Hemp — The Super Weed — Part I

by Willi Glenn

HOUSTON, TX--Any plan to eliminate oil spills, deforestation, strip mining or world hunger without hemp as the primary solution is a fractured palliative, a naive rehash of shallow thinking. In spite of our government's demented horror of hemp, the plant sustained our ancestors for thousands of years and could substantially improve the standard of living around the world today, except for the greed and ignorance of a few powerful people willing to let the world starve so they can continue lining their pockets and pushing their personal agendas onto the rest of us.  

The Glory Days

     For a better look at this plant that could save the earth, we have to go back a long time. Evidence of hemp usage has been found at a twelve-thousand-year-old, archaeological site in Taiwan while archaeological digs in China, India, and Egypt indicate hemp production and manufacturing was going strong as far back as 8000 BC. Hemp was so important that ancient people paid tribute to their rulers in gold, silver, precious stones, silk and hemp. It has won wars by providing cord for bows, reinforcement and string for armor, rope for ship rigging, canvas for sails and oil to waterproof wooden ship hulls. Peter McWilliams, a strong advocate of legalizing both marijuana and hemp farming, believed that without hemp for parachutes, rope, and fabric, the United States would probably have lost WWII.

     For over 250 years, hemp was one of the primary crops grown in the United States. Colonial America's prosperity was based mainly on hemp and, to a lesser degree, tobacco. Almost all of the colonists grew hemp to make cloth, to feed their animals, and for medicinal purposes as well as to kill the pain of childbirth, toothaches and broken bones. There’s evidence from letters that our founding fathers sometimes enjoyed a toke or two at the end of a grueling day. Rumor is that George Washington guaranteed the loyalty of his soldiers by smoking hemp with them as they suffered terribly through a war that many thought was lost.
 
     England needed raw hemp for paper, rope, fiber, and other industrial products, but their island was too small to grow enough food and hemp to sustain the population. Therefore, the crown invested heavily to protect its colonies from the Spanish and French in return for raw hemp and tobacco. Parliament was a tad upset to find its investment producing little or no return because the colonists were keeping most of the raw materials for their own use. English politicians really came unglued when a party of professional weavers left Ireland in 1718 and set up shop in Boston, taking hemp production from a cottage industry and nudging it toward a full-blown industrial revolution.   

     But England was in a quandary. It had declared war on Ireland, because the ungrateful Irish weren't willing to starve in order to provide food and hemp for English use. India would have been a great place to grow the much needed crops, except the the greedy inhabitants weren't interested in providing free farmland or cheap raw materials to England either. And then there were the Portuguese, Dutch and French hovering around India like hungry jackals waiting for their share of spoils. They all had to be put in their place militarily.
 
     So England turned a blind eye to American trade indiscretions and inadvertently allowed the colonists to perfect hemp fabric and fine hemp paper and to develop an attitude of independence that was a precursor to Taxation without representation? You must have lost your mind!

     The significance of paper making in the colonies can't be underestimated. Until 1883 when cotton became cheap enough to make into paper, almost 90% of paper sold worldwide was produced from hemp. Hemp was so important in the colonies between 1763 and 1767 that farmers in Virginia could be jailed for not growing it.

     But all wars must end. And after England slaughtered the Irish and Indians (India) into submission, it no longer needed raw materials from the new world. However, the crown still wanted its investments repaid resulting in the aggravating tax that brought about another war.


A Car Made of Hemp that Could Survive a Sledgehammer Attack?

     Although hemp began losing its importance with the introduction of the cotton gin in 1793 and metal ship production after the Civil War, it was still a money-making crop in the United States when Henry Ford unveiled his first car in 1903.

     When Ford introduced the affordable Model T in 1908, it sported a price low enough for the middle class to afford and was designed to run on cheap hemp alcohol. It had a body made of hemp and other plant fibers that was so strong it didn’t even dent when Ford whacked the back end as hard as he could with a sledge hammer. (Hemp fibers are much stronger and less rigid than steel—but more about this in the third part of this series of articles.)


