WHOLLY SMOKES

The Rise and Fall of the GST Tobacco Empire

John Sladek

www.sf-gateway.com

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Contents

Title Page

Gateway Introduction

Contents

Introduction

Henry Badcock and the Noble Red Man’s Gift of Golden Tobacco

Erasmus Badcock and the Great Business Opportunity

Samuel Badcock and the Gob Heard ‘Round the World

Jezreel Badcock and the Gettysburg Address

As American as Base Ball

The Tobacco Gin

A Cure for Malaria

A Good Cigar is a Smoke

A Lucifer to Light Your Fag

Charleston Snuff, and Other Disasters

Sophisticated Ladies, Satin Dolls, and Brothers Who Could Spare a Dime

Lord Chamberlains

“Keep ‘Em Smoking!”

Morse Code

Filtered Dreams

Castro’s Cigar

Hazardous to Your Health

Puff Love

The Final Days

Chronology

Website

Also by John Sladek

Author Bio

Copyright

Introduction

Today, in 2020 A.D., it is easy to look back and dismiss GST as “just another tobacco company.” But this kind of 20-20 (or 2020 A.D.) hindsight is possible only because we have forgotten so much. There was nothing ordinary or common about GST; it was one of a kind. If we Americans loved it – if we hated it – it was always for GST itself, and never because it was “just another” anything.

It is hard to find a company more deeply American than the General Snuff and Tobacco Company (GST). The roots of GST are deeply twined around the roots of the USA. It has grown with this nation, from the settlement at Jamestown to the War of Independence, to the Civil War, the dawn of baseball, two world wars, and on into the twenty-first century. The story of GST is also the story of the Badcock family, who owned and operated the company throughout its magnificent history.

This book follows that history, stopping to explore a few of its more dazzling events. You will meet the Badcock who kidnapped Pocahontas, the Badcock who burned London, the Badcock who started the American Revolution, the Badcock who almost killed a president, the Badcock who delivered the real Gettysburg address, the Badcock who wanted to prolong World War One (because he was doing so well out of it), the Badcock who tried to bribe Roosevelt, the Badcock who tried to kill Fidel Castro, and many others. They are all connected with GST, the firm that grew from a humble plantation in the woods to a powerful international conglomerate, marketing tobacco and food products throughout the world.

But the history of GST is also the history of advertising and marketing in America. An early GST genius not only inventedbaseball cards, but made sure that all ballplayers henceforward would chew and spit their way through games. Later the “Lady Fantasy” campaign brightened the lives of American soldiers through a world war. Still later, a GST market research study led to the Hindenburg disaster. And will America ever forget the (1950s) audacious live TV commercial of Horace Badcock? Or the (1990s) even more audacious – some would say outrageous – campaign for the hearts and minds of America’s children – called “Operation Puff Love”?

Whether we read it as a great family romance or a cautionary tale, the story of GST is a story for all times, all Americans, all family folk everywhere.

Henry Badcock and the Noble Red Man’s Gift of Golden Tobacco

The earliest European visitors found the natives of the New World using tobacco in most of the ways we know of today: they smoked it in pipes (called tobagos) and cigars, they made cigarettes of thin perfumed reeds, and they chewed. As early as 1511, Roderigo de Jerez observed natives “drinking” smoke through a rolled-up leaf, and began smoking himself. He took the habit back to Spain, where the Inquisition imprisoned him for it. Seven years later, when he was released, smoking was already a fad in Spain. Soon, Spanish colonists were cultivating tobacco in Cuba.

The broad-leafed plant was just as popular across Europe. Catherine de Medici, queen of France, used snuff in 1566 (as a cure for migraine). Sir Walter Raleigh persuaded Queen Elizabeth to try smoking in 1600.

In England, tobacco became known as “sotweed,” because it was believed to make the user “besotted”, or drunk. Some thought it had medicinal properties, curing everything from asthma and flatulence to cancer and epilepsy. Others argued that breathing smoke made men as sick as chimney sweeps. Whatever its effects, tobacco was colonial gold. Virginia and Maryland, which had little success selling other crops, grew prosperous on tobacco.

In 1604, James I of England wrote A Counterblaste to Tobacco, denouncing it as

[a] custome Lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the black stinkingfume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomlesse.

His words fell on deaf ears. Englishmen (like all other Europeans) continued to use the vile weed from America in ever-increasing numbers. “Hatefull” it might be, but tobacco, from the very beginning, earned money for everybody, including the government. Holding its Nose, James’s government raised the tobacco tax by 4,000%, and soon grew rich by taxing the Lothsome substance.

Still, the royal family continued to rail against the new substance. James’s son and successor, Charles I, declared that Virginia was “wholly built on smoke.”

The strange story of GST begins in James-town, Virginia in 1614, at the wedding of John Rolfe to the Indian princess Pocahontas. Rolfe had recently introduced a Caribbean variety of tobacco into Virginia. Stronger, sweeter than the local weed, it would become popular both in the colony and in England. Everyone at the wedding feast agreed, this was the best tobacco ever tucked into a clay pipe and touched by tinder.

No one was more enthusiastic than Henry Porteus, a young cousin of the bridegroom. Having accepted a cigar from one of the Native American guests, young Henry liked it so much that he made it the subject of his speech at the wedding feast, calling it “The Noble Red Man’s Gift of Golden Tobacco.” He made the startling (and at the time, treasonous) prediction that tobacco wouldbuild a new “Empire of America – the mightiest the world hath ever beheld.” How right he was! America would indeed rise to become a mighty world power, and the General Snuff and Tobacco Company would rise with it.

Henry was of course speaking simply as a high-spirited youth, boisterous with tobacco and wine. He became increasingly tiresome throughout the evening, making endless ribald toasts to the happy couple, repeatedly claiming kisses from the bride, and boasting that smoking augmented his own manliness, “making mee large and stiff as any cigarro.” Finally he capped off the evening by abducting the bride.

Henry Porteus Kissing the Bride (Pocahontas)

He had staggered off to bed very late in the evening. Either by design or mistake, he had wandered into Rolfe’s cabin – the bridal bower, where the newlyweds lay sleeping. On realizing his mistake, he started to creep away, but the sight of the lovely Pocahontas seemingly changed his mind. Henry removed his coat and flung it over the bride’s head. He then seized her and carried her outside. (The good-natured maiden did not struggle or cry out, supposing it all to be some sort of obscure English joke, like the shivaree.)

When the wedding party caught him, Henry had already tied Pocahontas over his saddle and was preparing to ride away. Had he done so, it might have led to an international incident between the English settlers and the followers of Chief Powhatan. Fortunately, he paused to light his pipe, so history did not take a bizarre turn.

Henry Badcock

Instead, Henry was expelled from the settlement, and his name expunged from all records. After changing his name to “Henry Badcock,” he made his way into the wilderness, where he hacked out a small clearing and used his meager savings to start a tiny plantation – tobacco, of course.

It was a success from the start. Within a few years, Henry Badcock’s plantation had grown to medium size, making him a moderately wealthy man. He could even afford a wife – literally, since he paid 180 lb. of tobacco to have his bride shipped from England. The same ship brought him an African slave – the first of many.

The Wonderful Weed:

Nicotiana tabacum

Erasmus Badcock and the Great Business Opportunity

“Oh the miserable and calamitous spectacle!” – John Evelyn

Erasmus Badcock

When Henry Badcock died in 1665, he left a plantation of 11,000 acres and 24 slaves. He was succeeded in the family business by his grandsons, Enoch and Erasmus Badcock. Enoch managed the estate, but young Erasmus had a hankering to see the world, which was becoming a very different place for tobacco. Some praised the wonderful medicinal properties of tobacco, which was said to cure toothache, worms, halitosis, lockjaw, and cancer. Others believed that it caused tremors, staggering, and a withering of the “noble parts.”

Some countries (Russia, China, Persia) executed people for using tobacco. Others (England and France) encouraged its use and levied enormous taxes upon it. Turkey, which had earlier banned tobacco (and daily executed up to 18 smokers) now legalized the weed as no more dangerous than other everyday drugs: wine, coffee, and opium.

In America, tobacco had become so precious that it was now the official money of Virginia and Maryland. In England, tobacco was now hedged around by a thousand regulations: Englishmen could buy it only from the colonies, which in turn, could sell it only to England. And always in the middle sat the government, levying punishing taxes on every leaf. It rankled young Erasmus to see the labor of his slaves turned into precious tobacco, only to have the Crown and other parasites snatch away the best part of it.

He wondered if there was not some way of cutting out the government and other middlemen. He traveled to England with a shipment of his family’s tobacco.

I thoughte that I shd see for myself how the tobaccoe factors, brokers, diverse merchants, &c. do grow rich from our golden leaves, and how we might ourselves increase our profitt from trading direct to tobacconists.

When he arrived in London in 1666, the city was still in the clutches of the Great Plague. This worked in Erasmus’s favor, for many customs officials and other watchdogs had fallen ill. Erasmus, an enterprising lad, managed to evade the duty and secretly convey a large consignment of tobacco from the docks to a riverfront warehouse in Thames Street. From there, he took small quantities out to sell to retailers. (By this time, there were some 7,000 tobacconists in London.) Nor did he neglect advertising.

I posted bills on every wall of the citie, informing all and sundry how smoaking is a certain way to ward off the deadly Plague. Those accustomed to the Pipe need have no fear of falling Sick.

By Saturday, September 1, Erasmus had unloaded most of his duty-free stock on the fearful public. He spent that evening drinking at the Star Inn with a new friend, Thomas Farynor, who ran a bakery next door. The two enterprising businessmen became great friends. Erasmus tried to persuade him to carry a line of tobacco in his bakery, but Thomas, who was the King’s baker, had no time for such foolishness. Erasmus walked him home, where Thomas put out the fire in his oven for the night, then sat down with him for a final pipe. When the baker said good-night and went up to bed, Erasmus sat finishing his pipe and meditating for a moment on the marketing possibilities of selling tobacco in bakeries, butcher shops, indeed, wherever food was sold. Finally he emptied his pipe and strolled back to his lodgings at the Star Inn.

