(BUSINESS) Letterbook of the American Tobacco Companys sales

Sale 2391 - Lot 76

Unsold

Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600

(BUSINESS.) Letterbook of the American Tobacco Company's sales department for plug tobacco. 296 pages of bound carbon copy typescript letters on tracing paper. 4to, original cloth, moderate wear; contents somewhat wrinkled but otherwise strong, minor dampstaining to the blank pages in the rear of the volume. [Durham, NC?], 1908-11

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These letters were written by W.S. Mason and W.S. Tisdel of the Plug Sales Department of the American Tobacco Company. Most of the letters relate to the sales of chewing tobacco to wholesale customers in Puerto Rico and Cuba. Both islands had strong customer bases of American troops in the wake of the Spanish-American War, though one might expect that Cuba was able to supply its own tobacco needs. Some of the letters discuss the company's products at length. One 12 May 1908 letter to a Cuban distributor, for example, notes: "The writer when in Cuba noted the fact that chewing tobacco being moldy did not seem to interfere with its sale, the consumer being willing to take it either way. We noted further that . . . the consumer desires the tobacco both a little softer and a little sweeter than that we have been furnishing to you." These letters date from the peak of American Tobacco's near-monopoly powers, while antitrust proceedings were working their way through the courts; the firm was broken up into four smaller companies in 1911 by order of the Supreme Court.