American Tobacco Company

“ These are raw materials essential to the production of cigarettes of the grade sold by the petitioners and also, to some extent, of the 10 cent grade of cigarettes which constitutes the only substantial competition to American, Liggett and Reynolds in the cigarette field of the domestic tobacco industry. The tobaccos involved in these cases are the flue-cured, burley and Maryland tobaccos. The flue-cured or bright tobacco is grown in a number of areas called 'belts.' These are in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. ”

“ The greater part of the Maryland tobacco was purchased by petitioners. The crops in the more southerly belts mature first and the burley crops are not ready for market until late fall. When the tobacco is ready for market the farmers strip, sort and grade the leaves according to their judgment as to quality, tie them into bundles called 'hands' (except in Georgia where the tobacco remains loose) , and truck them to tobacco auction markets. ”

“ Likewise the two corporations acquired for cash, by issuing stock, and otherwise, control of many competing corporations, now going concerns, with plants in various states, Cuba and Porto Rico, which manufactured, bought, sold, and distributed tobacco products or related articles throughout the United States and foreign countries, and took from the parties in interest covenants not to engage in the tobacco business. ”

“ In the 24 years since the American Cancer Society organized the first Great American Smokeout, our country has made encouraging progress in our battle to reduce the devastating human and economic toll that tobacco products take on our society. Today we have a more comprehensive understanding of the dangers of tobacco use and the sophisticated marketing tactics used by tobacco companies, and we have developed more effective methods for helping people break their addiction to tobacco products. ”

“ The manufactured article is made dutiable at 20 cents a pound greater than the raw product, which, with all of England’s boasted free trade, is intended as a protection to those engaged in the manipulation of tobacco. It is almost prohibitive to Americans who would export manufactured tobacco. The ad valorem equivalent of the duty on tobacco is nearly 2000 per cent. ”

“ Everywhere in the Pacific trade tobacco is native coin and currency. A few sticks of it will buy a man’s labor for the week, a woman’s virtue for the night. Government regulations have set a standard ration: two sticks a week. But the natives will accept only the stinking twist that traders import from Virginia. The development company had a bright idea: they would make a trade tobacco of their own and corner the business. ”

“ The manufactured American cigarette seems to be especially deadly in its effect. It is said to contain five and one-half per cent. of nicotine, or more than twice as much as the Cuban-made cigarette contains, and more than six times as much as is contained in the Turkish cigarette.
I am not going to quarrel with the use of tobacco in general by mature men. He who has come to man's estate is free to decide for himself whether he shall force a poison on his revolting stomach ”

“ It is in the public interest for Congress to enact legislation that provides the Food and Drug Administration with the authority to regulate tobacco products and the advertising and promotion of such products. The benefits to the American people from enacting such legislation would be significant in human and economic terms. (13) Tobacco use is the foremost preventable cause of premature death in America. It causes over 400,000 deaths in the United States each year, and approximately 8,600,000 Americans have chronic illnesses related to smoking. ”

“ Of course, when they are smoked and disliked no one uses them, and they become unsaleable, so that when Government finds that there are few or no purchasers, [295] and that their stock is accumulating, they are obliged to use a better class tobacco in their manufacture, upon which people begin to buy from them again. ”

“ The reason why the manufacture of smoking-tobacco for Indian consumption has occupied so large a share in the operations is, that the Indian market, though small, pays far more handsome profits than the English market.
The price paid for reasonably good American manufactured tobacco in India ranges from one to three rupees a lb. Ghazipore and Poosah tobacco is sold at half that 171price, at a much higher profit than can be obtained by sending cured leaf to England. ”

“ The product of tobacco in Europe is nearly equal to the average production of the United States. Austria-Hungary produces about one-third of it, Russia one-tenth, Germany nearly as much, France about 35,000,000 pounds, and the other countries a small quantity. Europe can easily produce all the tobacco required, but American tobacco is largely imported, because it is cheap and is considered valuable for mixing with and fortifying European leaf. ”