The fire seems to have begun near where Erasmus emptied his pipe. There were rushes on the floor, which must have smoldered for an hour or more, before blazing up to catch the baker’s store of firewood. By 1 a.m., the bakery was a-blaze. Thomas Farynor and his family escaped by clambering along a roof gutter to a neighboring house (all but one servant girl, who perished in the fire).

The sparks from the burning home fell on hay and fodder in the yard of the nearby Star Inn. From there the fire engulfed the Church of St. Margaret. It spread in waves down Pudding Lane and Fish Hill Street to Thames Street, where it found fuel indeed: warehouses full of tallow, oil, brandy and hemp (and the small remainder of Erasmus’s tobacco), open heaps of hay, timber and coal. By 8 a.m., the fire was raging halfway across Old London Bridge.

London was then a city of half-timbered medieval buildings, covered with pitch and thatched with straw, that flared up at the touch of a spark. A strong wind blew sparks everywhere. There was only the most modest equipment, such as buckets and bottles of water, to combat the blaze.

“Imperial Grenade” or Bottle of Water

to be Thrown at the Fire (1666)

John Evelyn’s journal recorded the panic:

The conflagration was so universal, and the people so astonished, that from the beginning, I know not by what despondency or fate, but crying out and lamentation, running about like distracted creatures without at all attempting to save even their goods; such a strange consternation there was among them, so as it burned both in breadth and length, the churches, public halls, Exchange, hospitals, monuments, and ornaments, leaping after a prodigious manner, from house to house and street to street…

All the sky was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burning oven, and the light seen above 40 miles round about for many nights. God grant mine eyes may never behold the like…

The Great Fire of London, 1666

The Great Fire of London burned for four days, and was finally stopped only when the Duke of York began blowing up houses with gunpowder, to create a fire-break. By this time, it had destroyed four-fifths of London, over 13,000 houses and 86 churches. Though few lives were lost, the property damage ran to £10 million. For years, debtors’ prisons were filled with those ruined by the Great Fire of London.

Erasmus, fortunately, was able to escape with his gold and even collect the remnant of his tobacco. He began visiting debtors’ prisons, now crowded with those ruined men who had lost their businesses and property. He explained to them how tobacco could be a great solace and comfort in their time of despair. Sometimes he helped a poor unfortunate by buying up his ruined property at a bargain price. When he sailed back to Virginia, Erasmus was doing very well for himself, very well indeed.

Samuel Badcock and the Gob Heard ‘Round the World

The Badcock clan continued to grow and prosper over the next century. The plantation grew to a phenomenal 340,000 acres, manned by 780 slaves. It was rivaled only by the decidedly second-place plantation of Robert “King” Carter (a mere 300,000 acres and 700 slaves).

One branch of the family moved to Boston where, in 1759, Samuel Badcock opened a small snuff mill. The Virginia Badcocks derided snuff as a foppish fad which would never last. Israel Badcock of Jamestown wrote:

The habit of taking fnuff is no more than an Affectacion of the French, brought back to England by Charles II and fpread throughout his Court. Thofe Boftonians who fancy themselves to be Gentlemen will of courfe haften to take up this Frivolity, but it hath no ftaying power.

In fact, it was the Virginia Badcocks who had no staying power, while the General Snuff Company of Boston (America’s first tobacco company) would form the basis of a world tobacco empire.

But that’s getting ahead of our story. First came a slight contretemps with Britain.

Samuel Badcock

The oppressive English tobacco tax was weighing ever more heavily on the American growers along the Chesapeake Bay (nicknamed the “Tobacco Coast”). They also found themselves perpetually in debt to British merchants; by 1776, growers owed the mercantile houses millions of pounds.

Thus when war finally broke out, there was no doubt about its purpose. Along the Chesapeake Bay, the Revolutionary War was known as the Tobacco War.

In the North, Samuel Badcock added chewing and pipe tobacco to his line of snuff. He saw the impending war as an opportunity to expand his business – after all, who chews and smokes more than soldiers? – but to which soldiers should he market his new products? The outcome of the war was far from certain, and it would pay to be on the right side.

Samuel finally compromised by selling to both sides. To the British, he offered a pipe tobacco called Good King George (marked with the image of the celebrated monarch). To the rebels, he offered a chewing tobacco called Minuteman (marked with a musket and a plow).

Samuel needed to know, however, whether his new products were acceptable; some market research was necessary. First he gave a generous supply of samples of Good King George to the garrison at Boston, where soon the British redcoats were puffing away contentedly. They seemed to like it, though there were complaints that it made them nervous and irritable.

Later the same day, Samuel rode out to the village of Lexington, some 20 miles away, and delivered generous samples of Minuteman chewing tobacco to the rebellious Lexington Company of militia. The militia, who called themselves “minutemen”, were delighted that his product seemed to pay them tribute. On the morning of April 19, 1775, the rebels were chewing assiduously, though complaining of the bitter taste. They had assembled on Lexington Green at 2 a.m. to block the advance of the British, who were marching through town on their way to Concord.

The two sides met under the most unfavorable circumstances. The British had marched all night, pausing only to smoke Good King George. They were jittery and quarrelsome, spoiling for a fight. The 70 minutemen, who had assembled to block the bridge, were supposed to be making only a silent protest, but the bitter tobacco had put them in a foul mood.

Major John Pitcairn, leader of the British troops, screamed out, “Disperse, you damned rebels! You dogs, run!”

The minutemen slowly and reluctantly began to withdraw. Their captain, John Parker, had told them not to fire unless fired upon first. But as they dispersed, one rebel stopped next to a broken plow which lay on the green. He looked back at the British and remarked, “This is disgusting! Damn it, I’ve had enough!” He referred to the bitter taste of the tobacco, which he now spat vigorously.

The gob of tobacco whacked against the iron plowshare with a sound like a musket shot, and threw up a cloud of dust like gunsmoke. The jittery British troops immediately fired two volleys into the crowd. The rebels returned fire, and the War of Independence began.

Jezreel Badcock and the Gettysburg Address

“Give a man very many unemployed hours, and tobacco, if not a necessity, is a wonderful solace.” – Henry T. Johns of the 49th Regiment, Massachusetts Infantry

Jezreel Badcock

Tristram Badcock

The War of Independence may have been good for the tobacco business, but the Civil War would prove even better. Both branches of the Badcock family continued to prosper after the revolution, and on into the nineteenth century. There was talk of reuniting the Boston and the Virginia branches into one mighty family company. Alas, the Civil War would split them further apart than ever.

Tristram Badcock, who now headed the powerful Virginia branch of the family, saw the war as a personal attack upon himself and his property. He believed that the dastardly Yankees wished him nothing but harm. If no one stopped these interlopers, they would strip him of his family heritage of fifteen plantations (totaling nearly a million acres), they would steal his 2,400 slaves, and they would lay waste to his crops of beautiful “Bright leaf” tobacco. There was nothing for it but to fight. Tristram formed a cavalry regiment and prepared to ride off in defense of his birthright.

His wife, Scarlotta, said good-bye to him on the steps of the great white mansion. It was evening, the air was filled with the scent of magnolias and the melodious humming of devoted slaves. Tristram removed his magnificent hat, with its eight-foot ostrich plume (there was not a hat to match it in all the Confederate Army) and kissed Scarlotta. He told her not to fret, he would return in time for the Cotillion Ball. Then he put on his hat, tied it securely under his chin, and rode off to glory.

Tragically, Tristram died in his very first skirmish. While charging up a hill, he passed under an oak tree where his splendid hat caught on a low-hanging limb. The hat, knotted securely under his chin with a leather thong, pulled Tristram from the saddle. His men, by then engaged in battle, were not immediately aware of his predicament. Tristram Badcock strangled to death before he could undo the knot.

Meanwhile in Boston, Jezreel Badcock had no such illusions about the war. This was not a crusade, but a business opportunity for his General Snuff and Tobacco Company. As he put it in a letter to his congressman in 1862:

Secession will mean the loss of most of our best supplies of tobacco. This is bound to drive up the price. On this account you and I must strive most assiduously to buy up ALL available and future crops, even those of the inferior (Pennsylvania) varieties. With very little exertion, we can, as the saying goes, “put a Corner on the Market” for this invaluable plant.

We each have a part to play in this schema. As a legitimate tobacconist, I am in the best position to invest prodigiously, without arousing suspicions. Your part will be to ensure that Congress does NOT decide to provide tobacco rations for our troops. You must see to it that the Grand Army does NOT RECEIVE A SINGLE IOTA OF free tobacco. ALL rations are to be purchased by individual troopers from sutlers – at OUR PRICES.

The scheme worked, forcing Northern troops to buy their supplies of tobacco from “sutlers,” civilians who ran small stores at every army post. The sutlers charged exorbitant prices for tobacco – up to $2.50 a pound, or ten times the normal rate. Union soldiers desirous of a smoke or a chaw had no choice. But in combat zones (where sutlers were not allowed) they soon discovered a new source of tobacco – the enemy.

The Confederate government authorized a tobacco ration for “every enlisted man in the service of the Confederate states.” It was considered indispensable for army morale. On the other hand, Confederate troops often lacked other items, such as coffee, sugar, shoes, blankets and overcoats, which were plentiful in the North. They solved the problem with a barter: during a truce, ceasefire or any lull in the fighting, the two sides would signal they were ready to trade. Two men at a time would cross over, make a deal, and return to their own lines.

When Jezreel Badcock learned of this, he was livid. He again wrote his congressman:

We must put an end this unconscionable trading with the enemy! Not only is it treasonous, it is bad for business. If soldiers keep getting their hands on Virginia tobacco, what are we fighting this War for? All will be lost!

