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HEMP HISTORY LETTERS ROOM USA Hemp Museum Store - Bookmark This Site - Museum Link - Email The Museum |
12. LETTERS HISTORY OF HEMP.
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LETTER SUBMITTED TO THE LOS ANGELES TIMES: APRIL 22, 1998.
Los Angeles Times: Letter to Patt Morrison.
RE: Battle of the Britches: Rival Levi’s.
I enjoyed your California Dateline article on the Levi Legacy. Having been to both the Nevada State Museum and the headquarters of Levi Strauss & Co., it’s a good bet that durable, light-colored duck twill he bought from Levi Strauss & Co. -a rugged fabric (Jacob) Davis had used to make wagon covers as well as tents," was Cannabis hemp or its derivative name canvas.
In a footnote to "Hemp: Lifeline to the Future," by Chris Conrad, 1994, he wrote: "Levi Strauss company historian Lynn Downey said all company records were destroyed in San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake/fire. Remaining notes refer to duck, a hempen fabric."
Canvas was hemp in 1870, and while no one really likes to talk about it, it is the fabric that won the West. And it is the fabric that will win the West again.
Richard M. Davis, Curator, USA Hemp Museum
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LETTER SUBMITTED TO THE LOS ANGELES TIMES: JAN. 5, 1998.
RE: COMEBACK: WOOD-AND-CANVAS CANOES. LIFE & STYLE, JAN. 5, 1998.
Please remind your readers that wood-and-canvas canoes flourished from about 1880 until it became difficult then illegal to grow hemp for canvas in 1937, when the U.S. Congress renamed humanity’s oldest textile plant from hemp to marijuana. It is hard to make a wood-and-canvas canoe without canvas (derived from the Dutch pronunciation of Cannabis, the Genus name of hemp/marijuana).
Cannabis hemp is now being grown in twenty-nine countries including Canada and England, so the excellent canvas fabric is again available on the world market. American farmers are still prohibited from growing this fiber crop, which has incredible industrial potential as a replacement for cotton, tree pulp paper, and fossil fuel products.
Hemp is an annual crop that can offer "new approaches essential in conserving products of both land and sea."
Richard M. Davis, Curator, U.S.A. Hemp Museum
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"The Birth of Our Flag." Postcard. Betsy Ross House, Philadelphia, PA. Sewing hemp sailcloth. |
LETTER SUBMITTED TO LOS ANGELES TIMES & PHOENIX REPUBLIC: APRIL 15, 1996.
RE: "IT’S A GRAND OLD FLAG!"
I was a veteran, who went to the Phoenix Art Museum Flag exhibit alone, before the veteran protest. I was upset for a different reason- the big lie, and of course I found it there. This flag exhibit was to celebrate freedom of speech. FREEDOM. FREEDOM from lies.
The lie is Marijuana. That marijuana is illegal-prohibited, denies us all a major part of our history, denies us the real plant, Cannabis sativa L., and all its glorious uses. I would like to give a quick history lesson according to the lie, then make the case that growing seed plants is an inalienable right of all people.
The first true paper from China(105 A.D.) contained marijuana. The first plant cultivated by humans was probably marijuana. The oldest cloth ever found, some 8-9,000 years old, was marijuana. It took 60 tons of marijuana to outfit one U.S. warship like the U.S.S. Constitution. Speaking of which, our U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights is printed on marijuana paper. Our Declaration of Independence was drafted on marijuana paper. Ropes, sails, flags, banners, uniforms, tarps, gunpowder, varnish, oakum, log books, and bibles on every sailing ship were made of marijuana. Growing marijuana was required in early colonial days, and taxes could be paid in marijuana. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were both marijuana farmers, just to drop a couple of names. THE FIRST UNITED STATES FLAG WAS MADE OF MARIJUANA (sail cloth). The first report of marijuana as medicine was 2727 B.C. in China. In the U.S.A., use as medicine began in l840 with the introduction of stronger varieties of marijuana and was used for almost 100 years. Some 360,000 acres of marijuana was grown annually during World War II, the seed crop grown by the 4H kids in Kentucky.
Our own national museum the Smithsonian is the keeper of the lie, not wanting our children to find out. Not a word of Cannabis sativa/hemp/ marijuana in the Art Exhibit or the Smithsonian. Never mind that in the process that they lie to those of us who are the government - the people. Marijuana, the name, was made up ninety to one-hundred years ago, to scare people off the real plant and name Cannabis sativa L. (Hemp). Hemp has always been the world standard fiber, and I could go on about its uses for medicine, clean burning alcohol fuel, press board, plastics, cloth, paper and 50,000 other viable commercial uses, but I would like to proclaim the right to grow Cannabis sativa L., as one of my/our inalienable rights.
Inalienable rights, are rights endowed by the Creator- "among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, "(Declaration of Independence). If the Creator specifically endows me (you) with a right does that not make it inalienable (not transferable to another). Look at Genesis I:29, "And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree; to you it shall be for meat." (H.& E. Phinney's, Holy Bible, 1830. Printed on Marijuana paper).
Cannabis sativa/hemp/marijuana is not the devil's weed, but is the Creator's plant, given to you and me - not given to the Arizona Government, the U.S. Government, the U.N. Government, not any government. We have the right to grow, I have the right to grow. Where does the Government of Arizona derive the right to tax me $500 to grow three Cannabis plants? Out of thin air, the same air that used to blow Cannabis/hemp flags, before Prohibition II.
Not every U.S.A. Flag was created equal. Some were made of hemp, grown on American soil, by American farmers, made by American workers, with an American history. Some were made of crude oil, pumped out of the ground in Iran, Iraq, or Saudi Arabia, sewn in Taiwan - plastic flags. Freedoms came before governments or symbols, lets not forget why we served.
Richard M. Davis, Curator, U.S.A. Hemp Museum
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USA Hemp Museum Store - Bookmark This Site - Museum Link - Email The Museum