The Politics of Despair (eBook)

Power and Resistance in the Tobacco Wars

Tracy Campbell (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021
240 Seiten
The University Press of Kentucky (Verlag)
978-0-8131-8739-6 (ISBN)

Infos

Shortly after 1900, tens of thousands of tobacco growers throughout Kentucky and Tennessee convulsed the region for nearly a decade in a revolt against the monopolistic practices of the American Tobacco Company. Though the revolt known as the Tobacco Wars remains one of the more remarkable insurgencies of rural America, it is also one of the more misunderstood. In this first major account of the uprising in over half a century, Tracy Campbell tells the story of these embattled farmers and casts a provocative new light on the issues that fueled the Tobacco Wars.When tobacco prices fell below the cost of production in the early 1900s, farmers in western Kentucky and Tennessee, faced with desperate economic circumstances, formed cooperatives through which they could pool their crops and withhold tobacco from the market until a satisfactory price was offered. Campbell recounts the organizational underpinnings of the notorious "e;Black Patch War"e; and the forces that drove farmers to seek violent solutions to their economic ills. Campbell then expands the story to the burley region, where a simultaneous movement was under way. In 1908, over thirty thousand burley growers undertook the only successful large-scale agricultural strike in American history. Campbell brings this drama to life and describes the emotional day when the farmers achieved their unprecedented victory over the powerful Tobacco Trust.The Tobacco Wars represented one of the last desperate gasps from the countryside before the onset of "e;agribusiness"e; drove millions of farmers and their families away for good. The Politics of Despair thus stands as a unique reminder of a tradition of protest that has, perhaps, been irretrievably lost. This book will interest not only rural and labor historians and students of the American South but anyone concerned with the profound issues surrounding the decline of rural America.

Autor

Tracy Campbell is professor of history and co-director of the Wendell H. Ford Public Policy Research Center at the University of Kentucky. His numerous books include Short of the Glory: The Fall and Redemption of Edward F. Prichard Jr.; Deliver the Vote: A History of Election Fraud, an American Political Tradition, 17422004; and The Gateway Arch: A Biography.

Inhalt

A Legacy of Peonage
Monopoly Comes to the Tobacco Belt
Organizing the Black Patch
Rumors of War
Night Riders
Organizing the Bluegrass
Farmers on Strike
The Demise of Agrarian Cooperation
The Decline of the Countryside

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 21.11.2021
• Zusatzinfo: 8 b&w halftones, 2 maps, 12 tables
• Verlagsort: Lexington
• Sprache: englisch
• Maße: 140 x 140 mm
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Weitere Fachgebiete ► Land- / Forstwirtschaft / Fischerei
• Schlagworte: agricultural strikes in america • american southern history • american tobacco company monopoly • black patch wars • kentucky tobacco history • night riders history • rural american history • tobacco farmers social history • tobacco farming politics • tobacco industry history • tobacco industry labor history
• ISBN-10: 0-8131-8739-7 / 0813187397
• ISBN-13: 978-0-8131-8739-6 / 9780813187396