We must change our plan. I see now that our only recourse is to win the War. We can ensure and consolidate our monopoly only if we make a speedy end to the War and thoroughly crush the Confederacy. We must take particular care to burn the tobacco plantations of the South entirely, thus ensuring a high and stable price for some time to come. Perhaps we can control tobacco for four score and seven years! Huzzah!

Jezreel saw that he must act directly, taking a personal hand in the war to achieve this monopoly. He waited until the war was virtually won, then quickly formed a detachment of volunteers. (As their leader, he proclaimed himself a general.) At the head of this detachment of irregular troops, he rode out from Boston only days before the peace treaty. Badcock’s Irregulars galloped at a relentless pace night and day, whipping horses furiously, changing to fresh horses, and heading always for Virginia.

Today, Badcock’s march through Virginia is almost as well-known as Sherman’s march through Georgia. Jezreel Badcock and his Irregulars made their way across the state, burning hundreds of tobacco plantations. He did not spare those of his own family. Indeed, he took particular care to seek out all fifteen of those belonging to his cousin Tristram, and put them to the torch.

On approaching one Badcock plantation, he beheld a woman on her hands and knees in the field, apparently eating something from the earth.

The woman was filthy with grubbing in the mud, and her eyes gleamed with insane fervor. She was digging up a tobacco plant by hand and stuffing it in her mouth. I heard her declare, “As Godis my witness, I’ll never go without a chaw again!”

I stopped and asked the poor woman if I might be of service. She informed me that her name was Scarlotta Badcock, and that she was waiting for her husband to return from the war.

“Sir, I am in sore straits. The slaves have all run off (ungrateful wretches that they are). I must somehow manage the million acres myself until Tristram comes home. Oh, I know they all say he was killed in the war, but I cannot believe that. He promised to take me to the Cotillion Ball. I have received the invitation.”

With this, she produced a mud-streak -ed card. “I know when he sees it, he will come home to honor his promise. Sir, I want you to take this invitation to Tristram and show it to him. And tell him to hurry home. Will you do me this service?”

I said, “But madam, you and I have not been introduced. I am a stranger.”

“I have always relied upon the kindness of strangers,” she said, and pressed the card into my hand.

“But where shall I deliver it, madam?”

“They gave me his address as Gettys-burg, Pennsylvania,” she said, and mentioned a road in that city. As it happened, I knew the address.

“Begpardon, ma’am,” I said, “There is no one living on that road. That is the road to the graveyard!”

“Stuff and nonsense,” she said. “You tell him to hurry along home.”

I promised to deliver the pathetic missive, and bidher good-day. I could not bring myself to tell her that I was Tristram’s cousin Jezreel, or that I had come to lay waste to his plantation. Such explanations would only confuse the wretched creature. Instead, I continued on to the mansion house, made a torch of the invitation card, and used it to fire the place. As soon as my men had finished putting the outbuildings and fields to the torch, we rode off, heading for home.

It should be noted that Scarlotta did not die alone and insane. After recovering her senses, she moved to Richmond and opened a boarding house. Soon her family became prominent hoteliers. A century later, one of her descendants would write a novel based on Scarlotta’s experiences, called Gone up in Smoke.

Nor did Jezreel succeed in cornering the market in tobacco. Indeed, his General Snuff and Tobacco Company achieved only modest profits. To grow further, it needed a man of vision, a man of wide-ranging ideas – a man like Jezreel Badcock’s son, Fillmore.

As American as Base Ball

Fillmore Badcock

It was during the Hayes administration that the company passed from Jezreel to Fillmore Badcock. Young Fillmore had grand ideas about everything. As he wrote in his diary,

The nation is growing, and by jig, we must grow with it! Boston is not big enough to hold our great company. We can and must expand to fill this great continent, from sea to shining sea! Now that we are one great nation, I mean to make General Snuff a household name everywhere. Nay, General Snuff must become one with the very idea of America. All across this great continent, no man will count himself truly manly until he has bit off a chaw of our “Nonpareil” cut plug. It must and it will become as American as the Grand Old Flag, as American as the game of Base Ball.

Possibly with that goal in mind, Fillmore began actually hawking Nonpareil at Fourth of July Parades. Each packet was wrapped in a small American flag.

Alas, sales were disappointing. Fillmore wrote:

No one wants Nonpareil. Why did I ever think I could set the world on fire? All is lost. The rent on the shop is past due, the snuff factory is mortgaged, and I have not the wherewithal to pay my laborers for another week. Sometimes I think of just giving it all up and taking a job (I hear they’re hiring factory hands in the Necco works in Cambridge).

But maybe parades are the wrong place to sell! Maybe I should try selling Nonpareil at Base Ball games! After all, Base Ball maybe the national Pass Time, but it is infernally slow. A game can take hours, most of it spent waiting. Fielders must stand idle for long spells, waiting for a hit. Spectators must sit staring for hours. It may be that player and spectator alike would benefit from a hearty “chaw” to relieve the tedium.

In addition, Fillmore tried one last marketing strategy to attract customers. With his rent money, he bought a rubber stamp and a cheap deck of baseball playing cards. The back of each card depicted a ballplayer from some popular team, such as the New York Nine, the Knickerbockers, or the Cincinnati Red Stockings. On the card face, Fillmore stamped “Nonpareil Base Ball Cards – Collect them! Trade them!” Then he slipped a card inside the wrapper of every packet of Nonpareil Chewing Tobacco.

As we now know, the gamble paid off handsomely. Fillmore sold out his first deck of cards within two innings. He was obliged to leave the game and buy more decks. Nonpareil became wildly popular, as everyone scrambled to get one of the new “base ball cards.” Within a month, Fillmore Badcock was able to pay his rent, expand his business, and hire other men to hawk Nonpareil at ball games. He was able to print his own baseball trading cards.

Within a year, he was truly national, shipping consignments of Nonpareil to every one of the 38 states. He later boosted his baseball game sales even further by altering the words of a popular new song:

Take me out the ball game

Take me out with the crowd

Buy me some Nonpareil chewing tobac’

I don’t care if I never get back

This must be counted as the first, and the most successful sports-tobacco campaign in history. Chewing tobacco became forever linked with baseball in the public imagination. Indeed, it’s hard to think of baseball history without it. Ballplayers everywhere took up the “chaw.” The image of a batter with a “quid” in his cheek has persisted for over a century –many players in all leagues still chew.

The Tobacco Gin

By 1877, the General Snuff and Tobacco Company was so famous that the opening of its new factory in Richmond was national news. No less a personage than the President of the United States agreed to officiate at the opening ceremony – a ceremony which would have tragic consequences.

The new factory was like nothing ever built before. At its heart was an amazing new processing machine, the “tobacco gin.” Just as the cotton gin eliminated the backbreaking labor of making cotton fiber, so the tobacco gin would automate the process of making chewing tobacco.

The huge machine occupied the entire space inside a large building. Above it stretched a wooden scaffolding, hastily thrown up for the opening ceremony. Thence visitors crowded at the rail, gawking down while Fillmore pointed out the features of the awesome machine: tobacco leaves were sucked into one end of the building, while continuous Nonpareil cut plug chewing tobacco spewed forth from the other end. The structure above looked shaky, but it held.

As the moment of opening approached, the Richmond Zouaves Silver Band began to play a selection of popular tunes. More dignitaries arrived to join the packed crowd upon the high platform. Some said later that they felt the timbers trembling even then, even before the President’s appearance. Yet the structure held.

Finally President Cleveland’s entourage arrived. As the band struck up “Hail to the Chief,” Fillmore rushed to greet him at the factory door.

Cigar Label Depicting President Grover Cleveland

(before his accident)

“Sir, I wasn’t expecting so many people in your party. The scaffolding isn’t quite -”

“Yes, yes, a capital machine. Shall we get on with this?”

Fillmore meekly led the way into the factory to the scaffolding stairs. The President, who weighed over 300 pounds, labored up the stairs and stepped out upon the platform to cut the ribbon. He was followed closely by a large entourage of equally large men. All those on the scaffolding felt a tremor in their toes. Yet, even then, the structure held.

“Tobacco is the road to the future,” the President started to say. “As we chew, so do we –”

At that moment, a steam valve popped open, sending aloft a blast of steam with a terrific roar. This event, though harmless in itself, had the unfortunate effect of startling the visitors. They leapt back involuntarily, all of the portly dignitaries and the mighty President. This sudden shift of weight was finally too much for the wooden scaffolding; it sagged, groaned, and collapsed, spilling the entire group upon the monster machine.

By some miracle, the President was saved (though some say he was never the same again) and not a single visitor was seriously hurt. Fill-more Badcock, however, tumbled headlong into the very maw of the metal monster, which rapidly converted him from a tobacco tycoon into ten yards of cut plug.

President Grover Cleveland

(after his accident)

A Cure for Malaria

Blessington Badcock

After Fillmore’s untimely death, the company fell to his young son, Blessington. Blessington Badcock had been a sickly child, and it was feared he would not be up to the job. The fears were groundless. The time he’d spent recuperating out West molded him into a man – he returned an industrial genius, a two-fisted empire builder who brought the company to its “manifest destiny.”

He was not averse to identifying the company with our nation. Glaring through his pince-nez, gnashing his teeth, and hammering on the boardroom table, Blessington declared that it was manifestly the destiny of General Snuff to take a keen interest in all American affairs, especially those involving “foreign entanglements.”

“What’s good for General Snuff,” he said on more than one occasion, “is good for America.” It went without saying, that what was bad for General Snuff was bad for America. The company was particularly concerned about the current revolution in Cuba. The Cubans had been fighting since 1895 to free themselves from Spanish rule and become an independent nation. Blessington repeatedly wrote asking President Cleveland to intervene.

