The times dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1903-1914, 1911-11-17
Approval of Tobacco Re
organization Plan
Is Announced.
STATEMENT MADE
BY WICKERSHAM
Acknowledgement Is Satisfied
That Circuit Courts Decree
Will Terminate a Monopoly
and Substitute Actual Com
petition Instead-Plea of
Independents Denied.

Washington. November 16.-Satisfled
that the decree entered in the Circuit
Court at New York to-day providing
Tor the disintegration of the American
Tobacco Company into fourteen COR
porations will terminate monopoly
and substitute actual competition in
ktead. Attorney General wickersham
VIII not appeal the case to the Su-
preme Court of the United States. He
Will accept the Circuit Courts de-
cision, although the government pos
sesses the right to carry the plan of
dissolution to the highest tribunal at
any time within year. The govern
ments approval of the plan was made
known by the Attorney-General in an
official statement issued to-day
The size OF some of the corporations
into which the company Will be sep
arated constitutes no valid objection
to the courts decree, in the Judgment
of the Acknowledgement.
THE public at large will be more
apt to benefit" he declares. from
competition between number of
large. solvent. we'll organized com
general Generalization OF business
which would cnsue were the business
to be distributed between a large mum
Der of small, weak organizations with
insufficient capital to maintain them
selves in active competition.
widespread Injury.
Some OF the representatives of the
so-cailed independent retailers asso-
Citations urged the distribution. OF
business among seventy corporations
instead OF fourteen. The suggestion
might as we'll hav> been fifty or two
hundred. For the government TO have
supported any such contention woL-I
have undoubtedly resulted in a re-
ownership and enormous and wide
spread injury to the general business
conditions of the country"
Regarding the contention which he
said had been advanced that the size
of some OF the companies was greater
than that of any of the existing in
dependents, the Attorney General
says:
Nothing in the law requires. or, in
the opinion of the Acknowledgement.
would justify the government in - :
ing the position that to reduce a
.n:cconolistic combination to legal size
no one of the distributes concerns
should be larger than the largest cx-
listing Independent concern"
The objections to the dissolution
scheme on the ground that the same
body "a shareholders would substan-
TALLY control each of the separated
companies are met, the AttorneN-SeN-
cral says. first, by comforting voting
rights, which now are vested in the
common stock alone, to the preferred
stockholders also; and secon-iy, by the
restrictions upon the actions Of the re-
spective corporations.
Plan Is Satisfactory.
The Attorncy-Generai believes"
continues the statement. that this
plan, with the restrictive provisions
embodied in the decree. will accom-
plish a recreation of lawful conditions.
and being so convinced. he has OPP
posed the efforts of outsiders to inject
themselves into the situation. and to
delay or prevent the carrying out of
the plan"
Under the impression that the mean
ing OF the opinion OF the court had
been beclouded by the various discus
sions of 1t and was not generally un-
derstood, the Attorney General en-
bodied in his statement a synopsis of
the terms of the decree.
He said it contained substantially all
of the requests made by the govern
ment except the enforced sale and dis
tribution to outsiders of the United
Cigar Stores Company and an author
ization to the government at any time
within five years to apply 10 the court
for relief. based upon n showing that
competitive conditions have not actu-
ally resulted from the operations OF
the plan.