The American Tobacco Company was a tobacco company founded in 1890 by J. B. Duke through a merger between a number of U.S. tobacco manufacturers including Allen and Ginter and Goodwin & Company. The company was one of the original 12 members of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1896.
The American Tobacco Company dominated the industry by acquiring the Lucky Strike Company and over 200 other rival firms. Antitrust action begun in 1907 broke the company into several major companies in 1911.
The American Tobacco Company, which started acquiring a wide range of non-tobacco products during the 1970s and 1980s, renamed itself American Brands in 1986, and has since been renamed Fortune Brands. American Tobacco became a subsidiary of American Brands for the next ten years until the company shed its tobacco brands to competitors.
Read more about American Tobacco Company: More Recent History
Famous quotes containing the words american, tobacco and/or company:
“Well, Mr. Thornton, you are a wonder. It looks the way all Irish cottages should and so seldom do. And only an American would have thought of emerald green.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“My excuse for not lecturing against the use of tobacco is, that I never chewed it; that is a penalty which reformed tobacco-chewers have to pay; though there are things enough I have chewed which I could lecture against.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The Bermudas are said to have been discovered by a Spanish ship of that name which was wrecked on them.... Yet at the very first planting of them with some sixty persons, in 1612, the first governor, the same year, “built and laid the foundation of eight or nine forts.” To be ready, one would say, to entertain the first ship’s company that should be next shipwrecked on to them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)