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One day a little more than a year ago there issued from the Richmond, Va. factory of Larus & Brother Co. (William T. Reed, president) a small shipment of cigarets modestly named White Rolls. Their cheap package was without Cellophane, they were unheralded by advertising—but their price was 10¢ per package of 20. The selling organization which had made Edgeworth a widely-used pipe tobacco began pushing White Rolls and soon the orders were rolling in. News of this reached President Reuben M. Ellis of Philip Morris & Co. Ltd. and its Richmond subsidiary, Continental Tobacco Co. Continental had been having trouble distributing a cigaret called Paul Jones (price, 10¢) in New England. President Ellis arranged with the United and Schulte cigar stores and Liggett and Whelan drug stores to display Paul Jones (TIME, Aug. 31, 1931). Then he inserted in New York, Philadelphia and Boston newspapers a single advertisement: "20 for 10¢. America. . . . Here's your cigarette!" Manhattan sales jumped. By February White Rolls and Paul Jones were producing some 350,000,000 cigarets per month, 4% of the national total.
In March President George Cooper of Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. of Louisville, Ky., reduced the price of a 15¢ cigaret called Wings to 10¢. Production of Wings doubled in a month. Although White Rolls and Paul Jones had fallen off a little. Wings' sales boosted the ten-centers' average to 5% or 6% of the national total. By May Wings had slowed the decline in national cigaret production which had been going on all year. Wings did not advertise in newspapers, but blurbs on the cheap brown paper package told smokers that they could not smoke Cellophane. In June arrived the fourth national 10¢ cigaret— Twenty Grand, also from Louisville. Its sales soon passed those of White Rolls and Paul Jones, ran the ten-centers percentage up to 15. Last week that percentage was 20. Axton-Fisher Tobacco Co. was making 18 million Twenty Grands a day, with unfilled orders piled high. Wings were rolling out of the machines at the rate of 50 million per day. White Rolls and Paul Jones were still selling well. These four brands had taken advantage of cheap tobacco, the advertising done by the "standard brands," and the opportunity to make money with a small margin of profit ($0.2315 per 1,000, against $1.226 per 1,000 for the 15-centers) to cater directly to Depression-hit smokers. Tycoons Hill, Williams, Toms & Belt, whose advertising had increased U. S. cigaret consumption from eight billion to 119 billion in 20 years, were vexed.