Mr. President, we must help the brave Cubans fling off the yoke of Spanish oppression. Not only is their cause right, and dear to the heart of every American, but the very heart of our cigar industry is at stake. It is vital to secure our important Havana and Manila cigar interests. It would be a national tragedy if those interests were to remain in the cruel hands of Spanish oppressors. It could well mean the end of the five-cent cigar!

Cleveland, however, had little reason to listen to Badcock schemes. He wished America to remain neutral. Nor did his successor, McKinley. Then in 1898, an event took place that changed President McKinley’s mind.

The U.S. warship Maine was lying at anchor in Havana harbor. A sudden unexplained explos – ion sank her, with 250 of her crew. The causes of this explosion are still unknown.

Critics of the General Snuff and Tobacco Company have blamed the firm. It has been claimed that a “secret company agent climbed aboard and set a charge. His only purpose was to drag the United States into a foreign war!”

Adair Badcock

Nothing could be further from the truth. Although it is true that a company agent was aboard, there was nothing secret or sinister about his mission. He was there simply to observe, and watch out for company cigar interests in Havana. The agent was a cousin of Blessington’s, Adair Badcock. He had no intention of harming an American ship, as his final cable to the home office indicates. Indeed, it can be argued that he was incapable of subterfuge.

CHEERIO ALL

EXHILARATING TO BE ABOARD STOP SHIP

IS VERY BUSY COMMA

ALWAYS PEOPLE RUSHING ABOUT STOP

I SEEM TO BE IN THE WAY MUCH OF

THE TIME EXCLAMATION

SOME OFFICER VERY RUDELY INFORMED

ME TODAY THAT I MAY NOT SMOKE

NEAR SOMETHING CALLED THE POWDER

MAGAZINE STOP

WE SHALL SEE ABOUT THAT STOP

REGARDS ADAIR

Nothing further is known; evidently Adair went down with the ship.

Blessington and the rest of America went to war. As he told the board:

At last! We have a chance to help an oppressed people and also to secure the important Havana and Manila cigar interests of our beloved General Snuff. It would be a national tragedy if those interests were to remain in the cruel hands of Spanish oppressors. Let us keep them in our far more benign hands boys.

With this in mind, I am prepared to take part in the scrap personally. I must avenge my cousin and my countrymen – and do some business in Havana and Manila. I am therefore raising a regiment. If Teddy Roosevelt can have his “Rough Riders,” I will have my cigar contingent – my Puff Riders!

Blessington soon rode off to Cuba, whence he sent the following letter home:

My beloved Letty,

Life here is very hard, what with the swamps, the heat, and the sickness all around. Speaking of which, I believe I have discovered the cause of malaria. I have noticed that men who smoke cigars seem immune to the disease, while non-smokers soon come down with it. Perhaps, when all this madness is over, we can use that in our advertisement – A CURE FOR MALARIA.

Incidentally, I have not received your usual shipment of cigars. I hope you haven’t forgotten to send it! I cannot abide the local ‘Havana’ products, which are inferior. I will wait instead for your next consignment of our very own Dunkelmeister Grandees. How I long for you, my dear, and for a fine old Yankee stogie!

Your affectionate husband,

Blessington

This was his last letter. The stogies never arrived, and Blessington succumbed to malaria.

The Lady Has a Light

for your

Dunkelmeister

Grandee

–

Yes, Miss Liberty

believes in Your

Freedom – to smoke the

smoothest, finest-tasting

cigar of your life.

“Bring me those tired of

ordinary cigars, those

yearning to draw freely”

–

Try this new land of

smoking. You’ll never

go back to the old.

“The Lady Has a Light” – advertisement for Dunkelmeister Grandee Cigars (1894)

A Good Cigar is a Smoke

Augustus Badcock

Blessington Badcock was succeeded by his brother Augustus, the first head of the firm to glimpse the full power of advertising. Augustus began with the simple idea that “a pretty girl can sell anything,” and he built mightily upon it. He outlined his plan in a 1913 memorandum:

Rudyard Kipling had it wrong when he said that “a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.” The plain fact is, women and cigars are very close to the same thing, at least in the masculine mind. For isn’t the enjoyment of a cigar akin to the enjoyment of making love to a woman? That is, a fiery, forbidden pleasure, enjoyed in private, often after a good dinner.

Perhaps smoking is only a substitute for the fires of passion. A man may smoke to show a woman how manly he is, or to cover his embarrassment with her, or because he has only a burning cigar to kiss instead of her blazing beauty. But when he applies his lips to a “sweet postprandial cigar,” (or pipe, or cigarette) you may be sure he is dreaming of finer after-dinner pleasures.

Think of the cigar divans of days gone by – bordellos disguised as smoking rooms. Think of Carmen rolling cigarettes in the factory.

Think of the female apache dancer, sharing a burning cigarette with the man she adores and hates. And as Oscar Wilde put it, “A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?”

We at General Snuff must find a way of selling this dream, the dream of tobacco as a mistress. We must make the customer feel that, when he lifts the lid upon a box of our cigars, he is unlocking the door of a hareem. Should we succeed in conveying this dream, the world is ours.

One way we might do this is at drinking establishments. We might consider dressing comely young women in fetching uniforms, and have them pass among the clientele, carrying trays full of cigarettes. These sirens, or “cigarette girls,” as we shall call them, would carry their trays in front of them, just below their admirable bosoms. This guarantees that men would at least look at their wares. A certain amount of decolletage might be added, to further entice…

Gibson Girl –

Inspiration for

Augustus?

A Lucifer to Light Your Fag

When the Great War broke out, Augustus recognized it not only as a time of world upheaval, but also a time of business opportunity.

By 1917, American doughboys were encouraged to pack up their old kit bags with General Snuffs new brand of cigarettes, Lady Fantasy. Each enameled tin of cigarettes displayed a pouting, handsome lady with auburn hair, gray eyes and rather misty features. There was nothing indefinite, however, about her well-filled shirt-waist. Augustus had insisted on the substantial bosom. “Our boys are far from home,” he wrote to the advertising artist. “They want their girl, they want their mother, they want something to suck on. Let us push it at them.”

Lady Fantasy cigarettes became so popular that the slogan on each pack – “Fragrant and Graceful”, abbreviated F.A.G. – gave rise to “fag”, the First World War nickname for a cigarette. (In the same way, “Lucifer” brand matches – a company which General Snuff tried to acquire – became the nickname for all matches. Both names appeared in the popular song of the time:

Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag

And smile, smile, smile

Long as there’s a lucifer to light your fag

Then smile, ‘cause it’s the style

But General Snuff found a way to make the government help with its advertising. Lady Fantasy and her bosom were to become ever more prominent as the war continued.

A patriotic poster of 1918 was not, strictly speaking, an advertisement for General Snuff. Instead, it purported to sell War Bonds. The tobacco giant had generously devised this patriotic poster and printed thousands of copies at company expense, volunteering to place them in rail-road stations across the land. The War Department, in gratitude, promised to look into larger orders for General Snuff and Tobacco products.

The poster shows an officer in his tent at night, somewhere in France. The orange candle-light gleams on his hair and the cleft in his chin, as he leans back from the letter he is writing to take a pull at his cigarette. On the table before him, along with his pen, the unfinished letter, and his Bible, there stands a prominent tin of Lady Fantasy cigarettes. The smoke rises from his cigarette and curls back to form a cool blue cloud above his head. This cloud contains a vision of home: a cool summer evening, magnolias around the porch, and a lovely woman in shirtwaist reclining across a white porch swing. The slogan reads:

IS SHE BUYING BONDS FOR ME?

Notice that the product is never mentioned. Yet the woman in the dream is of course Lady Fantasy herself, with her auburn hair, mist-gray eyes, not to forget the fantastic bosom. Thus the company contrived not only to hammer home its message without a word, it managed to link the product to patriotism.

But there was even more to the Lady Fantasy campaign. In every tin of cigarettes that went overseas, General Snuff included a trading card showing the same romantic picture as the poster. But here the message was addressed to the troops themselves, using a slightly different slogan:

IS SHE WAITING FOR ME?

A reassuring subhead added, “You can always count on Lady Fantasy.”

It might have been a great and wonderful campaign. The poster Lady Fantasy might have become more famous than the finger-pointing Uncle Sam. But alas, the war came to an end. As Augustus wrote in an office memorandum:

This armistice is very bad news indeed. Had we been able to keep the fighting going until 1921 or even 1920, we might have become the top tobacco company in the country. As it is, peace has reared its ugly head, and we must make the best of it. But I cannot help feeling that in ending the war our politicians have, as usual, stabbed us in the back.

Charleston Snuff, and Other Disasters

The period between the world wars was one of growth and consolidation. The 1918 armistice meant the end of Lady Fantasy. She was far too wholesome and old-fashioned for the Jazz Age. Men no longer dreamed of a Gibson girl – they were beginning to dream instead of a girl who liked to drink gibsons (concocted from bathtub gin), a girl who knew how to flap, how to neck, how to dance the Charleston on the wing of a biplane.

The packet with Lady Fantasy and her slogan “Fragrant and Graceful” (F.A.G.) had to go. Somehow the word “fag” had been debased to a pejorative term for a homosexual. Clearly it was time to scrap Lady Fantasy and start over. But how?

Augustus was getting old. He realized he could not run the company forever, so he began grooming his son LeRoy to take over. He started him in the advertising department. There young LeRoy plunged in, eager to show his stuff.

The trouble was, LeRoy Badcock didn’t have any stuff to show. Under his direction, GST in the 1920s saw many false starts. Lucky Lindy cigarettes lasted a year, mainly because Lindbergh (who didn’t smoke) never endorsed them. Then came a series of disastrous product names. Charleston Snuff appeared just as interest in the Charleston was disappearing.

LeRoy Badcock

“They’re all dancing something new, called the Black Bottom,” LeRoy complained. “I don’t suppose we could bring out a Black Bottom Snuff?”

