Matt was said to be "generous, creative, inventive, persistent entrepreneur with an almost magical sense of timing who cared deeply for others. Those were all traits that made him a highly successful and respected businessman and led to his becoming America's Hemp King."
Matt's hemp mills processed over 3,600 acres of hemp during their peak years and produced nearly 4 million pounds of fiber in a single year! The Matt Rens Hemp Company produced a large portion of the fiber for the entire United States before the war effort for World War II and expanded that role during the critical war years. Sheesh!
Thankfully, I know all of the following information because of the hard work of my dad's cousin, Dennis Rens. You can read the full account of The Hemp King of America in a concise story.
Oh, Matt knew the potential narcotic effects of hemp. In a 1940 Milwaukee Journal article, he said, "We have enough marijuana on hand in stacks and in our warehouses to drug the nation, but I can't recall a single case since I've been in the business where farmers or help around here smoked or put marijuana to improper use."
In 1945, Matt traveled to Washington, DC, to head a delegation testifying before the Senate Finance subcommittee. He reassured the government that, "In no instance have I ever known of anyone going into the hemp field and gathering leaves for illicit purposes." The Senate committee got the point.
But, my grandma, Willard Tenpas, remembers some "migrant workers" leveling out an area in the middle of a field to smoke a little of the hemp. He said that Matt (his father-in-law) was required to buy a yearly drug license for $2.
The United States government wanted to assist European countries in their rebuilding effort and planned to send millions of pounds of hemp fiber to France in 1950. So, Matt's crew planted a large hemp crop in 1949. The government changed their mind. What?! So...all of that extra hemp created a glut of fiber in 1950. There were 70 carloads of fiber with no potential buyers. Sadly, Matt passed away in 1950 and no new hemp crop was grown.
End of the Hemp Reign
Matt's son, Willard, ran the business after his father died and personally degerminated 2,000 bushels (88,000 pounds) of hemp seed at $9-10 per bushel. He took a huge loss and sold it for its only potential use: bird seed at $2 per bushel. The hemp business was done.
Local Hospital Built
In 1931, Matt closed the Waupun, Wisconsin (my hometown) hemp mill and donated the land to the City of Waupun. Now, the Waupun Hospital sits atop a former hemp field.
The hemp mill, shown below, still stands. It's covered in weeds. The building is decrepit, falling apart, and is in general disrepair. But, it's fun to see an important part of U.S. history, my family's heritage, and key piece of the World War II effort right down the road from my childhood home.
Life lesson: Don't smoke dope. Make rope.
Rens was one of the first to bring hemp into the modern age. The Rens family's history has now been preserved by Matt's grandson, Dennis Rens, who compiled family memories, photographs and the historical record into this important documentation. Dennis Rens has also released an accompanying video tape of home movies of the growing and processing of hemp taken by his uncle, Willard Rens, during America's last hemp heyday.
ReplyDeleteMatt Rens started growing hemp in 1914 in response to an initiative led by the University of Wisconsin. He realized that in Wisconsin, the crop could not economically be processed with the old Kentucky methods, by hand in the field. The variations in Wisconsin weather, especially humidity, required that hemp be dried and processed indoors. Rens invested in building a decortication mill that at its peak, processed four million tons per year of finished hemp line fiber. Rens spent his life perfecting the methods of economically processing hemp and developed the Matt Rens Hemp Company into America's largest hemp processor.
The manuscript documents how the hemp industry was prone to alternating booms and busts. The booms coincided with the two world wars. Matt Rens proved himself an excellent businessman by the way he weathered the cyclical depressions and invested ahead of the times of peak demand. In his best stroke of genius, he sold his entire operation to a "slick Chicago businessman" just weeks before the crash of 1929.
The manuscript misses one crucial phase of the Rens family history. Matt Rens tried his best to prevent passage of the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act. He traveled to Washington and testified before the House Judiciary Committee about his company and industrial and military demand for hemp.
Rens' lobbying effort was successful, at least on a temporary basis. Hemp stalks and fiber were excluded from the definition of Marijuana and farmers were only required to pay one dollar for a federal license. But soon the bureaucrats started hassling Rens and others going so far as to demand that every last leaf be removed from the retted stalks before they could be transported to the mill. In 1945, Rens again traveled to Washington to testify, this time before a Senate Finance sub-committee. The federal demands became too much for any farmer and by 1957 the entire industry was lost.
The prohibition against hemp cultivation caused a break in our generation to generation passing of farm sense. Ten thousand years worth of human experience with hemp is quickly being lost with the passing of our elders. Dennis Rens says he did not write this manuscript for publication, but solely as a project to preserve his family history. More of us need to follow this example and document the knowledge preserved in the memories of our senior citizens before it is forever lost.