Two of the most respected and influential journals in the nation, Popular Mechanics and Mechanical Engineering, forecast a bright future for American hemp. Thousands of new products creating millions of new jobs would herald the end of the Great Depression. Instead hemp was persecuted, outlawed and forgotten at the bidding of W.R. Hearst, marijuana seeds, who branded hemp the "Mexican killer weed, marihuana." As early as 1901 and continuing to 1937, the U.S. Department of Agriculture repeatedly predicted that, once machinery capable of harvesting, stripping and separating the fiber from the pulp was invented or engineered, hemp would again the America's number one farm crop.

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