Big & Little Four

The makers of 15-c--a-pack cigarets last week did what they had been expected to do for a long time--slashed prices. Acting in concert as they always do, the Big Four --American Tobacco (Lucky Strike), Reynolds Tobacco (Camel), Liggett & Myers (Chesterfield), Lorillard (Old Gold)--dropped the wholesale price from $6.85 a thousand to $6. Though no one ever knows what the Big Four will do, few people expected the cut to be so deep, for a year and a half ago the price had been upped, presumably because of Cellophane wrappings, from $6.40 a thousand.

The Big Four's move was a counterattack to stop the forward march of the Little Four--Brown & Williamson, Axton-Fisher, Larus & Brother, Continental Tobacco--makers of non-advertised 10-c--a-pack brands. The Big Four used to make 90% of all U. S. cigarets and Lucky Strike's George Washington Hill, Camel's Samuel Clay Williams, Chesterfield's Clinton W. Toms, Old Gold's Benjamin L. Belt thought the future was fine and blue (TIME, Oct. 31). Now the Little Four with their Wings, Paul Jones, Twenty Grand, White Rolls sell one out of every five U. S. cigarets. And added to the troubles of Messrs. Hill, Williams, Toms & Belt is the fact that total cigaret consumption is running 10% below last year.

Traders who have been short of Big Four stocks ever since the 10-centers started to boom hurried to cover last week as soon as the news was out. All tobacco shares shot up. Wall Street had suddenly remembered that each of the Big Four but Lorillard, whose Old Golds were still in the promotional stage, was able to make good profits in 1928 and most of 1929 with prices at the present level--$6 a thousand.

United Cigar Stores, Schulte, Liggett and other chain organizations promptly passed on part of the cut to consumers, dropping the retail price1-c- to 13-c- a pack, two for a quarter. The Big Four were disappointed that the retail price was slashed no more, were said to stand ready to cut & cut the wholesale price until their cigarets retail for 11 1/2-c-

P: While smokers were filling their cigaret cases last week for 1-c- less than the week before, a 1-c--a-gallon cut in the price of gasoline in all territory east of the Rocky

Mountains enabled motorists to fill their tanks for 10-c- to 15-c- less. The gasoline price slash, led by Harry Ford Sinclair's Consolidated Oil Corp., followed sporadic price-cutting in the East and Midwest during the last fortnight.

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