Business: Precedent Broken

Singer Ernestine Schumann Heink helped out the American Tobacco Co. last week. This concern, like all other tobacco manufacturers has been reluctant to advertise directly to women cigaret smokers, although women at present are an important clientele; but the manufacturers feared arousing the latent U. S. hostility to tobacco (TIME, Jan. 31). Prohibition has taught them much. However, the American Tobacco Co.'s advertising agency advised boldness and got Madame Schumann Heink to testify: "I recommend Lucky Strikes because they are kind to my throat." If Madame Schumann Heink smokes cigarets and yet remains solidly respectable and virtuous at 65, why then, no woman need conceal her smoking. . . . The American Tobacco Co. makes eight other important brands of cigarets, so that if this advertising arouses prohibitive discrimination against Lucky Strikes, the company can push some of its other makes.