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Though ranked among the Big Four, Old Gold was always a peewee in comparison. Whether the new member of the Big Four can do better, can overtake the 38-45,000,000,000 sales of each of the big three, the tobacco industry waits to see. With June sales totting up to the biggest total of any month in his company's history, President Chalkley went home last week to his one-acre place at Port Washington, Long Island, to enjoy a weekend's sailing in his 23-foot sloop, still trusting in partly the rum, partly the dwarf but mostly the price—the formula which so far has proved all that Philip Morris could desire.
*PhiIip Morris' sales for 1937 were 7,500,000,000; Old Gold's, 7,900,000,000. No figures for this year are yet available but Barron's, the National Financial Weekly, has already concurred with Mr. Lyon's claim that P. M. now leads Old Gold.
*Philip Morris was perturbed last year when at least 41 persons died from taking as medicine sulfanilamide that had been mixed with diethylene glycol as a solvent (TIME, Nov. 1). Medical research, accepted by the American Medical Association, indicates however that there is nothing poisonous about diethylene glycol when it is burned as it is in cigarets.