The first historical record of utilization of the hemp plant for its stem fiber comes from the Chinese who described the plant they called ma as having been introduced by the Emperor Shen Nung in the twenty-eighth century BC. The wild Cannabis ancestor is believed to have grown somewhere in a general area between western China and the eastern Caucasus, north of the Hindu Kush.
This wild ancestor is not found today.
Hemp's major use was as a cordage fiber. Its natural resistance to rot recommended it for maritime uses, and, as European seafaring expanded, so did the importance of hemp. So
critical was hemp to naval powers that laws were passed in England and in the American colonies requiring farmers to allot a portion of
their acreage to the production of hemp. Were it not for hemp,
European expansion, the Age of Exploration and the discovery of the
New World would certainly not have occurred as they did.
Sailing ships carried hempseed in their stores and the crop was seeded in new lands to provide for the repair of marlines, hausers and sails. Ships were caulked with oakum made of the short hemp fibers.
Hemp was growing in Chile by 1545, in New England by 1629. The Founding Fathers were strong promoters of hemp. For a time following the War of Independence, farmers could pay their taxes in hemp. George Washington admonished, "Sow it everywhere."3 Thomas Jefferson, a strong proponent of hemp as a crop, invented a hemp
brake and experimented with different genetic varieties.
Hemp production during the Revolutionary period was greatest
in Virginia where its labor requirement led to a rapid increase in that state's slave population. Hemp fabric clothed the slaves, but was too coarse for the gentle classes.
Hemp moved west with the Pioneers. It was first planted in Kentucky on Clarke's Creek near Danville by Archibald McNeil in 1775. The growth and vicissitudes of the Kentucky hemp industry have been described in detail by James Hopkins in his History of the
Hemp Industry in Kentucky. Kentucky was the principal producer of
hemp fiber until the Civil War.
The mainstay of the Kentucky industry was baling rope and bagging used for cotton bales. Hemp accounted for 5% of the weight of a cotton bale and the fortunes of the Kentucky industry rose and fell with the cotton market. But despite substantial efforts on the
part of the government and private individuals to encourage the use
of Kentucky hemp by the US Navy, it was generally rejected for
quality in favor of imported Russian "Riga Rein" hemp. After the
Civil War, jute and iron bands replaced hemp for cotton bales and the
Kentucky industry declined.
Hemp moved west with the Pioneers: Missouri (1835); Minnesota (1860); Illinois (1875); Nebraska(1887); Wisconsin (1908); California (1912). By 1860, Missouri had replaced Kentucky
as the major supplier of hemp. At the same time, hemp was moving
north, being first grown in Minnesota that same year.
As the nation expanded, so did its government. In 1890, the
cabinet office of Secretary of Agriculture was created. Its first
appointee was Jeremiah Rusk, a former governor of Wisconsin. One
of Rusk's first actions was the inauguration of the USDA's Office of
Fiber Investigations to encourage domestic bast fiber production. Its
first director, Charles Dodge, opined: "There is no reason why hemp
culture should not extend over a dozen States and the product used in
manufactures which now employ thousands of tons of imported
fibers."