THE TOBACCO WAR

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9175, 26 August 1908, Page 5

THE TOBACCO WAR

CABLE NEWS.

United Press Association—Bv Electric Telegraph Copyright.

NIGHT RAIDERS' CAMPAIGN

TOBACCO TRUSTS DECISION

KENTUCKY TO BE FORSAKEN

Reeeived August 5, 8.30 a.m. NEW YORK, August 24

Owing to the "Night raiders' " campaign, the American Tobacco Trust announces that its buyers will henceforth forsake Kentucky and transact business from Cincinnati. It intends to concentrate its supplies in Ohio.

A condition of affairs amounting to terrorism has resulted in the tobacco growing districts of Kentucky from the tactics adopted by those growers who are hostile to the methods of the tobacco trust. Such planters as have acquiesced in the imposition of the tobacco tax have been subjected to nocturnal raids, and their property has been practically laid waste. In December last five hundred masked night raiders took possession of the town of Hopkinsville, burned three tobacco warehouses, and destroyed property valued at £40,000. They shot one man, and so injured another that he subsequently died from his wounds. After holding the town in a state of terror for nearly an hour, the raiders disappeared without losing a man or disclosing their identity. A cablegram published on March 18th last stated that in a few months night raiders destroyed ten million pounds'worth of the property of those planters who had acquiesced in the imposition of the tax. On March 27th the raiders dest rojed a tobacco warehouse at Connigton, Virginia, valued at £IOO,OOO.