“Doesn’t convey quite the right image, sir,” a chorus of advertising lackeys informed him.

“Damn! I suppose we need to rethink.”

Nothing seemed to go right for LeRoy. He launched Houdini cigars in 1926 (the year Houdini died shortly after an escape). He launched Tutanhkamen cut plug (which seemed as popular as a mummy’s curse). Finally in 1929, he launched a new cigar called Wall Street (the crash made it a national joke).

Augustus wasn’t laughing. He informed Le-Roy that he had one more chance to bring a successful product to market. “Son, maybe your problem is all this modernism. We don’t need it. I say, stick to the old tried and trusted products. Remember, a comely young woman can always sell a seegar. Of course it’s your decision, my boy.”

It was 1936 before LeRoy Badcock came up with his next product, a cigar as new, sophisticated, utterly modern as that latest mode of transportation, the airship.

They’re always saying that zeppelins are cigar-shaped. By jing, so are our cigars! Why don’t we cash in on that? They say the zeppelins are quiet, smooth, elegant, real tasteful, and just the thing for the upper crust. We too must hammer on those themes. “Relax with a high-class cigar,” stuff like that. We can make our new cigar as exciting as the Graf Zeppelin itself.

Reactions to this odd memo varied. Some thought it was a stroke of genius. The Freudian connotations of zeppelins (the longest objects ever sent into the sky) would perhaps carry over to the new cigar from General Snuff:

The Hindenburg Cigar

The Ride of Your Life

A Smoke to Remember

If you are fortunate enough to take passage on the world’s largest and most luxurious Airship, the Hindenburg, you’ll experience a quiet, smooth ride in tasteful, elegant surroundings. The whole atmosphere is one of tranquillity.

That’s what we aim for too in our newest creation, the Hindenburg Cigar. It’s the longest, most gracefully tapered cigar in the world. One puff, and you’ll experience all the smoothness, the good taste, the elegance of a ride on the famous Airship.

So if you can, take a ride on the great Airship itself.

If not, light up a Hindenburg, relax, and enjoy the ride.

Yet LeRoy was not satisfied with this advertisement:

It lacks substance. It says very little about what I call “the Zeppelin Experience.” We need to tell people what it must be like up there, floating through the sky, drinking and playing bridge with earls and princesses, all the swells, while the map unrolls down below. Gliding along far above the cares of the world, above the clouds. Like being God. The Zeppelin brochures make it sound just peachy.

Somehow we need to convey all that in our cigar ads. I think I must give it a whirl myself. I’ll take passage on the Hindenburg and keep a detailed journal.

LeRoy Badcock boarded the Hindenburg in Frankfurt, on May 3, 1937. It was of course the great airship’s last voyage. The following entries from his journal detail the trip:

May 3. Boarded the great ship at Frankfurt-am-Main. They keep it in a huge hangar, with the tail sticking out. The tail fins are decorated with huge swastikas. The steward tells me the Nazi Party paid the company a lot of money to put them up there. The great airship was flown on propaganda flights over Germany, dropping pamphlets and showing the flag. I wonder if we couldn’t pay more, and get them to take the big swastikas off the tail fins and put up GST instead. It’s a thought…

You just walk up a gangplank and there you are. They make you hand over your matches and lighter when you come aboard. That irritated me – the Germans are good at giving irritating orders – so I kept back one box of matches – how would it look, the president of a tobacco company not having a light! Evidently this has something to do with the ship being filled with hydrogen, not helium as planned. I don’t understand all that chemical mumbo-jumbo. There was some problem about buying helium from America. Political stuff again. I don’t understand all that political mumbo-jumbo, either. I’ll wager the big swastikas didn’t help. Anyway, they assure me we will be able to smoke in the Smoking Saloon.

They also make you hand over your camera, but the steward says we’ll get them back after we get past the three-mile limit and head out to sea. Mean-while, we watch from the windows while a hundred little men pull ropes and somehow back us out of the hangar. They play some music for the occasion. It really is all very smooth, no bumps or noises at all. Nothing like a ship. Then we are on our way!

My cabin is tiny, but adequate. I took a stroll around the ship, looking over the rather luxurious Dining Saloon, Drawing Room, and Reading and Writing Room. Then I descended a wide staircase to the Smoking Saloon. I thought to myself, this airship has everything you might expect on a luxury liner, but I will be in New York in two and a half days.

May 4. In the morning, took a tour of the ship. We were shown the bridge with all its fascinating controls. The braver souls were taken up a ladder to walk along a dim corridor and look at the huge gas bags.

At lunch, met a pretty Bavarian woman named Diesl, an English tennis player named Hatney, and a large, red-bearded fellow with a monocle who introduced himself as Count Exon Waldiz. Some kind of Ruritanian aristocrat or something.

Count Waldiz joined me later in the Smoking Saloon, where I was enjoying a perfecto and a glass of whiskey. He seemed to be drinking absinthe. “Two days of boredom,” he said, and suggested we play cards for money. I explained that I know no games but “SlapJack.” We played that for an hour, and I lost over $800.

In the evening, I watched the stars with Fräulein Diesl. She says she lost over 4,000 marks to Count Waldiz, betting on the relative speeds of two ships down below.

May 5. Read a few cables in the morning and sent off replies. In the afternoon, I took a brisk walk with Mr. Hatney. He says he lost over £750 to Count Waldiz. The Count had bet he could seduce Fräulein Diesl before we landed. This morning, Hatney had seen her come out of Waldiz’s cabin. I wonder about Waldiz. Is he really a count, and not some kind of swindler who preys on airship passengers?

In the evening, Count Waldiz again drank absinthe. He was up to no good. First he bet me a thousand dollars he could name more cigar types than I. This he didby cheating. After I had named the Claro, Corona, Corona Gorda, Double Corona, Figurado, Giant, Grand Corona,

Long Corona, Lonsdale, Maduro, Panatela, Perfecto, Petit Corona, Pyramide, Robusto, Simple Corona, Toro, Torpedo, and Triangular, he named the Valdez.

“The Valdez?” I asked.

“Named after my family. Valdez is the Spanish version of Waldiz,” he explained.

After I paid up, he showed me a pistol and suggested a sporting game of Russian roulette. When I refused, he suggested we try “taking the bridge.” We could force the captain to make the ship do some “dives and loops and things. Great fun, what?” I again refused.

“But LeRoy, my old friend, does it not drive you mad, all these German rules and regulations? Do you not feel like doing something, making something happen? I mean, here we have to sit in this room to enjoy a smoke. It is an insult to you as a cigar tycoon! Don’t you feel like having a cigar in your cabin?”

I said yes indeed, and I had hidden a box of matches for that very purpose.

“Capital! And did you do it? Did you smoke a cigar in your cabin?”

I explained that I was afraid the steward would smell the smoke or find the ash.

“Afraid of the steward. LeRoy, you have a sad case of German-itis! But I will think of some cure, fear not.” There was a mad gleam in his monocle. I’m glad we land tomorrow.

May 6. Towards evening, we approached our destination, Lakehurst, New Jersey. I had not seen Count Waldiz all day. Then all at once he popped up in the corridor and grabbed my lapels. “LeRoy, my old friend, come and have a final cigar. I’ve found a place where the steward won’t bother you!” He indicated the ladder leading aloft, to the gas envelope – an area expressly forbidden to unaccompanied passengers. I murmured something about seeing to my suitcases.

The Mad Count leaned towards me, his breath reeking of absinthe (I will henceforth forever hate licorice). “LeRoy, my old friend, you must not be a coward! Imagine, a tobacco czar, afraid to light up! Come up and have a last smoke with me!”

I followed him up the ladder to the dimly-lit corridor. We found ourselves on a catwalk running the length of the air-ship, past these rows of great cylinders of oiled silk – the gas bags.

“Just think, LeRoy! These big sausages contain the clouds of hydrogen that hold us up in the sky! Marvelous!” Waldiz bit the end off a grand corona. “Got a light?”

I did not feel like a smoke myself, but I handed him my matches. He was about to light it, when a crewmen appeared. “Verboten. This deck is off-limits to passengers! What do you make here, gentlemen?”

Waldiz looked at him. “We came up because I smell gas.”

The crewman started, then smiled. “You make a joke, sir. Hydrogen gas has no smell. No smell at all.”

“Not for ordinary people, but I have a very sensitive nose.” The Count pointed to his nose, which was red and bulbous. “Years of absinthe have sharpened my senses. I tell you, I smell gas! There is a leak!”

The crewman chuckled indulgently. “Really? Where is this so-called gas leak?”

Count Waldiz pointed to a dark corner between two gas bags. “Over there, I believe. Let’s have a closer look.”

He struck a match and lunged forward.

That’s all I recall until this moment. I am lying on the ground, and my leg seems to be broken. There’s burning stuff falling all around me – falling, I fear, from the mighty Hindenburg. The ship itself is still intact in the air above me, though ablaze.

Miraculously, my journal and fountain pen have fallen with me, so I can continue my chronicle. No sign of Count Waldiz. Not that I want to see him again. [No one ever did see the Count again]. Damn him! He’s created a disaster! There go all our hopes for a decent, upmarket stogie!

I’d better wind this up now, for the Hindenburg seems to be falling towards me! Evidently if the hydrogen burns up, the darned thing can’t stay aloft! It sinks to earth as surely as a ship sinks to the bottom of the sea! I wish I’d paid more attention in chemistry class. If only –

LeRoy was crushed to death by a piece of the falling wreckage. Near as anyone can tell, it was a giant tail fin, emblazoned with a swastika.

Sophisticated Ladies, Satin Dolls, and Brothers Who Could Spare a Dime

Throughout the 1930s, the advertising department set to work developing a cigarette with a completely new image. As their report saw it, people wanted to escape from the harsh world of the Depression into a fantasy of wealth and sophistication:

Our new cigarette, X, must be closely identified with the modern young aristocrats: men and women who are rich and suave, tough and coolly sophisticated.

