Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 October 1891 — A TRUST IN CIGARS FORMED. [ARTICLE]

A TRUST IN CIGARS FORMED.

How the Manufacturers Will Take Full Advantage of the McKinley Tariff. This time it is the cigar manufacturers. McKinley added several boards to the already high fence around the cigar industry. The duty on ordinary cigars is now from 150 t 3 200 per cent. Of course, only expensive cigars are imported, on which the duty, being mostly specific, is much less. Domestic prices have been advanced several points, but they are still often below the level of the top of the new tariff feuce. The situation is tempting to manufacturer who consider it a disgra e to their calling to let such an opportunity go to waste. Large cigar manufacturers of New York, Poughkeepsie and Binghamton held a meeting early in October. The objects of these meetings, as reported in the papers, were to form a cigar trust, with a capital of $25,009,000, to crush the life out of small manufacturers and iabor unions, and to raise prices. Mr. Theodore H. Allen, of 18 Broadway, in whose office the meetings were held, is the reputed father of this immense trust He admits that meetings were held, “but ” he says, “they were to discuss business prospects and possibly to devise some means of reducing prices. ” Millions of smokers will await with | anxiety the outcome of this attempt to I “devise some means of reducing prices. ” | They know how extremly difficult and risky it is for a single manufacturer to lower prices when profits become so high as to impinge upon his sensitive conscience. The people are becoming accustomed to these meetings held for their benefit. They expect philanthropic manufacturers to go to much trouble and expense to lower prices. Consumers might at first resist reductions if they thought that only a few firms were concerned. There are 15,000 t0'20,000 cigar manufacturers in the United States, but less than 200 control the majority of the capital. Whether or not the.-e 200 can so unite as to kill out, or buy out, the majority of the smaller manufacturers, and suppress cigarmakers’ unions, it is certain that the McKinley tariff bill has greatly favored large and discouraged small manufacturers One of the ways in which it did this was by increasing the duty on tobacco to be used as wrappers from 75 cents to $2.75 per pound As Sumatra tobacco (about the only kind heretofore used as wraDpers) costs only from 40 to 60 cents per pound in Amsterdam, the rate of duty is nearly 500 per certt. Small manufacturers, with little credit and less capital, were unable to buy more than a few bales of Sumatra tobacco before the duty was advanced. These were exhausted in a few months and now these unfortunate manufacturers, unable to pay $3.50 per pound for wrappers that cost their competitors $3, hav.e been trying to convince the trade that domestic are just as good as imported wrappers. The trade is only convinced against its will and is inclining more and more towards the wealthy manufacturers who still have on hand from one to two years’ supply of Sumatra tobacco, and who take pleasure in supplying goods in familiar wrappers. The small manufacturers are now weakened from heavy loses of McKinleyism and can offer but feeble resistance to the attacks of their more fortunate and aggressive brethren.