The Rise of the Dark Side

     Recognizing the unlimited money making potential of gasoline filling the tanks of millions of automobiles, the dark side emerged in the guise of multimillionaires and billionaires whose fortunes just weren’t enough to sate their greed. They struck like a snake on a mouse.


Greed

     William Randolph Hurst wanted to deforest the entire U.S. to feed his paper manufacturing industry. He created an empire by manufacturing paper for his tabloids, and then expanded into other wood pulp products. Apparently, his ego pushed him into believing he should sacrifice the life of every tree in America to keep his holdings intact. So when President Roosevelt snatched millions of prime timber acres from his grasp by declaring them a national treasure, Hurst set his sights on Mexico and bribed the Mexican government to let him strip Mexico’s timber. But for some silly reason, Mexicans didn’t want their country deforested either and rallied around Pancho Villa. Villa won and Hurst was once again foiled. Villa’s success, combined with intense public hatred of Hurst, made him a cult hero in both the U.S. and Mexico.  But Hurst learned one word that changed the fate of the hemp industry in America. That word was “marijuana.”


The Prohibitionist Mentality

     The prohibitionists—a group of folks inclined to force their moral judgments on people easily brainwashed—were active long before their Act of 1735 banned the sale and import of liquor in Georgia. Georgians didn’t seem to mind much and immediately went to work building their own stills which really incensed the prohibitionists who, a few years later, had to stand by helplessly as their prohibition law was dismantled. This state of anger lasted until the eighteenth amendment was passed in 1919. When it was repealed, prohibitionists were in a red-eyed mood, looking to prohibit anything resembling fun, frolic, or God forbid—a waste of time. They thought they could make a dent in immorality by bullying folks, especially farmers into covering the private parts of their animals. But this didn’t go over well with the general public, especially in farm communities. Being on the right side of the marijuana fracas gave them a strong toe hold in the prohibition business while upping them a few rungs on the ladder to heaven.


Power

     There were two powerful, amoral creatures crawling around the dark side at this time. One was Andrew Mellon, the richest man in the world, Secretary of Treasury for eleven years, principal owner of Gulf Oil and DuPont’s chief financial backer.

     And John D. Rockefeller, owner of Standard Oil, who according to Robert Deitch in his book Hemp—American History Revisited, killed alcohol as a competitive fuel source by pushing prohibition, thereby “creating doubts about the future availability of alcohol.”

     President Hoover was forced to fire Mellon when starving Americans accused him of single handedly causing the great depression… Well, fired isn’t exactly the right word. Mellon was offered an ambassadorship to England to get him out of the country. And, his nephew-in-law, Harry J. Anslinger, was given the position of Secretary of Treasury and a chunk of Gulf Oil to ensure he would properly carry on the fight against alcohol production. Mellon disappeared into the sunset leaving Harry panting to solidify his job as chief prohibition enforcer and to destroy any competition threatening Uncle Andy’s empire.

     The DuPont managers, though perhaps not as dismal as the other two, but powerful players in his own right, had already begun making oil-based products like plastic and chemicals used to process Hurst’s wood pulp into paper. Cheap hemp would crucify their growing empire. So, it’s not difficult to imagine what they thought about serious competition from an “inexpensive little weed.”


Terror in the Dark Side

     The decorticator, developed in 1928 to eliminate the high labor costs of separating hemp fibers, made the price of raw hemp competitive with cotton, oil, and wood fiber. This struck terror into the hearts of the powerful and greedy.  There was no doubt that cheap hemp would create havoc in oil, lumber, plastics, paper, and pharmaceutical conglomerates. It could not—would not—be allowed to develop.

     So the dark forces banded together against one prolific little plant with fibers stronger than steel, with seeds that had fed and clothed humanity for eons, and with a feel good chemical that could heal disease, kill pain, ease emotional tension, and relax sore muscles.

     The underhanded shenanigans began.

See Part II

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