They Like It

Tobacco is a dirty weed. I like it. It satisfies no normal need. I like it. It makes you thin, it makes you lean, It takes the hair right off your bean. It's the worst darn stuff I've ever seen. I like it.

--G. L. Hemminger, 1915

Despite continuing reports that cigarettes are the worst darn things, tobacco-men in 1958 scored their "biggest peacetime advance in 20 years." So last week in Printers' Ink wrote Consultant Harry M. Wootten, the man who knows the tobacco industry best. Sales last year, said Wootten, soared about 9% to top $4 billion; profits rose 11% to $220 million. Domestic consumption jumped to an alltime high of 430 billion cigarettes, up 5% for the year. Most important, per capita use broke the old record of 3,509 cigarettes set in 1952, just before the start of the medical reports linking cigarettes with cancer. Last year the average American aged 15 or over smoked 3,575 cigarettes or 179 packs.

The health scare actually lit up sales by causing smokers fo switch to filters. As the Agriculture Department says, "Some persons smoke filter-tip cigarettes at a higher rate than they smoked non-filter tips." Last year filters' share of the domestic market increased from 39.9% to 45.9% as consumption rose by 35.8 billion smokes.

The filter boom caused the greatest shake-up in the standings of cigarette companies since 1927-30, when American Tobacco's George Washington Hill doubled Lucky Strike sales and bumped R. J. Reynolds' Camel from its traditional hold on the No. 1 spot. In 1958 the story was different. Thanks to their bestselling filters, Reynolds' Chairman John Clarke Whitaker, 67, and President Bowman Gray, 51, dethroned American Tobacco as the No. 1 company for the first time since 1941. Reynolds captured 28.2% of the market v. 26.1% for American in 1958.

Though Reynolds' first-place Camel slipped .9% to 63.5 billion cigarettes in the domestic market and American Tobacco's second-place Pall Mall gained 6.4% to 58 billion, American was hurt by a 9.2% dip in sales of its third-place Lucky Strike, to 47.2 billion. Furthermore, neither of its filters--Hit Parade or Tareyton--broke into the top 15 brands. Meantime, Reynolds sped ahead on the sales of its Winston, up 5.5% to 42.3 billion, ranking it as the top-selling filter and No. 4 among all brands. Reynolds' filtered Salem also took over first place in the burgeoning mentholated market, and rose from 13th to tenth place among all brands, as sales jumped 59.7%.

The most spectacular gain of all was scored by P. Lorillard's Kent, up 138% to 36 billion cigarettes, just behind Winston. In the overall brand standings, Kent vaulted from tenth to fifth, removed Liggett & Myers' lagging non-filtered Chesterfield from the top five for the first time since World War I.

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