"He says we've jest got to lay to them manufacterers by a holdin' our terbaccer, and cuttin' out the raisin' o' hit: says them fellers of us that's not a j'inin' the Equity, is jest a stavin' off the good day fer all of us. Mr. Sam Nolan and Mr. Dick Leslie over here, they say thar hain't no good in the Equity, but Mr. Evans, he says the reason they talk that a way is: the buyin' Comp'ny, thenkin' 'em beeg fellers, and influency, give 'em prices away up yonder on their terbaccer, so's they'd talk agin the Equity! Yes, sir!
"The comp'ny could easy do that, Bunch, and not feel hit. Jest thenk o' a gittin' a dollar and a half a pound fer terbaccer! Hain't that what Black Jack sells at, Joey?
"And all them fellers does to the terbaccer is jest to sweeten hit a leetle, and put a leetle liquish in hit, and maybe a leetle opium, so as to set the cravin' fer more on a feller that uses hit!
"And talkin' about hard work, us fellers up here in the Blue Grass ortn't to complain nigh as much as we do about havin' to be in the terbaccer from one year's end to t'other, and jest gittin' a gnat's livin' outen hit! Now down yonder in the Green River country, the Dark Terbaccer country, whar they don't raise nothin' but terbaccer (no leetle corn patches to fall back on fer stock feed and bread, like we've got) hit's wuss off with them fellers than with us. Hit's work all the time reg'lar, and in the cuttin' and housin' time, hit's work day and night too, come Sunday, come Monday! Fer they're jest bound to save hit, hit bein' their whole livin'!
"I've worked in the terbaccer from daylight to dark and hit rainin' hard all day, wormin' and a suckerin', and expect to ag'in: I've worked on Sunday considerable—planted on Sunday in a settin' season, and cut in a press,—skeer o' frost er somethin', on Sundays, and some nights, but my cousin, Columbus Skeens, down thar, he says Sunday is week day to him, and the moon is the sun, all August and September nigh about.
"And Columbus' women folks, they have to git out in the fields considerable, too.
"And yit Bunch, on account o' the dark terbaccer not brengin' as much as our'n, they're wuss off than we are. One feller can't raise more'n four acres o' terbaccer, ginerally, and he has to halve hit with the land-owner, so ef he raises a thousand pounds to the acre, and gits seven cents, he don't git but a hunderd and forty dollers fer his year's work in terbaccer. Yes, sir!
"And 'tain't been so long sence the buyers, when they all j'ined together in one buyin' Comp'ny, pinched them fellers down thar in the Black Patch down to three cents, when their sellin' time come. Somethin's wrong, Bunch.
"Hit's jest as bad, I've heerd in some the Counties up naixt the Ohio River, too. Columbus, he keeps a sayin' ef thengs don't git no better, somethin's a goin' to happen down thar!"
"Thar's already been thengs a happenin'," remarked Gran'dad, taking a sudden interest in the conversation, "that is, in some parts o' the State. I wuz a readin' yisterday about people a bein' turned back home with waggin loads o' terbaccer the buyin' Comp'ny'd sneaked around and bought,—terbaccer that was pooled in the Equity, and they had no right to sell. And more than that, some barns o' pooled terbaccer, the buyin' Company has persuaded some pore fellers with more emptiness in their stomicks than brains in their heads, to sell to hit, has been burned down, by what the papers calls 'night riders.'"