For example, the man who smokes X might spend the day hunting foxes, then put on evening clothes to go to a boxing match, ending up at a low dive in Harlem where all the waiters know him.

Or the man who smokes X might return from hunting big game in Nairobi, then spend a season relaxing at Monte, where he enjoys making substantial bets – a king’s ransom on a turn of the wheel.

Let us not forget the woman who smokes X. She might spend the day racing her own plane, then give a dinner party for a select circle of friends including the Prince of Wales.

Or the woman who smokes X might play a chukker of polo, then get up a theatre party to see the Lunts in a new Noel Coward play. Later she would include the Lunts and Coward in her party, as she moved on to the newest nightclub.

The name we choose for X must suggest something English and aristocratic, such as those used by our competitors: KingEdward, Prince Albert, Chesterfield, Tareyton, &c. Possible candidates are Lord Byron, Ring James, Ivanhoe, Montrose, or aristocratic place names like Hampshire, York, Lancashire, Kent, Marlborough, Somerset, Devonshire.

A major obstacle to this change was Augustus Badcock, who saw no reason to modernize. Augustus was a formidable bully. Lady Fantasy had been his idea originally, and now he was reluctant to let her go. Augustus was still the president, and he resisted all change at General Snuff and Tobacco. His reply to the memo fairly snorted at the idea of “Lord Fauntleroy stuff” selling tobacco. The image of poloplaying women was also repugnant to him. He responded to the famous memo by firing the entire advertising dep artment.

There followed a stormy board meeting:

AUGUSTUS: We don’t need no Lord Fauntleroys or polo popsies in tight breeches. We can always count on our old standbys, Lady Fantasy, Bull Pouch, and Cairo.

BOARD MEMBER (laughs): Just look at the sales figures. No one still smokes Lady Fantasy but a handful of old veterans – half of them missing a lung.

AUGUSTUS: That’s from poison gas! You can’t blame cigarettes for lung problems!

BOARD MEMBER: Maybe not. Nevertheless, the public associates our products with broken-down, bronchitic invalids. Is that what we want? As for Bull Pouch tobacco and Cairo Cut Plug, nobody uses them but a few old-timers out west. Is that the kind of image we want? Tom Mix trying to hit a spittoon? We don’t need to call up the ghosts of sunburned yahoos with dirty necks, squatting around a campfire. No sir. The fact is, cowboys are dying out, and if we don’t move with the times, so are we.

AUGUSTUS: Death! Damn you, I know all about death. Lost my son to this High Society nonsense. Le-Roy just had to get on the damned Hindenburg and mingle. Well, I’m not going to suffer any further losses. Damn it, I’ll die out myself before I let you tarnish the good name of General Snuff and Tobacco!

So saying, Augustus angrily bit off a large chaw of Cairo Cut Plug. It was a huge bite, more than he could chew. Somehow Augustus sucked some of it back into his windpipe and began to choke.

The other board members looked at one another. No one moved. We’ll never know why they hesitated. Did they want him to choke? Or were they simply afraid to step up and slap him on the back?

Either way, from that day forward, Augustus Badcock was no longer an obstacle to progress.

Lord Chamberlains

Augustus was succeeded by his nephew Horace (“Boomer”) Badcock, a man with more experience of the modern world, and especially of the Great Depression. As a young man, Horace took a summer off and tramped the country. He lived the life of a hobo, riding the freight trains, standing in soup lines, sleeping outdoors – and drinking antifreeze. “I wanted to get in touch with real people,” he explained later. The episode earned him the nickname, “Boomer,” which he bore proudly the rest of his days.

Horace felt he knew what ordinary people wanted in a cigarette, namely an escape into elegance. “They don’t enjoy living in dirt, and poverty, and ugliness,” he said. “They want beauty and sophistication. They want class and plenty of it. We need to make our products as exciting as the movies. When people light up, they ought to feel they’re sharing in the lives of the famous, the glamorous, the wealthy. They ought to feel it’s like sipping that first martini.”

He rehired the advertising department and cautiously endorsed the new campaign. The company prepared to launch a new cigarette with an English name.

The name itself was a problem. A number of English names were considered and rejected, for various reasons. Some were too hard to pronounce (Cholmondely, Leicester, Featherstone-haugh). Some simply had a comical sound (Stoke-on-the-Wold, Horsleydown, Cuthbert Harrowing, Wrangthorn, Plimsoll). Some sounded faintly risqué (Marquis of Bath, Knight of the Garter, and Lord Privy Seal).

The final choice was Lord Chamberlain, a name sufficiently aristocratic, suave, and worldly. No one knew that, in Britain, this was only the title of a dull official whose chief job was censoring plays. In America the name itself would play well –on Broadway or anywhere else.

The drift of the campaign was clear in magazine ads from prestigious 1930s magazines like New Yorker and Vanity Fair. Each ad featured a glittering aristocrat.

In one ad a society lady is shown in two poses: in aviator suit, climbing from the cockpit of her own plane; in evening dress she welcomes guests to a dazzling dinner party. Always and everywhere, she smokes Lord Chamberlains.

“I serve them to my guests between courses,” she explains. “Nothing aids digestion like Lord Chamberlain.”

“For a recent dinner party at our house in Newport, I really depended upon Lord Chamberlain,” she says. “I serve them to guests after every course – everyone knows they aid digestion – and they make the conversation flow and the occasion simply sparkle.” She laughs. “My friends are all sold on Lord Chamberlain. It’s the modern thing to do!”

Lord

Chamberlain –

It’s the

Modern Thing to Do!

To the rest of the world, she’s the Baroness du Champs-Elysée, very much a part of the glittering haut monde, dashing back from an Alpine skiing holiday to catch the New York season, before she flies her monoplane out West to visit her rancho. Then it’s off to Deauville or the south of France.

But to her friends, she’s just Sally, the fresh-faced, girl who’s always ready for a lark – like going to Harlem in sables and pearls. And when she smokes, it’s always

Lord

Chamberlain

Another ad shows a tall, slim man in full evening dress, under the canopy of a Harlem nightclub. He wears a bright scarlet-lined cape and a bright blue order (the color reproduction of the time could not manage much more than red or blue). His hair and naval beard are bright orange-red, and his eye (the one not hidden by a monocle) vivid blue. He has just stepped out of a limousine and paused to remove his gloves and take a reflective pull at his cigarette.

King Edilvik of Ruritania says: “I like to prowl in strange places. I find I can take Lord Chamberlain anywhere. My constant companion, it’s at home on safari in Nairobi, or racing my favorite car at Daytona, or just relaxing at the Cotton Club. Wherever I go, Lord Chamberlain helps me get more out of life.”

These days there was a plentiful supply of exiled Ruritanian and other aristocrats, thanks to the turmoil in Europe. How long before America got into it? For GST, a new World War might mean new markets – and brand new rules.

“Keep ‘Em Smoking!”

Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on a Sunday. On Monday, Horace Badcock called an emergency meeting of the board.

HORACE: You heard Mr. Roosevelt. It’s war, boys, and we’ve got to pitch in.

BOARD MEMBER: Well of course, every company is expected to do its patriotic duty.

HORACE: I’m not talking about the war with Japan and Italy and Germany. I’m talking about the war with our rivals, the makers of Lucky Strike, Camel, and Chesterfield. This is real war! No quarter will be asked or granted, no prisoners taken, and no holds barred! It is, quite simply, a battle to the death!

BOARD MEMBER: Isn’t that a little strong? I mean, we’re all gentlemen. Businesses all have to pull together for the good of the country.

HORACE: Damn the country! We are fighting for our lives! For room to live and breathe! Our products need living space, and we can only give it to them by taking that space away from our enemies!

BOARD MEMBER (skeptical): How are we supposed to begin?

HORACE: We need to begin with a sneak attack. With anew brand of cigarettes – Hits! Hits will be tough, no-nonsense, a fighting man’s smoke. In a plain brown pack.

Hits was a patriotic blunderbuss (every ad featured American flags and Minutemen) that nevertheless failed to hit its target. According to a marketing memo, it lacked the right touch:

The problem is not the cigarette. Hits is essentially the right product for our times. Consumers no longer want to identify with monocled aristocrats in red-lined capes. That fancy-pants stuff is strictly for the birds. What they want is patriotism and teamwork and the common man just rolling up his sleeves and doing the job. We have to aim at that common man.

What’s more important, we have to aim at the common woman too. Women are now flooding into the war plants, taking up jobs like welding and riveting. They work like men and they want to smoke like men. This can be a massive new market.

Our new brand, Hits, ought to be perfect for this new women’s market, but so far it isn’t doing well. Women just don’t care for that dull brown packaging. The fact is, no matter how tough Rosie the Riveter is, she wants a cigarette pack that matches her lipstick. We need to change the packaging color to red as soon as possible.

We suggest announcing the change with an ad slogan: “Hits Brown has Gone to War.” The ad copy will go on to explain that brown dye is now needed for uniforms or camouflage paint or something patriotic. Let the wordsmiths hammer it all out. But the ad should finish up something like this: “Hits is helping Uncle Sam. You can help too, by buying War Bonds. Keep ‘Em Flying! Keep ’Em Smoking!”

With this campaign, Hits sales became brisk, but other tobacco companies were fighting too for bigger shares of the market. GST fought back hard. Its radio ads hinted that other brands might cause “tired lungs.”

Did you know the cigarette you smoke can make a difference to the war effort? Some brands cause tired lungs. You feel too rundown and tired to do your job. You can’t give Uncle Sam a hundred percent. And Uncle Sam needs a hundred percent from everybody, so he can give Hitler and Tojo a kick in the pants.

Of course, Hitler and Tojo would like it fine if you had tired lungs. So don’t make it easy on the enemy. If you’ve got tired lungs, give Hits a try. Remember, Hits is helping Uncle Sam. You can help too! Buy Bonds and Keep ‘Em Smoking!

