The Cigarette Century Read online

  One other development turned out to be critical to the ultimate triumph of the cigarette as a commodity of mass consumption. The open flames of wood and charcoal used in curing were well known to impart particular flavors to tobacco. But open fires were unpredictable and hard to control. In some instances, they led to overly dry or even burned leaves—or the curing barn could go up in flames. By mid-century, tobacco growers and manufacturers began experimenting with flue-curing—large furnaces with iron piping that could produce the necessary heat under more controlled conditions. Flue-curing became widespread after the Civil War.30

  Flue-curing proved especially effective at turning tobacco a bright “lemon yellow” color. Many commented on the mildness of this tobacco and its particular suitability for cigarettes. But what they could not have known is that this process also subtly changed the chemistry of the leaf to make it slightly acidic rather than alkaline. The mildness of bright tobacco, processed in this way, promoted inhalation. Smokers soon found that they could take cigarette smoke deep into their lungs, rather than holding the smoke principally in their mouths as they did with pipes and cigars. In this way—as we now know—nicotine absorbs rapidly into the bloodstream; some seven seconds later, it reaches the brain. Nicotine addiction was born in the serendipitous marriage of bright tobacco and flue-curing. This physiological process would create a mass industry and a consequent epidemic of tobacco-related diseases.31

  By the nineteenth century, then, tobacco and its products were deeply embedded in the new nation’s social experience—in its commerce, its labor, its leisure, and its social ritual—all before the cigarette became the dominant form of consumption. Tobacco was not only an export; Americans’ use of tobacco was widespread and cut across geographic, cultural, and class boundaries. When Charles Dickens traveled around the United States in 1842, he was struck by ever-present tobacco chew; he labeled Washington, DC, the “head-quarters of tobacco-tinctured saliva.” In “all the public places of America,” he observed, everyone accepted this “filthy custom.” That Dickens found this remarkable shows that tobacco chewing was not only widespread, but a distinctively American form of tobacco use.32 Though less prevalent than tobacco plug, cigars and pipes held significant shares of the market as well. All three forms were popular among the educated, urban, and well-to-do. Cigar smoking became a powerful symbol of social authority and power, its use soon ritualized in portraiture and politics.33

  Although tobacco was important as an agricultural crop and consumer product, by the mid-nineteenth century, there was little hint that the cigarette would ever become an important vehicle for its use. The few cigarettes that were smoked before the Civil War were deemed a curiosity, a cheap commodity for the urban young who could not afford more appropriate forms. The shift from chew, snuff, pipes, and cigars would constitute a profound change in the production and consumption of tobacco. It would bring radical changes in business organization and industry, as well as deep cultural transformations in a consumer-driven economy.

  The first successful cigarette entrepreneur, James Buchanan Duke (also known as Buck), had a capacious, even global vision for his industry, and he possessed both the vision and the energy to implement this plan. He led the radical consolidation of the industry, introduced new technologies of production and consumption, and advocated the notion that the tobacco market would know neither cultural nor geographic boundaries.

  Cigarettes have existed for centuries. The earliest ones were probably wrapped in a cornhusk; tobacco consumers in early seventeenth-century Spain replaced the husk with a fine paper that burned evenly when rolled around crushed tobacco. The cigarette spread first to other European countries, then Mexico, and ultimately to the United States. Manufacture of cigarettes in the United States began during the Civil War, but the product failed to attract much of a following until 1869, when the New York firm of F.S. Kinney brought experienced workers from Europe to instruct their American employees in the technique of hand rolling. By experimenting with tobacco blends and emphasizing the use of bright tobacco, Kinney came up with Sweet Caporals, which soon became popular in East Coast cities as a faddish and somewhat low-class alternative to more respectable forms.34

