Christopher Newman Midwest Political Science Association 2004
Elgin Community College Dark Tobacco Patch War—Revolution Analysis
3
monopoly of buyers with a monopoly of producers.
10
The concept was for farmers to sell
their yields to the Association at a set Association price (initially at 8 cents per pound—
two cents per pound over the costs of production
11
—with the Association to store the
tobacco in its own warehouses and pay the farmers when the Association in turn sold its
holdings.
12
The initial voluntary approach, in which “…initial members begged, cajoled,
and actually prayed with many growers to join,” soon had between 70% to 95%
(percentages varying from county to county within the Dark Patch) of the tobacco
farmers in the Dark Patch signing contracts to deliver their crops only to the
Association.
13
The first year of the Association experiment was unsuccessful. Both nonmember
producers and Association members who disregarded their pledges to the Association
undermined the attempt at meeting the Tobacco Trust on an even economic basis while
seeking individual profit as the trust paid out as much as 10 to 12 cents per pound in an
attempt to destroy the Association.
14
In 1906, for example, nonmembers were selling to
the Trust at ten to twelve cents a pound while Association members were receiving seven
and one-eighth cents.
15
This failure of a strictly voluntary association of tobacco
producers was mirrored in the early 1920s by the Burley [Bright Leaf] Tobacco Growers
Co-operative Association. Facing the same sort of steep decline in the price of Bright
10
John G. Miller, The Black Patch War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina
Press, 1936) [hereinafter “Black Patch War”] 15-16.
11
Tobacco Night Riders 22-23, 126.
12
Planters in the Association 568.
13
Tobacco Night Riders 24.
14
On Bended Knees 51.
15
Tobacco Night Riders 50.
Convention