State of the Union Address eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 245 pages of information about State of the Union Address.

State of the Union Address eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 245 pages of information about State of the Union Address.

Situation after readjustment.

The American Tobacco Company (old), readjusted capital, $92, 000,000; the Liggett & Meyers Tobacco Company (new), capital, $67,000,000; the P. Lorillard Company (new), capital, $47,000,000; and the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (old), capital, $7,525,000, are chiefly engaged in the manufacture and sale of chewing and smoking tobacco and cigars.  The former one tinfoil company is divided into two, one of $825,000 capital and the other of $400,000.  The one snuff company is divided into three companies, one with a capital Of $15,000,000, another with a capital of $8,000,000, and a third with a capital of $8,000,000.  The licorice companies are two one with a capital Of $5,758,300 and another with a capital of $200,000.  There is, also, the British-American Tobacco Company, a British corporation, doing business abroad with a capital Of $26,000,000, the Porto Rican Tobacco Company, with a capital of $1,800,000, and the corporation of United Cigar Stores, with a capital of $9,000,000.

Under this arrangement, each of the different kinds of business will be distributed between two or more companies with a division of the prominent brands in the same tobacco products, so as to make competition not only possible but necessary.  Thus the smoking-tobacco business of the country is divided so that the present independent companies have 21-39 per cent, while the American Tobacco Company will have 33-08 per cent, the Liggett & Meyers 20.05 per cent, the Lorillard Company 22.82 per cent, and the Reynolds Company 2.66 per cent.  The stock of the other thirteen companies, both preferred and common, has been taken from the defendant American Tobacco Company and has been distributed among its stockholders.  All covenants restricting competition have been declared null and further performance of them has been enjoined.  The preferred stock of the different companies has now been given voting power which was denied it under the old organization.  The ratio of the preferred stock to the common was as 78 to 40.  This constitutes a very decided change in the character of the ownership and control of each company.

In the original suit there were twenty-nine defendants who were charged with being the conspirators through whom the illegal combination acquired and exercised its unlawful dominion.  Under the decree these defendants. will hold amounts of stock in the various distributee companies ranging from 41 per cent as a maximum to 28.5 per cent as a minimum, except in the case of one small company, the Porto Rican Tobacco Company, in which they will hold 45 per cent.  The twenty-nine individual defendants are enjoined for three years from buying any stock except from each other, and the group is thus prevented from extending its control during that period.  All parties to the suit, and the new companies who are made parties are enjoined perpetually from in any way effecting any combination between any of the companies in violation of the statute by way of resumption of the old trust.  Each of the fourteen companies is enjoined from acquiring stock in any of the others.  All these companies are enjoined from having common directors or officers, or common buying or selling agents, or common offices, or lending money to each other.

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State of the Union Address from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.