  The economic depression of 1873 apparently spurred sales of cigarettes, however, because they were relatively inexpensive. By the middle of the decade, the firm of Allen & Ginter was offering Richmond Straight Cuts and Pet Cigarettes featuring Virginia Gold Leaf tobacco. Lewis Ginter, who successfully brought together blends of bright and burley, came to dominate the early cigarette business through his combination of tobacco knowledge and marketing savvy. Other tobacco concerns were soon attracted to cigarette production. Goodwin & Company, in New York City, produced Old Judge and Welcome; William S. Kimball, in Rochester, emphasized Turkish blends in his brands, Three Kings and Vanity Fair.35 Even with these new brands, however, in 1900, cigarettes still made up less than 2 percent of the thriving tobacco market, dominated by chew, cigars, and pipes.36

  W. Duke Sons & Company, based in Durham, North Carolina, began producing cigarettes in 1879. At first, their future dominance of the trade was far from certain. With a tedious and labor-intensive production process, cigarettes held little attraction to a firm like Duke, which produced mostly chew and smoking tobacco. Following the Civil War, Washington Duke and his sons rebuilt his failing company producing a bright leaf chewing tobacco under the name Pro Bono Publico. His son Buck soon took over the business and focused on competing with the leading brand of chew, the heavily promoted Bull Durham.37

  James Duke almost single-handedly invented the modern cigarette. Duke had a genuine affinity for the new modes of industry that would come to dominate American business enterprise, and he had little patience for the staid practices of his competitors, which he would soon render obsolete. Aggressive and untethered, he brought together the technological, business, and marketing innovations that would define the coming new age of consumption.

  Duke employed only ten cigarette rollers in 1882 but soon added fifty more. At that time, Allen & Ginter, the leading U.S. manufacturer, employed approximately 450 women to roll cigarettes in its Richmond factory. Taking advantage of a strike at a New York City cigarette producer, Duke solicited another 125 experienced rollers to move to Durham in 1883, offering to pay moving expenses and a wage of $2.00 per twelve-hour day, the highest in the industry. As demand for cigarettes continued to rise, Duke’s operation grew with it. He greatly expanded his labor force of rollers by hiring young women, whose work was closely inspected for consistency and quality.38 By 1885, he had over 700 cigarette hand rollers in two factories, one in Durham and one in New York.39

  There were many attempts to replace these laborers with automated cigarette-rolling machines. But bringing tobacco filler and paper together with speed and precision proved extremely difficult, and despite several machines patented during the 1870s, hand rolling remained the only process reliable enough for commercial cigarettes. Most companies remained firmly committed to it. The breakthrough came when James Bonsack, a Virginia inventor, introduced a rolling machine he designed in 1881. Using processes transferred from his father’s woolen mill, Bonsack’s machine neatly fed compressed tobacco onto a paper ribbon that—upon being rolled into a tube—was precisely cut to cigarette-sized lengths. This one-ton contraption required three human attendants, but it produced over 200 cigarettes every minute, almost as many as a skilled hand roller could produce in an hour.40

  Although James Bonsack’s name rarely appears in the history of technology next to those of his contemporaries Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, or the Wright brothers, his machine, like theirs, formed the foundation of a major American industry. Each of these inventions would profoundly alter American life in the next century. Unlike the telephone, the incandescent light, or the airplane, the cigarette was not a new invention. The Bonsack machine constituted a classic example of what has been called innovation through emulation. It attempted to replicate the handmade proc
ess by packing tobacco, rolling paper around it, and precisely cutting the cigarette.41

  With this new technology, the fledgling cigarette industry acquired the potential for unprecedented growth. At the time of the machine’s introduction, four manufacturers—Allen & Ginter from Richmond, Virginia; William S. Kimball & Company from Rochester, New York; Kinney Tobacco from New York City; and Goodwin & Company, also from New York City—produced about 80 percent of the nation’s cigarettes. Each of these companies, recognizing the advantages of mechanization, had invested in rolling machinery. Allen & Ginter even offered a prize to any inventor who could produce a successful prototype. But given the persistent quality-control problems, there was concern among manufacturers that consumers would reject machine-made cigarettes and insist on a handmade product.

