain, the medical doctor David Amos.
He would become a key player in this story that
delivered a deep sense of mission to the night Writers
(38:42):
and would become the arch nemesis of James buck Duke.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
And then David AMers, a little country doctor or gob
service these people. He knew their misery, he knew their area,
and he have I don't know what we're having to it.
I was able to go through doctor Amos's account book
and a lot of fields weren't not paid, and a
lot of them paid with cams chickens. This that he
(39:09):
was kind of a frustrated army general. He grew up.
He think he was born in nine fifty seven. He
grew up here. This is something were going to take
this on. Joined the association, and I'm convinced. Although I
never failed any hard conference that was in direct conference
with Felix Hue and photixs Hoan always kept the nut
writers you know, like this. But I think the night
(39:33):
Rider activity, David Amis activity was probably at least got
tested approval from the association, and AA became the militant
arm and organized started doing their visits on farmers and
reading Princeton and warehouses and trying to make a difference.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
So the Night Writer's connection to the Dark Tobacco Planners
Protection Association wasn't official. Wasn't official, but there was little
doubt who these night Riders worked for. These guys were
always masked and no one really knew who they were.
But doctor Amos was an unlikely villain, and to most
people in Kentucky even today, he's not a villain at all.
(40:16):
He was born in eighteen fifty seven in Cobb, Kentucky.
His father was a compassionate, well respected doctor known for
treating the recently emancipated black patients without charge. David Amos
attended a military high school, but in eighteen eighty, at
the age of twenty three, he became a doctor.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
Following the footsteps of his father.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
Long before being a doctor was financially lucrative, the profession
was primarily connected to service. His piercing blue eyes and
a trendy handlebar mustache gave him some charm, and he
had charisma to boot. He lived horses, pistol, shooting, the military,
and service to his country community in Cobb. He didn't
(40:58):
even grow tobacco, but he cared for There are a
lot of people who did so. Around nineteen oh five,
doctor David Amos became the unofficial, under the radar, militant
minded leader commanding a branch of the Tobacco Association that
would become known as the Night Writers. He was a
night writer by night and country doctor by day. This
(41:21):
is the same group that old Joe Scott eighty years
later still pledged his allegiance to, and the night Writer's
sole job was to convince people to join the association
and punish those who didn't. I wonder if Joe Scott
ever met doctor Amosamus. What kind of fell about doctor Amos.
Speaker 5 (41:42):
I don't know much about dog famers. I met him
with one time, but no, dawg famous was a now
he is a smart man. Now he hadn't a had
a lot of since he did. He had Hawkins just
asking me to take this thing here. He's arche checkerboard and.
Speaker 7 (42:01):
Every man that he had a He had his men, ever.
Speaker 5 (42:05):
Fella squads, ever fella had a captain.
Speaker 4 (42:08):
He had so many men you.
Speaker 7 (42:09):
Undertown, however one of them them them them places are numbered,
you say, the post office, telephone office, has ever business
place where it was telephone and telephone.
Speaker 5 (42:21):
And he had all that number though, and here he
gave a man. Uh, he had he had, he had
a captain, so many men, and he gave him a
place one of these.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
In the next episode we're going to get into the
specifics of what the Night Writers actually did, the beatings
and the organized city raids. But from Joe's description you
see that this organization was militant and at times would
take over entire cities with five hundred well organized men
on horseback at the command of the generous Country Doctor,
(42:53):
often with the horses hoofs wrapped with burlap sacks to
make their approach quiet. That's some gangsters, but there was
something much bigger at work on a national scale, something
bigger than tobacco. Mister Cunning anim will now unveil a
larger story happening in America.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
James Duke kind of he represented the capital interest of
this country, and whereas David am was humble, Country Doctor
represented the labor and this struggle of the Night Writers.
It was labor versus capital, and this is going on
all over the country. This was just a little microcosm
(43:34):
of the labor movement in the railroad industry, in mining,
in the factories. It was that time of our country
when these clash between the labor and capital was becoming violent,
hitting head on, and you had to develop the origins
the Labor Union, the night Writers and the Association especially
were basically the Gurian Union members. So each one of
(43:57):
them led this. But that's been the both of this country, right,
capitalism labor. But it's always been a tension between the two.
And it could have very well, like during the Depression,
it could have very well gone south like it did
in Russia, like it did in a lot of other
countries where the Toutarian government took over.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
It's easy to take for granted what has happened in history,
not really thinking much about what could have happened. Mister
Cunningham is saying that this same labor versus capital struggle
happened in other countries and it turned out way different,
way worse. I want to close this first episode with
(44:38):
an interesting clip from Joe Scott when he was asked
if he thought what he did was meaningful.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
Not writers did any good.
Speaker 5 (44:50):
Then this buncle wouldn't have been where it is today's.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
So I asked that.
Speaker 5 (44:55):
They said, well, would you do that again? This is
all help when I says close everything he was.
Speaker 4 (45:00):
So I've said on that in my country and the.
Speaker 5 (45:03):
Poor people that I heard I was doing all, I
do it again, and I do it how Wally I
feel about. I don't believe home on anybody.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
In a way.
Speaker 7 (45:15):
There's just they.
Speaker 5 (45:16):
Didn't They didn't need something. This trust company didn't need
all his money. And then starving the poor folks to death.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
You know, he said that trust company didn't need all
that money and to starve them poor folks to death,
that's what he said.
Speaker 3 (45:31):
And yes he would do it again.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
In the next episode, we're going to look exactly at
what they did and its effect. And here's a question
I'd like you to answer right now, and it's this.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
Do you think the.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Tobacco Association's boycotted selling worked? Joe Scott sure thought it did.
The stories of the common man fighting against a corporate
giant are intriguing because they're the stories that still dominate
and divide the American consciousness even today. The world of
the hunter Gatherer didn't have to consider stuff like this.
(46:05):
He was just too busy trying to subsist. This is
a product of extreme prosperity, which overall we'd have to
say is a really good thing, but it brings many
cancerous pitfalls. After you hear what the Association and the
night Writers did, you'll be able to decide who were
the good guys and bad guys. And actually we'll get
(46:27):
a judicial decision that reflected the temperature of these people,
and it might surprise you the conclusion they came to.
There's one more hot episode about these dang night Riders
coming up, and I can't thank you enough for listening
to Bear Grease and Brent's This Country Life podcast. Our
render schedule is slightly different right now because we did
(46:49):
a render with CrossFit Master Jedi and Hunter Rich Froning,
and that's going to come out next week, and then
the second night Rider episode will come out, and then
we're going to have a render where we discuss all
this night Rider stuff. So between now and then, the
wild Place is wild, and that's where the Bears live.
Host
Clay Newcomb
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