Tobacco Industry

TOBACCO INDUSTRY

The first permanent English settlement in the New World was a disaster for its early inhabitants. Times got so bad in the "starving time" of 1609–1610 that some of them resorted to cannibalism. Ten years later the Virginia colony exported 40,000 pounds of tobacco to England and the farmers were getting rich. The first successful commercial crop of tobacco was cultivated in Virginia in 1611 by Englishman John Rolfe and within seven years it had become the colony's leading export. By the 1630s the annual crop was 1.5 million pounds. People were planting tobacco everywhere, even in the roads. In spite of the fact that tobacco exhausted the land, over the next two centuries it was an important cash crop, though increasingly dwarfed during the nineteenth century by a much more important cash crop—cotton. After the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, most tobacco was grown by small, independent family-owned farms.

Initially tobacco was produced mainly for pipe smoking, chewing, and snuff. Cigars didn't become popular until the early 1800s. In 1847 the Phillip Morris Tobacco Company was established, which sold hand-rolled Turkish cigarettes. Two years later J.E. Liggett and Brother was formed in St. Louis. In the American West, chewing tobacco became so popular among cowboys and gold diggers that the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company built its operations around the product in 1875.

Cigarettes, which had been around in crude form since the early 1600s, didn't become widely popular in the United States until after the American Civil War (1861–1865). At that time, they were crudely made from scraps left over after the production of other tobacco products, primarily chewing tobacco. The invention of the first practical cigarette-making machine, sponsored by tobacco baron James Buchanan Duke (1856–1925) brought mechanically rolled cigarettes in the 1880s greatly increased the demand for cigarettes. One of the advertising ploys of the cigarette manufacturers was to point to the "sanitary" nature of mechanically rolled cigarettes. "No dirty immigrants hands" had rolled the cigarettes, in contrast to the cigar manufacturers in the immigrant ghettos of the north. Thus cigarettes became an expression of anti-immigrant sentiment as well as of the advent of science and modernity.

With the introduction of "Bright" tobacco, a uniquely cured yellow leaf grown in Virginia and North Carolina, cigarette sales steadily gained ground over other tobacco products. Cigarette sales surged again in the late 1880s with the introduction of the "White Burley" tobacco leaf. In 1901, six billion cigars were sold and only 3.6 billion cigarettes. With the emergence of the Marlboro brand, marketed from the newly established Philip Morris headquarters in New York, cigarettes soon became the major tobacco product. With the demand for cigarettes on the rise, R.J. Reynolds Company marketed a new cigarette brand called Camel in 1913.

By the early twentieth century, with the growth of cigarette sales and smoking, articles addressing the health effects of smoking began to appear in scientific and medical journals. In 1930, researchers in Cologne, Germany, made a statistical correlation between cancer and smoking. Eight years later, Dr. Raymond Pearl of Johns Hopkins University, reported that smokers did not live as long as non-smokers. By 1944, although admitting that "no definite evidence exists" linking smoking and lung cancer, the American Cancer Society began to warn about the possible health risks associated with smoking.

Despite these warnings cigarette sales sharply increased. During World War I (1914–1918), armed forces took up the "soldier's smoke." During the 1920s, the tobacco market soared, particularly among women, as cigarettes attracted a growing number of "flappers." The coincidence of the rise of cigarettes and the rise of feminism meant that the woman who smoked cigarettes, especially out of doors, was taking a stand in favor of women's rights. During the 1920s, the tobacco market soared, particularly among women. Popular brands of cigarettes included "Chesterfield," "Lucky Strike," "Old Gold," "Camel," "Raleigh," and "Marlboro." The Phillip Morris tobacco company began marketing the Marlboro in 1924 as a woman's cigarette that was as "Mild as May." Smoking rates among female teenagers tripled between 1925 and 1935.

With the introduction of the Pall Mall brand in 1939, the American Tobacco Company became the largest tobacco company in the United States. During World War II (1939–1945) the sale of cigarettes was at an all-time high. Tobacco companies sent millions of cigarettes to soldiers for free. Cigarettes were also included in a soldier's C-Rations. When the soldiers returned home from abroad, the tobacco industry had a steady stream of loyal customers. The cigarette culture was actively promoted. The main male movie stars of the age were smokers. Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne were smokers. (They also both developed lung cancer.) After World War II, the soldiers came home "hooked on cigarettes." One popular country-and-western song from the 1940s was "Smoke, Smoke, Smoke that Cigarette. . . ."

By the 1970s the two most influential tobacco companies were Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds, with the popularity of their respective "Marlboro" and "Winston" brands. Another trend in the 1980s was the consumer interest in discount cigarettes, partly in response to the substantial increases in cigarette taxes. The 1990s saw an increasing support by the government to make tobacco companies liable for damages caused by their products exemplified in a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision. There also continued to be significant tax increases on cigarettes in many states, such as the 75 cents a pack tax levied by the state of Michigan. In addition, during the 1990s many businesses began to restrict or eliminate smoking in public places, in response to an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report in 1993 that categorized tobacco smoke as a class-A carcinogen. Increasing criticism of advertising strategies employed by tobacco companies also contributed to the decline in popularity of tobacco products.

The health risks associated with tobacco use resulted in a rise in lawsuits filed against tobacco companies in the late 1990s. Individuals sought compensation for poor health brought on by years of smoking and states asked for reimbursement on the large medical costs incurred by smoking-related illnesses. Both groups were successful and reforms were initiated. By the end of the twentieth century, the complexion of the tobacco industry in the United States was radically changed by shifting attitudes and regulations. Because of the unfavorable market conditions in the United States, companies sought to increase their sales in foreign markets, where attitudes about tobacco remained open and restrictions were more lenient.

Although tobacco had jump-started the American economy at a point when settlement was clearly costing more money than it was worth (except in the eyes of the religious dissidents of New England who merely wanted to be apart from England), and though it had helped to shape some of the fundamental characteristics of the emerging colonial American economy, the tobacco plant had also become a noxious but well entrenched part of the American culture.

See also: American Tobacco Company, Tobacco, Tobacco Trust

FURTHER READING

Breen, T.H.H. Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Goodman, Jordan. Tobacco in History: The Cultures of Dependence. London: Routledge Press, 1994.

Hillstrom, Kevin, ed. Encyclopedia of American Industries, 2nd ed. Vol. 1: Manufacturing Industries. Detroit: Gale, 1997, s.v. "Tobacco Products."

Kluger, Richard. Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris. New York: Alfred A. Knopf: Distributed by Random House, 1996.

U.S. Industry Profiles: The Leading 100, 2nd ed. Gale Research, 1998, s.v. "Tobacco Products."