“ In this production Rich declares that every fellow who came into an ale-house and called for his pot, must have his pipe also, for tobacco was then a commodity as much sold in every tavern, inn and ale-house as wine, ale, or beer. He goes on to say that apothecaries' shops, grocers' shops, and chandlers' shops were (almost) never without company who from morning to night were still taking tobacco; and what a number there are besides, he adds, "that doe keepe houses, set open shoppes, that have no other trade to live by but by the selling of tobacco." ”

“ The domestic tobacco trade comprises the various kinds of seed-leaf of Connecticut, New England, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Illinois, New York, Florida and Ohio, as well as the sorts known as White Burley “lugs,” fine-fibred wrappers, Indiana kite foot, and American-grown Havana. In the chewing class are included the fine-cut and the plug fillers, principally of the White Burley type from Kentucky, while under the head of export tobacco are the Virginian bird’s-eye cutting leaf, and the spinning fillers or shag. ”

“ Strangely enough, good cigarettes had never been smoked in the United States, a land with an overwhelming preference for the cheap drugged tobacco called Virginia. No one would pay for a pure Turkish leaf ”

“ America has a large tobacco industry at home. We import tobacco in vast quantities from every producing land to satisfy the whimsical and varying tastes of connoisseurs. Our own tobacco is discouraged by those who smoke it under the name of Turkish, Egyptian, Cuban, Dutch, Spanish, and other foreign products, and pay a heavy price for the critical taste which their vanity causes them to imagine they possess. Last year these imports of leaf tobacco alone were valued at $26,000,000, or $10,000,000 more than in 1915. ”

“ Now hundreds of thousands of cheap American cigarettes are being introduced, and a lucrative tobacco-trade has sprung up. Boxes of ten, which are sold at a pice in Darjeeling, fetch an anna at Chumbi, and two annas at Phari. Sahibs smoke them, sepoys smoke them, drivers and followers smoke them, and the Tomo coolies smoke nothing else. Tibetan children of three appreciate them hugely, and the road from Phari to Rungpo is literally strewn with the empty boxes. ”

“ No young man expects to obtain a favorable hearing if he offers himself for employment while smoking or chewing tobacco. Business men dislike to receive tobacco-scented messengers. Cars and elevators contain signs prohibiting lighted cigars or cigarettes. Insurance companies reject men who show signs of excessive use of tobacco. Why? Because they are apt to die before their time. The Interborough Rapid Transit Company of New York City rejects applicants for motormen and conductors "for excessive or long-continued use of tobacco." ”

“ Remarks pointing to the rapid growth of the smoking habit among youths were made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his recent Budget speech, where, commenting upon the augmented revenue from tobacco, he said it was mainly due to the vast consumption of cigarettes, which were specially attractive to our youthful population. ‘I am told,’ Sir Michael added, ‘of one manufacturer who makes two millions of cigarettes a day who hardly made any a few years ago.’
Every-day observation bears out the statement that the cigarette is the chosen smoke of youths. ”

“ The great business world has taken it up as a deadly enemy of advancement, of achievement. Leading business firms all over the country have put the cigarette on the prohibited list. In Detroit alone, sixty-nine merchants have agreed not to employ the cigarette user. In Chicago, Montgomery Ward and Company, Hibbard, Spencer and Bartlett, and some of the other large concerns have prohibited cigarette smoking among all employees under eighteen years of age. Marshall Field and Company, and the Morgan and Wright Tire Company have this rule: "No cigarettes can be smoked by our employees." ”

“ Vice President Gore has joined me today to talk to you about what we're doing to reduce smoking, especially by young people, and to protect Americans from the potential threat of secondhand tobacco smoke. Cigarette smoking is the most single significant public health problem facing our people today. Every year, more Americans die from smoking-related diseases than from AIDS, car accidents, murders, suicides, and fires combined, taking a terrible human toll and putting great financial burdens on our health care system and on businesses all across America. ”

