Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 March 1900 — THE SALTPETER MAN. [ARTICLE]

THE SALTPETER MAN.

Crown Officer Heartily Hated in England —A Galling Tyranny. At St. Peter’s, Durham, John Haward, saltpeter man, was burned in 1602. Unless he were of extremely amiable character, we fear there would •be few who lamented his death, if there were no immediate prospect of his being succeeded by some one more despotic and exacting than himself. The saltpeter man of the first half of the seventeenth century was hated even more, if that be possible, than the “window peeper” of those more recent days when light was subject to heavy taxation. Before the importation of saltpeter from abroad, as an important ingredient in the manufacture of gunpowder, it was a Crown monopoly, and agents, popularly known as saltpeter men were sent all over the country to seek for it in stables, pigeon cotes, pigsties, and,indeed, in almost all other places the soil of which was supposed to be impregnated with animal matter. The injury these men did, says the London Athenaeum, and the irritation they caused by digging up floors and pulling down fences was great; no householder was free from their visits, which were rendered especially odious from their being empowered to impress carts and horses for the purpose of carrying away the mineral and the utensils employed in its manufacture. This galling tyranny—though, of cotffse, not to be compared with things of far greater moment — was, no doubt, oneof the factors in the national irritation which made the civil war possible. The monopoly was put an end to by parliament in 1656. It was revived in a somewhat modified form during the struggle between the northern and southern states of America. In the confederacy the scarcity of saltpeter was so serious that Jefferson Davis has told us that men

were sent about the country to obtain the material from caves, old tobacco houses and cellars. Whether these persons had the legal power of forcible entry we do not know. During a time of such great disorganization it is probable that the rights of owners would he but little respected when they clashed with what was deemed a public necessity.