Christopher Newman Midwest Political Science Association 2004
Elgin Community College Dark Tobacco Patch War—Revolution Analysis
5
control of the Dark Leaf tobacco crop, but observers from the Burley Tobacco
Association’s vantage acknowledged that the result was secured by the violence of the
Night Riders rather than any other cause.
25
The Night Riders protected themselves from official interference by inducting
into membership the governmental elite of the affected Dark Patch counties
26
to the point
of being “…in practically entire control of the legal machinery—the courts and officers
of the counties and judicial districts; and these county and district governments…were
practically at that time independent of the State’s Executive.”
27
It was not until attorneys
for some victims injured by the Night Riders hit on the tactic of moving plaintiffs out of
Kentucky to establish residency and qualify for suit in federal courts that this monopoly
was broken and alleged Night Riders could be subject to judicial process.
28
The prices received by Association members and nonmembers permit a clear
measurement of the economic impact of the Trust, Association and Night Riders. This
permits comparison of producers’ economic condition before and after the agreement of
the American Tobacco Company and Regie, as well as before and after activity of the
Night Riders, This is in line with Gurr’s suggestion that aspects of his posited Relative
Deprivation concept can be measured through “indicators of economic activity.”
29
The
Association managed increases from four (or three or two, in some cases) cents per
pound in 1904 to seven and one-eighth cents per pound in 1906.
30
With Night Rider
activity increasing in 1906, 1907 and 1908, prices went to eight and four-fifths cents a
25
Blue-Grass Co-operation 463.
26
On Bended Knees 65.
27
Black Patch War 22.
28
Tobacco Night Riders 174-75.
29
Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970)
[hereinafter “Why Men Rebel”] 56.
30
Tobacco Night Riders 35.
Convention