Controversies

Camel-Lucky. Readers of U. S. cigaret advertising were last week startled to find one great tobacco company virtually calling another a liar. Under the heading of Turning the light of Truth on false and misleading statements, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., makers of Camels, scolded George Washington Hill and his American Tobacco Co., makers of Lucky Strikes, which claims that a special toasting process removes from cigaret tobacco its harmful irritants and corrosive acrids.

After quoting a Lucky Strike advertisement (with the name deleted) the Camel advertisement maintained that Luckies had fallen back on their toasting campaign only when the Federal Trade Commission ordered them to stop using "fake testimonials and specious argument that all can keep slender by smoking that brand of cigarettes." The Camel advertisement also objected to the inference that the cigaret industry used "rank tobaccos" with harmful irritants, saying, in effect, that while George Washington Hill could legitimately discuss the rank tobacco in Luckies and its improvement by toasting, he should not attribute such rankness to the industry as a whole. Concerning toasting itself, the Camel copy said:

"The publication of a fake testimonial is no greater perversion of the truth than to imply that the heat treatment of tobaccos is an exclusive process with any single manufacturer. . . . Whether or not a manufacturer . . . attaches a contrivance to his heat-treating machines to catch . . . the vapors . . . can have no more effect toward improving the tobacco than your catching . . . the vapors that come from your teapot would have toward improving the tea. . . ."

Previous Camel advertisements have been consistently conservative, with an impersonality in marked contrast to the advertising of Luckies. Indeed, the Lucky advertising has usually been read almost as a series of unsigned manifestos from George Washington Hill, the Napoleon of American Tobacco Co. However, neither William N. Reynolds, Camel chairman nor Bowman Gray, Camel president, has emerged from a corporate reputation to become a popular figure in the public eye.

Loft-Loft. Loft, Inc., the candy company which last year rid itself of its Loft family founders, last week found itself with a double directorate and two factions fighting for control. Official records are in the hands of a group headed by Alfred R. Miller, of A. R. Miller & Co., investment securities house, who has been Loft president since the Lofts left. Meanwhile Charles G. Guth, onetime head of Mavis Candies, Inc. (bought by Loft in April 1929 for $1,000,000), has been elected Loft president by another stockholding group which is demanding access to the records. The Delaware-Chancery Court (Loft has a Delaware charter) has appointed a chancery master to settle the dispute.

Gillette-Schulte. All manufacturers like to have retail salesmen push their products. Last week Schulte Retail Stores Corp. sued Gillette Safety Razor Co. for $125,000, due as a quarterly payment for aiding sales of Gillette blades. Gillette filed a countersuit, maintaining that far from pushing Gillette sales, the Schulte stores were instead endorsing Dunhill razors, in which, claimed Gillette, D. A. Schulte, Inc. was largely interested.

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