Troubled Smoke

How things have been going in the cigaret business was again shown clearly by two developments of last week:

1) Axton-Fisher Tobacco Co. of Louisville, Ky., maker of one of the four best-selling 20-for-10-c- brands (Twenty Grand), announced a net profit for 1932 of $1,416,952, more than double its 1931 profit of $605,552.

2) American Tobacco Co., maker of Lucky Strike, one of the four big 15-c- brands, paid its regular quarterly dividend of $1.25 but omitted the usual $1 extra dividend. Wall Street heard that President George Washington Hill of American Tobacco was planning to cut prices below the $6 per 1,000 at which Luckies now wholesale, has sworn to run 10-c- cigarets out of business if he has to make them himself.

Mr. Hill could get some satisfaction out of the fact that the U. S. Supreme Court last week ordered the Federal Court for the Southern District of New York to dismiss without prejudice a stockholder's suit to set aside American Tobacco's employe stock purchase plan, whereby President Hill and his directors got 32,370 shares of common B stock, listed at $112, for $25 a share. But so sharply did Justices Stone and Brandeis criticize the plan that disgruntled stockholders promptly began a new suit in New Jersey.

Meanwhile, Camel's new advertising campaign ("It's fun to be fooled . . . It's more fun to KNOW") drew fire from U. S. magicians whose tricks were exposed.

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