  By early 1882, Bonsack, with the assistance of his father, brother, and brother-in-law, set up the Bonsack Machine Company. Their machine reduced the cost of rolling cigarettes by half. The Bonsack Machine Company rented its machines to cigarette producers, supplied an operator with the apparatus, and charged a royalty on sales of about $.30 per thousand. Manufacturers agreed to a minimum of $200 in royalties per machine.42

  Allen & Ginter ordered a Bonsack machine but soon rejected it, eager to save the prize money they had offered. The first Bonsack prototype met an inauspicious end when the train taking it to New York caught fire en route. Although Bonsack successfully delivered a new machine, Allen & Ginter remained concerned about how customers would regard a machine-made product. Their rejection was more than a lost opportunity in the annals of industry; fear of mass production was a key factor separating the Victorian business culture from that of modern industrial firms like James Duke’s.43

  It was Bonsack’s deal with Duke that secured his machine’s dominance within the early cigarette industry.44 Duke countered his competitors’ concerns about mechanization by publicly declaring it an advantage, explicitly announcing on new packaging that the contents were machine-produced.45 The efficiency and consistency of machines, he claimed, were superior to traditional craftwork. The cigarette—quintessentially a modern product—would soon be produced exclusively by modern machinery under Duke’s lead. Moreover, Duke was well aware of the advantages of reducing his reliance on wage labor.

  Unlike his competitors, who were more deeply committed to the historical traditions of tobacco commerce, Duke thrived on the battle; he had neither the taste nor the time for the customs of a gentleman’s trade. It was precisely this independence from traditional products and practices that opened the way for his innovative and aggressive empire-building. Duke was first a salesman and entrepreneur, and tobacco was but a product. By 1884, while his competitors were still hesitating, Duke had installed two Bonsack machines in his Durham factory. A year later, after experimenting to improve the machines’ performance, Duke signed a secret contract in which he agreed that he would produce all his cigarettes with the Bonsack machine; in return, Bonsack reduced Duke’s royalties to $.20 per thousand. Duke and Bonsack soon reached a further agreement guaranteeing Duke a 25 percent discount on royalties against all other manufacturers. Also, Duke shrewdly hired one of Bonsack’s disgruntled mechanics, William Thomas O’Brien, to operate his machines, assuring fewer breakdowns than his competition.46 By June 1886, O’Brien was meticulously maintaining ten machines. Duke placed a heavy emphasis on efficiency and continuous production. The lessons he learned in developing the mass production of cigarettes he would soon apply more broadly to industrial organization.

  By becoming Bonsack’s premier customer, Duke secured essential control over its technology and turned Bonsack’s patent into a powerful competitive advantage. It was increasingly common for inventors to relinquish their patents to corporations. Duke understood that control of the Bonsack patent—through his secret, discounted licensing agreement—was a critical lever in dominating the cigarette trade. His deal with Bonsack reflected an important change in the character of the patent system, from a legal mechanism protecting independent inventors to one that would protect large and powerful corporations.47 In a letter to the president of the Bonsack Company in 1889, Duke would insist that his early and complete commitment to Bonsack more than justified such discounts. “I say openly if it had not been for us to-day,” he claimed, “the Bonsack machine would be a smouldering wreck.”48 Duke would periodically assist Bonsack in the protection of his patent, recognizing that upstart inventors with new machines could threaten his advantage. He also periodically threatened Bonsack with lawsuits for violating their agreements.

  The cigarette-rolling machine appealed to Duke as a mechanism of efficient mass production but also as a means to end his labor problems. He faced continued shortages of workers, as well as unrest and disgruntlement over wages. The installation of Bonsack’s machines at the Duke factory was an unwelcome sight to his employees. For Duke, it marked a new form of control over the vicissitudes of human capital. With the installation of the machines, the hand rollers Duke had brought from New York now mostly returned, often to the cigar trade.

