Capital is a killer. The tobacco companies not only sell a highly addictive product guaranteed to harm its user, they use their monopoly to super-exploit growers and workers.

‘Exploitation of Carolina Tobacco Farmers’ by Art Shields from New Leader. Vol. 7 No. 39. September 15, 1928.

Collusive Price Fixing Robs Southern Growers While Politicians Discuss Rum and Religion

ASHEVILLE, N.C. At the mercy the “Big Five” tobacco companies, the farmers of the bright leaf cigarette belt of North and South Carolina and a portion of Virginia are bringing their crop to the warehouses at prices ranging from 12 to 16 cents a pound, as compared with an average of 28 cents last year.

It is a desperate prospect for the tens of thousands of growers who depend on the proceeds of this money crop for their groceries, clothes and the school books of their children.

In answer to the outcry of the farmers the Eastern Carolina Chamber of Commerce, with headquarters in Raleigh, is advising them to burn 30,000,000 pounds of the weed, to raise the prices of the rest. Overproduction is the trouble, says the business association. But overproduction is only part of the trouble. The farmers’ chief grievance is against the buyers of the big companies who fix his prices by collusion.

Neither the Republican nor Democratic platforms offer any relief from this conspiratorial price fixing by the “Big Five.” Neither party hints at using the Sherman Anti-Trust Law nor any other federal statute against the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., American Tobacco, Liggett & Myers, P. Lorillard and the British-American Tobacco Co., who secretly agree as to what they shall pay the growers at the farcical warehouse auctions.

This conspiracy in restraint of the farmer’s trade has again and again been exposed, but the Department of Justice takes no action. The tobacco trust was supposedly dissolved in 1911 under a plan proposed to the Supreme Court by James Buchanan Duke, head of the trust and chief culprit under the law. But this dissolution does not prevent the component tobacco companies from uniting against the leaf growers as the beef companies unite against the cattle raisers.

Faint hopes of a move against the combine arose last month when Commissioner Talmadge of the Federal Trade Commission accused the buyers of collusive price fixing. Talmadge suggested an investigation. At once Georgia chambers of commerce passed resolutions that the proposal be shelved, as bad for business. Farmers are pessimistic of any action. North Carolina farmers held several tumultuous protest meetings last fall. The price fixers were fervently denounced at a mass meeting of 4,000 growers in Danbury and soon after a meeting nearly as large was held in Winston Salem to which the big companies were invited to defend their action. The big companies ignored the challenge and nothing came of it.

Obviously this collusive price fixing is not the only trouble of the farmer. He is a prey to other evils inherent in business economics. But it is an evil he is most conscious of, and which may lead again to organization.

The tobacco growers have been unorganized since the break up of the Tri-State Tobacco Co-operative several years ago. In debt for food and fertilizer, the individual grower dumps his crop on the market for what he can get, knowing he is being robbed but helpless to do anything about it under the circumstances. Meanwhile as the season gets colder and the farmer is facing a winter of destitution the politicians who are stumping the rural areas are evading the tobacco issue and making prohibition the chief controversy in the campaign, with religion playing it a close second.

New Leader was the most important Socialist Party-aligned paper from much of the 1920s and 1930s. Begun in 1924 after the S.P. created the Conference for Progressive Political Action, it was edited by James Oneal. With Oneal, and William M. Feigenbaum as manager, the paper hosted such historic Party figures as Debs, Abraham Cahan, Lena Morrow Lewis, Isaac Hourwich, John Work, Algernon Lee, Morris Hillquit, and new-comers like Norman Thomas. Published weekly in New York City, the paper followed Oneal’s constructivist Marxism and political anti-Communism. The paper would move to the right in the mid 30s and become the voice of the ‘Old Guard’ of the S.P. After Oneal retired in 1940, the paper became a liberal anti-communist paper under editor Sol Levitas. However, in the 1920s and for much of the 1930s the paper contained a gold mine of information about the Party, its activities, and most importantly for labor historians, its insiders coverage of the union movement in a crucial period.

PDF of full issue: New Leader was the most important Socialist Party-aligned paper from much of the 1920s and 1930s. Begun in 1924 after the S.P. created the Conference for Progressive Political Action, it was edited by James Oneal. With Oneal, and William M. Feigenbaum as manager, the paper hosted such historic Party figures as Debs, Abraham Cahan, Lena Morrow Lewis, Isaac Hourwich, John Work, Algernon Lee, Morris Hillquit, and new-comers like Norman Thomas. Published weekly in New York City, the paper followed Oneal’s constructivist Marxism and political anti-Communism. The paper would move to the right in the mid 30s and become the voice of the ‘Old Guard’ of the S.P. After Oneal retired in 1940, the paper became a liberal anti-communist paper under editor Sol Levitas. However, in the 1920s and for much of the 1930s the paper contained a gold mine of information about the Party, its activities, and most importantly for labor historians, its insiders coverage of the union movement in a crucial period.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-leader/1928/v07n39-sep-15-1928-NL.pdf