For a time, GST sought an endorsement from General Douglas MacArthur. Horace began trying to look like MacArthur – wearing dark glasses and a crushed hat, smoking a corncob pipe – hoping to ingratiate himself with MacArthur. Seemingly this had no effect.

General Horace

Badcock Smoking His

Famous Corncob Pipe

Horace then planned a campaign in which MacArthur would appear in an ad saying he was giving up his famous corncob pipe and switching to Hits. When the general refused to cooperate, Horace wrote:

I’m not disappointed. Why should we bother with an endorsement by the man who lost the Pacific war? No, we need to think bigger, aim our sights higher. Find what brand FDR smokes in his cigarette holder over at the White House. If it’s not ours, see what he will take to change to our brand. By God, there’s an endorsement worth having!

GST magazine ads featured heroic paintings of fighting men and working women smoking.

One ad showed what was supposed to be a naval gun crew after a battle, their faces gleaming with sweat and grime, puffing with pleasure on Hits as they rested near the powder magazine. Another showed what was supposed to be a bomber crew over Germany, flipping back their oxygen masks to light up.

Neither radio nor print ads were working well enough. Horace called a meeting and laid down the law to his marketing people: “To hell with tired lungs. To hell with Uncle Sam. We need something direct, something with punch. Before the war ends, I want us to be Number One! No excuses! Number One! And somebody for God’s sake get me a drink!”

Morse Code

To become Number One, it was essential to show that GST products were more patriotic, more military, and altogether far more American than the competition. In desperation, the GST marketing team turned to less honorable methods.

They started whisper campaigns suggesting that rival brands were far from patriotic. Lucky Strikes were whispered to be a favorite in Berlin, where they were called “Streichenheimers.” Chesterfields were likewise whispered to be popular with monocle-wearing Nazi generals, who smoked them in effeminate holders. Camels were whispered to be packed with secret poisons by Japanese agents. Alas for GST, no one believed a damn word of it.

In a confidential memo, Horace Badcock suggested going further with the smear campaigns.

Why not get the enemy to actually endorse some of our rivals? All we’d have to do is slip a few bucks to the Japs and Germans. Then when Tokyo Rose or Lord Haw-Haw are doing their propaganda broadcasts, they could just include some ads for Luckies and Camels. Have our Lisbon office look into this.

But finally nothing came of his desperate idea.

Meanwhile, the makers of Lucky Strike had hit on the clever notion of salting their radio ads with military-sounding Morse code messages. “L.S.M.F.T…. L.S.M.F.T.,” they beamed at their audience, over and over. For listeners deficient in Morse code, an announcer would translate this as, “Lucky Strike means fine tobacco.”

GST considered jamming the Lucky Strike signal, but there seemed no practical way to do so. Besides, jamming might cause federal trouble. In one region, GST tried bribing radio stations to suppress the Lucky Strike blips and substitute a secret message from GST: “H.I.T.S…. H.I.T.S.” It was hoped that listeners who knew Morse code would get the real message.

This campaign was a dismal flop. First of all, most radio stations wouldn’t take the bribe. Only one or two places ever bothered broadcasting the substitute dots and dashes.

Even then, the message was lost, since almost no one understood Morse code but a few boy scouts. Alas, the scouts interpreted the endlessly repeating message as “S.H.I.T…. S.H.I.T.” One bright lad, believing he had intercepted a secret Nazi broadcast, phoned the FBI. The station, and General Snuff, had a lot of explaining to do.

Nevertheless, GST played its part in the war. At that time, it was fashionable for company presidents to become honorary military officers. GST lobbied hard to get Horace Badcock made an honorary army general. At last, he was offered an honorary rank as a two-star general.

Horace, was not pleased with the offer. A journalist described the stormy scene.

“Two stars?” Badcock shouted. “Only two stars? Who do they think I am?”

“But sir,” said an aide. “It’s more than Sarnoff.”

“Who?”

“David Sarnoff, the president of RCA. He has only one star.”

Badcock seemed mollified. “So I’ll out-rank Sarnoff, will I? I’ll outrank RCA? Well, OK, I guess I can go along with this. We all have to make sacrifices for the war. Two stars, eh? I’ll drink to that.”

GST lobbied even harder to get the War Department to include two Hits in every package of C rations. The company also paid for elaborate USO entertainments for the troops overseas, with commercial messages slipped in (“But seriously, fellas, one thing we’re fighting for is the right to light up a Hit. Am I right or am I right?”) Yet the cleverest GST promotional idea was the Wounded Soldier photo. It happened after Horace Badcock saw a newsreel of a medic offering a cigarette to a wounded GI. “By God, that’s not our brand!” he shouted, his mustache quivering with indignation. “Fix it! Fix it!”

GST worked to fix it in every possible way. The company inundated medics and chaplains with free cartons of Hits. It paid handsome bounties to war photographers to bring home photos of wounded GIs smoking Hits.

The photographers responded handsomely. Some went so far as to force cigarettes between the lips of unconscious soldiers. In one case, the photographer rushed up to a dying man on a stretcher, knocked the rival brand from his lips and substituted a Hit.

The campaign culminated in a prizewinning photo. In grainy black and white, it shows a close-up of a soldier with a bandaged head lying on a stretcher. He is exhausted, but his spirit cannot be broken. He grins bravely as a medic holds a cigarette to his lips. The name printed on the cigarette, clearly visible, is HITS.

Later it was learned that GST had doctored the photo, airbrushing a rival brand name out of the negative and painting in the letters HITS. The War Department learned of this dastardly act and denounced it as “conduct unbecoming a tobacco firm.” Horace Badcock was promptly demoted to one star.

One of GST’s More Controversial War Photos (1945)

Filtered Dreams

By the end of the war, Horace Badcock’s single star was in the ascendant. GST profits were up, the company was expanding, and America was about to enter a new “atomic age,” an era of peace, plenty, limitless prosperity, and of course constant smoking.

Unaccountably, the company’s sales then began sinking rapidly. The problem seemed to be Horace. Years of drinking – he still indulged in antifreeze – had affected his mind. His decisions, always arbitrary, became ever more bizarrely eccentric. For example, he refused to allow the company to advertise on television.

“It’s a passing fad,” he insisted. “The public will forget all about so-called television in a couple of years. It’ll be forgotten, a thing of the past. Like zeppelins. Like underwear.”

“Underwear, sir?” asked an aide.

“Didn’t I just say forget underwear? And forget television! And for God’s sake, stop talking about zeppelins. And what does a guy have to do to get a drink around here?

Horace’s memos became vague and wandering. In them, he proposed strange impractical schemes. For example, on learning that postwar Germans were using cigarettes for a black market currency, he wrote:

Why can’t we ship some fake cigarettes to Germany? Just paint sticks of wood white and put them in our packs. Since they’re not going to smoke them anyway, we can make a fortune out of nothing!

Horace worried about communists in the unions (even though GST had no unions). During the McCarthy hearings, he wrote the following memo:

I think we should take the red off our Hits packages. Change it to green or something. Red is a little too close to communism. Don’t want to give people the wrong idea.

Once we have green packs, we can start a rumor that Lucky Strikes, with their red packs, are part of a commie plot to kill Americans. They put poison in them, to destroy the minds of clean American boys. But our packs are green because we’re Irish, we have the luck of the Irish, like Joe McCarthy, like Lucky Strikes. We’re luckier than Lucky Strikes!

It was not until the 1950s that Horace – now dying – deigned to look at television. What he saw filled him with gloom. Here was program after program, all sponsored by rival brands. His was a cry of despair:

My God, what’s happening? Lucky Strikes are sponsoring something called Your Hit Parade – practically using our brand name, Hits! Chesterfields have Arthur Godfrey, and Philip Morris have I Love Lucy. Everybody’s got a piece of the action but us! And now look at this! A dancing – a dancing pack of Old Golds!

Very well. If they want a television commercial, I will give them a television commercial they’ll never forget.

Horace dismissed all suggestions from the ad agency, and from his own advertising department. Instead, he locked himself away in his office for several months and worked. His seclusion gave rise to rumors – it was said that his fingernails were a foot long, that he saved his urine in jars, that he lived on nothing but antifreeze and cigarettes.

Finally he emerged, looking haggard but cheerful.

“They want a television commercial?” he said again. “I will give them a television commercial they’ll never forget.”

He bought time on all networks for a single live commercial. He used this time to make a personal appearance, accompanied by his son, his son’s wife, and his baby grandson.

HORACE: I hope you don’t mind me bringing along my family. They’re going to help me prove something important. This is my son Woody, his wife Mary, and my grandson, Dwight. We’re here to prove to you once and for all time that cigarettes are not, repeat NOT harmful. I’ve just been reading a study by some so-called scientist. He shaved the backs of some mice, and painted them with cigarette tar. Did you read that study, Woody?

WOODY: Yes, Dad. He says the mice developed tumors.

HORACE: Rubbish! We’re going to prove it’s rubbish, right here and now. We’re going to perform a little demonstration of our own. I’ve got a glass of cigarette tar here, and a brush. Instead of a mouse, we’ll be using my baby grandson. Mary, is that OK with you?

MARY: Sure, Dad. I know you would-n’t do anything to harm little Dwight.

WOODY: Here he is, Dad.

HORACE: That’s right. I would never harm a loved one to prove a scientific point. What I am going to prove is that you CANNOT cause a tumor with cigarette tar. Now I’m going to paint his head. He’s already bald, so no need to shave him! (Dips brush and paints it over baby’s head. The baby giggles.) Does that tickle?

This surreal commercial angered and upset some viewers. Others thought it proved something. In any case, it did nothing for GST’s slumping sales. Horace seemed to give up on life. He spent his last year sitting before the television, sipping antifreeze and muttering.