  Cigar production did not quickly embrace machinery. As an older, bigger, and more successful industry, its workers led in the fight for unionization. These unions now fought with considerable success against the introduction of machines that would replace their workers. Further, the cigar industry, consisting of many small local firms, rarely commanded the necessary capital to invest in such technological improvements. This contrast between the cigar and the cigarette would soon represent the historical shifts typified by the twentieth century.49

  Other technological innovations also made the success of the cigarette possible. Flue-curing helped create a raw product especially suited for cigarettes. 50 Also, the “short smoke” of the cigarette, unlike other forms of tobacco consumption, was dependent on the “quick light.” As consumption increased in the 1880s and 1890s and the size of a pack doubled from ten to twenty, a safe and convenient mode of ignition became crucial to smokers. Although the first matchbook was invented in the 1890s, a truly safe match, free of toxic phosphorous, would not emerge until the early twentieth century. But once combined with the free matchbooks—covered with advertising—it gave smokers the implement needed to make the cigarette ubiquitous.51

  The Bonsack machine and its successful application marked a transformative event in the rise of the cigarette. The machine shifted production from a traditional artisan-based shop and reorganized it to emphasize standardization, system, and control—key values in the culture of modern technology. 52 The Bonsack machine assured new economies of scale and speed of production as well as long production runs. It mandated radical reorganization of virtually every other aspect of cigarette production, from the purchase of leaf (to assure adequate volume) to retail sales. Many of Duke’s later innovations sought to address the imbalance the Bonsack machine created between his ability to mass produce cigarettes and his ability to market them. The overcapacity inherent in the mass production of the cigarette marked a characteristic problem of industrialization. Duke would play a leading role in creating a corporate structure capable of turning this problem into profits.

  Duke understood that the solution to overcapacity involved the aggressive solicitation of new smokers. The revolution in production required an equally significant revolution in consumption.53 Without the “invention” of modern advertising, Duke could not have efficiently utilized the machinery of production. At the same time that Duke committed his company to the new technology, he also committed it to new techniques of intensive marketing and promotion. It was the articulation of this critical pathway from production to consumption that would ultimately create the modern cigarette industry.54 Duke was first a salesman with deep competitive instincts, but he also understood the essentials of risk-taking and change. Promoting a product, particularly one difficult to distinguish from one’s competitors, required the creation of new incentives.

  Promotion, Duke insisted, would drive consumption. At the sa
me time that Duke was working to have the Bonsack machine perfected, he was installing a print shop in his Durham factory that would employ new color lithography techniques. His marketing campaigns centered on premiums, coupons, and collecting cards, freely distributed with each pack of Cameo, Cross Cut, or Duke’s Best. Illustrating themes of sports, adventure, Civil War generals, fashion, and beauty, these cards varied from the educational (flags and stamps of foreign countries) to the exotic (actresses wearing the costumes of foreign countries). He encouraged patrons to collect complete sets. Sets of “actresses,” usually not fully clothed, were especially popular with the boys and young men who constituted Duke’s main market. Although Washington Duke objected to such “lascivious photos,” his son, knowing the impact on sales, expanded advertising budgets dramatically, forcing his competitors to follow suit.55 This commodity-connected collecting was a lasting innovation that continues today with baseball cards and Pokémon. Duke had discovered important incentives for smoking in the cultural rituals of youth.56

  From its inception, the cigarette targeted the uninitiated; young people, for whom it was the first form of tobacco consumption, were the primary constituency. According to the New York Times, tobacco dealers like Duke used premiums to “entice boys to excessive cigarette smoking.” “Every possible device has been employed to interest the juvenile mind, notably the lithograph album.” Youngsters seeking these picture books “clamor[ed] for the reward of self-inflicted injury. . . . [M]any a boy under 12 years is striving for the entire collection, which necessitates the consumption of nearly 12,000 cigarettes. He will become demoralized, and possibly dishonest to accomplish his purpose.”57 But Duke and his competitors now understood that the future of the cigarette rested in the nimble consuming hands of American youth. So began the long tradition of explicitly advertising to children.