JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
Vincent Riggio (1878-1960) was a classic rags-to-riches story: Sicilian-born, lower East Side, quit school to work, opened barber shop on 117th, etc., and by 1947 was one of the highest paid execs in the country at $484k/yr., heading up sales for the American Tobacco Company.(Its hard to translate this wealth, even after fiddling with CPI—at the time though 30 million of the 39 million families in the US Census for 1950 made less than $5k/yr.)
Anyway Riggio wrote a Christmastime book1 in 1938 on "Sales Organization" for the ATC, a piece of boosterism and a how-to for sales of cigarettes and the beauty they represented. One part that stopped me was the instruction on filling “10,000” windows in high-traffic areas with ciggie displays. There were 93 cities in the US with 100k or more population in 1930 (105 in 1940, 50 in 1910, and 68 in 1920) so even if the windows concentrated on the big cities that’s 100 big windows (think classic giant window displays busy intersection) per each of the 100 cities. That’s in addition to massive amount of print ads and radio/sporting event sponsorships. (And remember the print ads used movie stars, doctors, lawyers, Santa, sports figures, and so on, plus the combination of the cigarette with the possibility of expressive manhood AND sexual allure.) These folks got their message across, which was too bad.
And for the record ATC was founded in 1890 by Buck Duke, and was one of the original 12 companies2 comprising the first index for the Dow Jones averages (1896). ATC was busted3 in 1911 as a monopoly, after which it became a simple oligopoly.
Notes:
1. Riggio, Vincent. American Tobacco Company, Sales Organization. Printed by ATC on fine laid paper. 7”x5”, 61pp. Embossed cloth. I can’t find this in WorldCat/OCLC.
2. The twelve companies included American Cotton Oil, American Sugar, American Tobacco, Chicago Gas, Distilling & Cattle Feeding, General Electric, Laclede Gas, National Lead, North American, Tennessee Coal & Iron, U.S. Leather preferred, and U.S. Rubber.
3. United States v. American Tobacco Company, 221 U.S. 106 (1911), “...which held that the combination in this case is one in restraint of trade and an attempt to monopolize the business of tobacco in interstate commerce within the prohibitions of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.”--Wikipedia
Comments