latter’s pledge that “you would always further, as far as you possibly could, the sale of our products; in fact, we have stated to you that unless this was done we would consider it in our interest to hamper your enterprise in every way we could.” Lest Whelan remain in doubt as to how closely the trust was policing their agreement, Hill then cited the place, date, and precise nature of the infractions that prompted the menacing protest, e.g. , at a store on New York’s Sixth Avenue a customer requesting a ten-cent packet of pipe tobacco was given Mastiff, a rival brand.
To assure United’s spread and success, American Tobacco operatives worked to drive competing shops out of business. That many of these were very modest establishments run by pensioners, invalids, or aging war veterans was of small concern at 111 Fifth Avenue. Whatever was necessary to drive them from the vicinity of the newly arrived United Cigar emporium was done, whether that meant simple price-cutting or dispensing free merchandise to the clientele or pressuring their landlords to increase their rents or, as a last resort, buying up the property and pushing the rival proprietor off the premises. Ruthlessness had grown into brutality. And arrogance had become so routine that Percy Hill did not hesitate to write to one of the trust’s largest independent retail chain customers, Acker, Merrall & Condit, objecting to a delivery to its prominent Forty-second Street outlet of rival Silko cigarettes, remarking, “As this is a brand for which there cannot possibly be any demand, I cannot understand why in the world they should be purchased.”
It was a short step from deception and oppression to outright skullduggery. A series of interoffice letters surviving from 1903 disclose a system of underhanded activities involving aliases, spies at rival companies, and fake “independent” outfits whose true purpose was to damage the operations of the trust’s remaining competitors. That this villainy was clandestine by design is shown by a letter from mastermind Hill to a San Francisco agent regarding a formerly hostile independent now being harnessed as a front for the trust. Hill urged that this development be kept “a very confidential proposition” since the whole point of it was that there not be “any suspicion that we are connected with it in any way.” To discomfit the independent People’s Tobacco Company in New Orleans, Hill set up Craft Tobacco, whose puppet proprietor eagerly reported his plans not only to try to hire away from “the People’s their principal [work] force” but also to “endeavor to cause a strike within their factory.”
When inside sources told Hill that the Ware-Kramer Company, one of the few surviving sizable independents, had just shipped 5 million cigarettes to China, Hill was alarmed in view of the ambitious plans in the Orient for newly formed British-American Tobacco. He wrote at once to the head of Wells-Whitehead Tobacco in Wilson, North Carolina, the trust front nearest to the Ware-Kramer operation, asking to be advised from what port the rival cigarettes were shipped, where they were due to be landed in China, and either the brand name or the markings that the enemy cargo containers bore; a plot to shanghai the goods was readily inferable.
Eventually Duke’s high command grew so determined to crush all remnants of competition that any substantial jobber who was willing to discontinue handling competitors’ merchandise would receive a 6 percent discount on top of all other existing inducements. When this freeze-out arrangement was prevented by the courts, the trust simply began making payments for “special attention” to its products, the nature of which it did not have to spell out, and before long more than 250 distributors across the country had signed up for the program.
The trust’s iron hand finally met firm resistance from its most crucial suppliers: the tobacco farmers. Dominant in all but
To assure United’s spread and success, American Tobacco operatives worked to drive competing shops out of business. That many of these were very modest establishments run by pensioners, invalids, or aging war veterans was of small concern at 111 Fifth Avenue. Whatever was necessary to drive them from the vicinity of the newly arrived United Cigar emporium was done, whether that meant simple price-cutting or dispensing free merchandise to the clientele or pressuring their landlords to increase their rents or, as a last resort, buying up the property and pushing the rival proprietor off the premises. Ruthlessness had grown into brutality. And arrogance had become so routine that Percy Hill did not hesitate to write to one of the trust’s largest independent retail chain customers, Acker, Merrall & Condit, objecting to a delivery to its prominent Forty-second Street outlet of rival Silko cigarettes, remarking, “As this is a brand for which there cannot possibly be any demand, I cannot understand why in the world they should be purchased.”
It was a short step from deception and oppression to outright skullduggery. A series of interoffice letters surviving from 1903 disclose a system of underhanded activities involving aliases, spies at rival companies, and fake “independent” outfits whose true purpose was to damage the operations of the trust’s remaining competitors. That this villainy was clandestine by design is shown by a letter from mastermind Hill to a San Francisco agent regarding a formerly hostile independent now being harnessed as a front for the trust. Hill urged that this development be kept “a very confidential proposition” since the whole point of it was that there not be “any suspicion that we are connected with it in any way.” To discomfit the independent People’s Tobacco Company in New Orleans, Hill set up Craft Tobacco, whose puppet proprietor eagerly reported his plans not only to try to hire away from “the People’s their principal [work] force” but also to “endeavor to cause a strike within their factory.”
When inside sources told Hill that the Ware-Kramer Company, one of the few surviving sizable independents, had just shipped 5 million cigarettes to China, Hill was alarmed in view of the ambitious plans in the Orient for newly formed British-American Tobacco. He wrote at once to the head of Wells-Whitehead Tobacco in Wilson, North Carolina, the trust front nearest to the Ware-Kramer operation, asking to be advised from what port the rival cigarettes were shipped, where they were due to be landed in China, and either the brand name or the markings that the enemy cargo containers bore; a plot to shanghai the goods was readily inferable.
Eventually Duke’s high command grew so determined to crush all remnants of competition that any substantial jobber who was willing to discontinue handling competitors’ merchandise would receive a 6 percent discount on top of all other existing inducements. When this freeze-out arrangement was prevented by the courts, the trust simply began making payments for “special attention” to its products, the nature of which it did not have to spell out, and before long more than 250 distributors across the country had signed up for the program.
The trust’s iron hand finally met firm resistance from its most crucial suppliers: the tobacco farmers. Dominant in all but
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