Business: Big & Little Four

The makers of 15¢-a-pack cigarets last week did what they had been expected to do for a long time—slashed prices. Acting in concert as they always do, the Big Four —American Tobacco (Lucky Strike), Reynolds Tobacco (Camel), Liggett & Myers (Chesterfield), Lorillard (Old Gold)—dropped the wholesale price from $6.85 a thousand to $6. Though no one ever knows what the Big Four will do, few people expected the cut to be so deep, for a year and a half ago the price had been upped, presumably because of Cellophane wrappings, from $6.40 a...