“ At this time Kentucky and Havana tobacco were used in the manufacture of cigars, but on testing American tobacco or as it is now known "Connecticut seed leaf" it was found to make the finest wrappers yet produced, and consequently the best looking cigars. From that time its reputation has kept pace with its cultivation, until it now enjoys a world wide popularity. As a wrapping tobacco it towers far above the seed products of other states and can never have a successful competitor in the other varieties now cultivated in the Middle and Western States. ”

“ During the reign of the Stuarts, the plant was first cultivated in New England but only in small quantities [19] and (p. 077) used solely for smoking. About 1835 the plant received more attention from the farmers living in the Connecticut valley containing some of the finest tobacco land in the country. They found by repeated trials that the soil was well adapted to the production of a finer leaf tobacco than any they had ever seen. ”

“ Smoking is to some extent gradually replacing betel-nut chewing, especially with the children, who now take to the weed when they are about five or six years old. The native tobacco is very strong, and when smoked as a cigarette wrapped in dried banana-leaf, it is decidedly unpalatable to the European. Light cigarette tobaccos of foreign manufacture are now much in vogue. Those who can afford it, roll up the tobacco in lotus leaf. ”

“ In the United States the weed exhausts four hundred thousand acres of excellent land, and employs forty thousand sickly and cadaverous cigar and tobacco makers. In England, where there is a duty upon tobacco of seventy-five cents a pound, and upon cigars of nearly four dollars a pound, the government derives about six million pounds sterling every year from tobacco. The French government gets from its monopoly of the tobacco trade nearly two hundred million francs per annum, and Austria over eighty million francs. ”

“ Tobacco companies once suspicious of a
fire-safe cigarette standard are now demonstrating coming around. In
fact, Phillip Morris endorses the language in this bill, along with The
Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids and The Congressional Fire Services
Institute, which includes the Foundation for American Fire Fighters,
National Volunteer Fire Council and the Fire Department Safety Officers
Association. It has also been endorsed by SAFE--Safer America For
Everyone.
Each year thousands of innocent people are killed, maimed or
permanently disfigured by carelessly discarded cigarettes. ”

“ In my letter of July 25th, I took the liberty of proposing that timely measures might be adopted for encouraging the direct importation of the tobacco of the United States into this Kingdom when the order of Bernis should be expired, and that in the meantime that order might be strictly executed. A great accumulation of tobaccos in the seaports of France, and a refusal of the Farmers General to purchase any more, on the pretence that they have purchased the whole quantity required by government, excites discontent among the merchants. ”

“ Congress, too, has recognized tobacco in its various forms as a legitimate article of commerce by requiring licenses to be taken for its manufacture and sale, imposing a revenue tax upon each package of cigarettes put upon the market, and by making express regulations for their manufacture and sale, their exportation and importation. Cigarettes are but one of the numerous manufactures of tobacco, and we cannot take judicial notice of the fact that it is more noxious in this form than in any other. ”

“ In the evening, the planter's home is filled with the young people, bent on having a right good time, and with "stripping the willow" and other games, close the day if not the night in the most enjoyable manner. Many of the country merchants take the tobacco of the growers when in condition to handle, paying them (or at least a portion of it,) in goods, or purchasing the tobacco as they do other merchandise. They have large warehouses where they receive and pack the tobacco until shipped to market. ”

“ The practice was hedged about and obstructed by a host of restrictions and conventions, but as the nineteenth century advanced the triumphant progress of tobacco became more and more marked. The introduction of the cigarette completed what the cigar had begun; barriers and prejudices crumbled and disappeared with increasing rapidity; until at the present day tobacco-smoking in England—by pipe or cigar or cigarette—is more general, more continuous, and more free from conventional restrictions than at any period since the early days of its triumph in the first decades of the seventeenth century. ”