AN ATROCIOUS INDUSTRIAL WAR.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9052, 30 March 1908, Page 4

AN ATROCIOUS INDUSTRIAL WAR.

From time to time for many months reports of atrocities in connection with the tobacco war in Kentucky have been reported in our cable messages, and in our to-day's cables it is recorded that Kentucky "nightriders" have just destroyed a tobacco warehouse in Virginia valued at £IOO,OOO. The "war" has been proceeding more or less continuously since 1904, and is the outcome of the establishment of tobacco monpolies which had brought the rates down to starvation figures. A Planters' Protective Association was formed to wage war upon the monopolies. It was in fact a selling trust to defeat the aims of the buying trusts. The majority of the growers, however, failed to fall into line with the movement, and out of this fact originated the "night-riders." The object of this Organisation is to compel the '' gro.wers outside the Planters' Association to come ip, and the methods adapted to this end are atrocious. They include the firing of the homesteads of the recalcitrants, flogging planters who stand out, destruction of crops, blowing up threshing machines, burning factories and barns, killing and maiming stock, holding up trains suspected to be conveying Trust tobacco buyers, cutting telephone wires, and stopping short only at cold-blooded murder. Of the many cases brought before the courts only two convictions had resulted up to January last. The Planters' Association has, however, by its efforts succeeded in putting up the price of tobacco from less than four dollars per 1001b to a fraction above nine dollars, and it is said that whole communities have by its operations been rescued from debt and despair.