The western sentinel. [volume] (Winston-Salem, N.C.) 1887-1926, 1895-08-29
STRAITS OF THE TRUST.


The tobacco trust grew fat and
saucy over its combined wealth and
strength and resorted to high-handed
measures to make everything tum
BILE its way, regardless of the lesson
taught by the story Of the avaricious
old fellow who killed the goose that
laid the golden egg. By it's aristo-
cratic and Shylock ways, the trust
antagonized and lost the friendship
OF the tobacco raisers and dealers
and hence the planters and dealers
hail with very great satisfaction the
signs of formidable competition for
the aforesaid trust.
While we cannot agree with the
Southern Tobacco Journal that the
trust is sick nigh unto death, because
strong fight for the mastery, we re
produce the following from the last
issue of that journal as an index to
the trials which it is undergoing and
to the benefits which will accrue
from partial or complete triumph
for the formidable competition with
which the trust is likely to have to
contend. The Journal says:
Few persons informed of the sit
uation-o those SO blind that
they will not See-but concede that
the proper place for the American
Tobacco Company is in the list of
the used-to-be's. The developments
of the past few weeks have given it
setback from which itcan never hope
to recover, and indeed it will be for
tunate if it escapes with its life. Its
control OF cigarette machines and
monopoly of cigarette manufacture
ing are gone for good and aye; it
must meet formidable competition,
from two great Independent cigar
cite factories in the West, one in the
North and a host in the South, all
of which will cut and slash prices and
destroy it's hitherto enormous earn
ing capacity; it has met with loss
from the New England Wholesale
Grocers' Association and the New
York Grocers' Association: it is OPP
posed by the Union of Tobacco
Workers, who have begun a boycott
Of it's goods; it is being sued by the
State of New Jersey and is in danger
OF having it's charter annulled, and
it must answer to other States for
violation of laws; it's shareholders
have lost confidence in it's ability to
continue to pay large dividends, as
we'll as it's stability, and its stocks
have greatly declined in value
Fiercely assailed on all sides, it is in
sore straits. It's arrogance, tyran-
Ly, ambition and dictatiOns to the
trade, that it shall do this aad shall
not do that, are at an end. 1t has
been checked in it's mad career, as q
Granville county friend would phrase
it, "by a concentration of fortuitous
circumstances superinduced by aeon
glomeration of unparalleled coinci-
dences."
"While the jobbers and retailers of
tobacco will be happy over release
from the chains of the Trust, there
will be greater rejoicing among the
leaf dealers and the farmers. The
news of the coming of the Liggett &
Myers Tobacco Company and the
Dsummond Tobacco Company into
the field has already considerably
advanced the price of cutters, and
that grade of tobacco will be higher
next season than for several years;
in fact since that Memorable Sunday,
the 18th instant, when the Trust,
sprang into being. The pet theory
of one of our esteemed contempora-
lies (and held also by a small number
of tobacconists, remarkable as it
seems) that elimination of compe-
tition in the markets insures better
prices, will be finally and effectually
exploded, The Journals charge,
made all along, that the Trust has
been taking advantage of it's oppor-
tunities to buy cutters for less than
their real value will be sustained.
The trade will get again into the
old grooves of more prosperous
times, and the setback of the Ameri-
can Tobacco Company will be to the
advantage of every tobacco in