Sold American The First Fifty Years 1904-1954 The American Tobacco Company
Sold American The First Fifty Years 1904-1954 The American Tobacco Company
Hard Cover xmall tear in page glued to front cover
144 pages
Copyright 1954
CONTENTS
The Making of a Nation
Pro Bono Publico
Out of Many, One
Ask Dad, He Knows
What this Country Needs
Nature in the Raw
Modern Design
LS/MFT
Particular People
PICTURE CREDITS
3-"Tobacco," Thomas Hart Benton
8-Brown Bros. (2)
9-Culver (4) 10-Culver (lower left)
11-Brown Bros., Culver, Culver
12-Culver
13-Culver (2)
14-Culver
16-Culver
20-Culver (upper left, lower left)
24-Culver
26-Culver
27-Brown Bros. (upper left, upper right) Culver (lower left, lower center, lower right)
33-Culver (upper left) Brown Bros. (lower left, upper right)
38-Brown Bros. (lower left) Culver (3)
39-Brown Bros. (3)
40-Brown Bros.
41-Brown Bros. (lower left) Culver (lower center)
44-Brown Bros. (2)
52-Culver (upper left)
55-Culver (upper right) Brown Bros. (lower right)
60-Culver (3)
61-Culver (upper right) Brown Bros. (lower right)
62-Culver (3)
63-American Machine & Foundry (top)
82-Wide World (lower left)
84-Culver (upper left) Brown Bros. (lower left)
85-Culver
86-Brown Bros. 92--Brown Bros. (2)
95-Olin Industries (upper right) Culver (lower right)
98-Karsh
102-Culver (3)
103-Brown Bros. (3)
106-Brown Bros. (3)
107-Culver (top, lower left) Brown Bros. (lower right)
111-Standard Oil Company (New Jersey)
116-Brown Bros. (upper left)
118-"Outside the Curing Barn," Thomas Hart Benton
119-"Tobacco Talk," James Chapin
FOREWORD
ON OCTOBER 19, 1904, The American Tobacco Company in its present legal form came into being. In a legal sense, then, this history marks our fiftieth anniversary.
Like many other statistics, this one tells a very incomplete story. In point of time, American Tobacco goes back a good deal farther than its 1904 re-incorporation. Under a different corporate structure but with the same name, the Company goes back to 1890. And the management of The American Tobacco Company traces in an unbroken line all the way from 1865, when Washington Duke and his sons started a home tobacco manufactory in their little log cabin outside Durham, North Carolina.
In point of manufacturing tradition, American Tobacco is even older. The Lucky Strike brand, for instance, was begun as a smoking tobacco mixture by a subsidiary company founded in Richmond in 1853. Some of the fine Havana cigars made by the Company go back even farther.
In point of product, our enterprise has its roots in the pre-Columbus years when the misnamed "Indians" of this hemisphere grew tobacco to be smoked in crude pipes and rolled into rough cigars and cigarettes. With the passage of time and the acquisition of knowledge, tobacco and its curing and manufacture have been greatly changed, greatly refined. But the leaf seems to give the same solace to modern, civilized Americans that it yielded the naked savages of five centuries ago. This is not so strange as it may sound at first; for the cigarette holds enjoyment for many different kinds of people in our own day. A Lucky Strike, or a Pall Mall, or a Herbert Tareyton, can be smoked with pleasure by a farmer between furrows, a G.I. in Korea, a clerk "taking five" from his office desk, or a well-dressed patron in some fashionable dining place.
Whatever age we assign The American Tobacco Company, wherever we place the start of the American smoking tradition, we are not celebrating numbers alone. It is true that this Company has made and sold more cigarettes than any other. And it is true that its founders changed the nation's smoking tastes with their bold gambles on machinery, and on fresh uses of the printed word. But by these tokens it is also true that our Company has had more experience in cigarette making, more opportunity to learn our business, than any other.
This means that we have managed to plow that knowledge back into our blending and testing and leaf-buying and manufacturing over the years. If we had not, if our experience were not reflected in the highest quality men and machines can attain, some other company would be the leading manufacturer of cigarettes.
We are confident that we shall remain so, that Americans will continue to use our products at an accelerating rate.
Our confidence is based on two things. First, tobacco itself has been part of the American heritage as long as men have lived in this favored corner of the world: even the cliff-dwellers of the New Mexico desert left smoking implements behind them. Second, it is American Tobacco's policy to place quality of product above all other considerations. We believe this policy accounts for our volume of business, and so make it the starting point for everything we do. We believe it is best for our customers, our employees, our stockholders, our suppliers and for the American tradition of smoking.
Unlike many a volume business, ours does not stand or fall on this year's new design or next year's fashion, for smoking tastes change slowly. We gather the best tobacco leaves we can find, age and blend and flavor and shred them. We package and pass them on to the smoker in the form he prefers, rolled in white paper or Havana leaf or Connecticut wrapper or packed in tins. But the heart of our business-the tobacco-is recognizable in any of these forms. It originated in American soil; it is sanctioned by ancient custom; it is part of our habit of life.
So we are proud to dedicate "Sold American!" to the American public. Their good taste has made it all possible.
Paul M. Hahn President
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