Elwood Badcock

The company meanwhile was turned over to Horace’s son, Elwood (“Woody”) Badcock, a brash young man with a crewcut, a bow tie, and radical new ideas. He began with a massive TV campaign. Next came the problem of medical research. Since 1950, there had been an unceasing barrage of medical studies linking smoking to lung cancer.

The medical boys are hot on our trail, and we need to act fast. We need to move forward with our new cigarette, Castlereagh – or I guess we’re spelling it Castleray – but the important thing about it is its new filter.

It’s not just a filter. It’s the patented Neutrichron(r) filter with White Chlorophyll 90. Guaranteed to clean all harmful particles from its smoke, just as Neutrichron cleans the air after nuclear bomb tests. Probably no one is going to believe it, but you have to respond somehow. You have to fight lab research with lab research. Our white coats against their white coats.

Anyway, the Neutrichron filter looks like a winner. It has a secret ingredient – asbestos! How can we lose?

A famous TV ad for Castleray showed a silver-haired man dressed as a white-coated doctor in his laboratory surrounded by microscopes and retorts. He wore a speculum on his head and a stethoscope around his neck – the miter and stole of a bishop in the High Church of Medical Science. This man perched on the edge of a lab table and took from the pocket of his white coat a white pack of Castlerays.

Now and then one of my patients asks me if they should cut down their smoking. I tell them, don’t cut down, just switch. Switch to Castlerays. Castlerays with the pure white Neutrichron filter. I smoke them myself. I like the patented protection of Neutrichron that guards your throat without taking away the taste.

DON’T CUT DOWN, JUST SWITCH became a catch phrase for that year. But filters, Woody saw, were only a stop-gap measure. In the long run, GST must become more than a tobacco company. With some foresight, he suggested diversifying into food:

If we don’t, we may be in trouble. The current medical concerns about smoking could be only the tip of an iceberg – a very large iceberg. Tobacco companies could become the target of a long-term campaign of government harassment. As soon as we add filters, the government could ask for something else: tar reduction, say, or Poison labels. We might even be forbidden to advertise on radio and television.

To prevent these kinds of injuries, we must diversify into food, adding a second string to our bow. Whatever happens to tobacco, food always has a future.

Within a year, GST plunged wholeheartedly into the food markets, acquiring cake mixes, cereals, bakeries, and canneries. GST would eventually own thousands of well-known brands, including Jeeter Peanut Butter, Fruitricious cereals, Kubla Khan cake mixes, Dolphin tuna, and of course Bentley nuts.

Castro’s Cigar

President John F. Kennedy had won the 1960 Presidential election by a narrow margin. He needed the help of tobacco state legislators to put through his ambitious program. At the same time, he was aware the public was calling for a government study of tobacco and health problems.

There had already been such a study in Britain (the Royal College of Physicians’ Report). When asked about it at a press conference, Kennedy said,

That matter is sensitive enough and the stock market is in sufficient difficulty without my giving you an answer which is not based on complete information, which I don’t have, and, therefore, perhaps I will be glad to respond to that question in more detail next week.

In the case of GST, the President’s dilemma was even more perplexing, because of his acquaintance with Woody Badcock. Woody considered himself a personal friend of Kennedy’s. Indeed, when Cuba became a problem, it was Woody who suggested a way for the CIA to eliminate Fidel Castro. As Woody explained,

I told Jack what we needed was to slip Castro an exploding cigar. The idea tickled him. We had quite a laugh, picturing that little bearded creep blowing himself up with a stogie like a cartoon cat. So I put my best lab boys to work on it, and we designed and built a prototype to CIA specifications. It worked like this: You first arm the thing by removing the cigar band. Then when you light it up, Bang! It worked like a charm. Blew up a lot of watermelons, had a hell of a good time.

We delivered it and the CIA managed to smuggle it into Cuba and into Castro’s private humidor. Unfortunately, it never went off. Turns out that Castro liked to smoke cigars without removing the band.

The CIA had another plan, to get Castro to visit an obscure street in Havana, and there drop a large weight marked “1 TON” on his head. But by then, I guess Jack lost interest. He didn’t even tell me, just stopped returning my calls. Finally a couple of CIA types came around to say, forget all about the project, “it never happened.” Yeah, right.

Jack and I were never close again. Maybe he was embarrassed or something.

I guess he had a really full schedule. There was the trouble with Marilyn, and then the Bay of Pigs, and then he had to make this trip to Dallas. You know, I can’t help but think, if we’d sent Fidel that exploding cheroot, Jack would still be alive today. Anyway, it was a hell of a funny idea.

The 1960s brought other changes, including the end of doctor ads. For a time, there was the false hope of legal pot (along with everyone else, GST spent the decade madly scrambling after trademark names like Aztec Mellow).

There was also a return to Western ads. A new series showed a hard-bitten cowpoke with a leathery face – a man who valued freedom, a man who went his own way – squatting by the campfire to light his filter-tip Castlerays with a branding iron.

Freedom was the watchword. This was no longer a time for consulting authorities or taking orders. White-haired doctors were no longer respected. Young smokers wanted to follow a romantic rebel into new territory. Everybody wanted to be Lenny Bruce, or Jimi Hendrix, or at least Steve McQueen on a motorcycle.

All this would continue into the era of health warnings.

Hazardous to Your Health

Health warnings began to appear in the later 1970s, and with them came advertising restrictions. It was almost necessary to pretend that cigarettes weren’t cigarettes at all. “Lights” appeared, and herbal cigarettes.

Dwight Badcock

Elwood (“Woody”) Badcock retired in 1975, handing the torch to his son, Dwight. Dwight Badcock was a bashful-looking young man who seemed almost hiding from the world behind masses of hair, heavy sideburns, and a mustache. He was the first Badcock who did not smoke. But he was every inch a Badcock from his platform shoes on up to his display of hair (one journalist referred to it as a “hirsute of happiness”).

Make no mistake, we are at war with the government. Call me crazy, but I feel we’re going to win this war. Maybe not today. Maybe not next year. But let us bide our time. In the long run, we are going to win the hearts and minds of the people. The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind!

Biding its time, the company continued to diversify into food. It already owned a range of cereals, cake mixes, and cookies. Now the company name was changed to GST Foods, as it began buying up fast food franchises: the lucrative Little Dorrit, the surprisingly successful Mister Bagel, the elegant Pizza Jardin, and the down-home good profits of GFC (formerly Grannie’s Fried Catfish).

Another change was the introduction of menthol. Dwight came from that generation who knows that menthol cigarettes go well with marijuana. His new menthol brand, Tubular Bells, was meant to take market share away from Kools and Salems. It became a cult classic, but never really achieved significant market share.

In the 1980s, tobacco came under even more government pressure. TV and radio commercials vanished. Even billboards and magazine ads were forced (by industry agreements) to display government warning labels.

For a time, GST Foods attempted to soften the blow, by including not one warning, but two:

THE SURGEON GENERAL HAS DETERMINED THAT CIGARETTE SMOKING IS HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH.

OF COURSE, THE SURGEON GENERAL WORKS FOR THE GOVERNMENT. AND WE ALL KNOW THE GOVERNMENT NEVER LIES TO US.

Naturally, the Surgeon General’s office took a dim view of this. There was talk of new harsher legislation. Finally, GST agreed to display the government warning without commentary.

The answer was a series of 1980s ads, seen in magazines and on billboards, that tried to make health warnings somehow irrelevant. A typical ad would show a group of young, healthy, athletic people of both sexes having active fun – water polo or touch football or snowball fights – in the healthy intimacy of contact sports. They were laughing like lunatics. Somewhere far down the page, far below them, lurked the ominous white warning label from the Surgeon General. But all of the people in the ad were laughing, laughing with their eyes closed, and so unable to see the offensive warning label at their feet.

Come join us, was the subliminal message. Come join the fun. Close your eyes to that abominable warning. It’s not known whether anyone got the message, but GST cigarette sales continued to rise.

Puff Love

By the mid-1990s it was clear that many of the old marketing ideas no longer won customers. The tobacco world was shrinking. Instead of mass marketing, maybe it was time to invent new products, to target smaller, individual markets: grandparents, teens, health-conscious young adults, working mothers, and so on.

One ad, aimed at young middle-class urban adults, showed a healthy young couple in expensive outdoors clothes lashing a canoe on top of their Jeep Grand Cherokee. It was no longer possible to show them actually smoking, but a large red cigarette pack floated in the air near them. The cigarette was called Moccasin. “Remember Moccasin,” said the headline. “The noble red man’s gift of golden tobacco.” (Around the company, this ad became known as Bury My Lung at Wounded Knee.)

The same principle was applied to other groups. Senior citizens who wanted to save money could turn to Cheap Jack brand (“All the flavor, half the price, no nonsense.”). Working mothers might relax at the kitchen table, inhaling My Break cigarettes. Women in fashionable jogging clothes might light up Lungs of Steel cigarettes. There would be a brand created especially for every conceivable consumer group.

It was Dwight Badcock who suggested a brand for kids.

His confidential internal memo put it bluntly:

I see one huge, unexploited target market, largely ignored by our competitors, but ready for us. This is the youth market.

Call me crazy, but I say this apple is ripe for plucking.

Ask yourself: Why does the idea of kids smoking have such a negative image today? After all, kids have always smoked. Many of you probably smoked as a kid. It did you no harm.

Who says smoking is bad for kids? A few weak-minded politicians, a few spoil-sport doctors, but mainly those mean-spirited groups who simply want to ban something. They’re desperately afraid that someone, somewhere, might be enjoying something. Early in our century they banned alcohol. Today they’re after tobacco, but where will they stop? Will they want to ban coffee and tea? Will they seek FDA regulation of chocolate ice cream?

Make no mistake, this is our fight for life. If we do nothing, if we hold still for it, our enemies will shut us down. It’s time to take a stand and fight back. It’s time for us to say, Yes, we are selling cigarettes to kids, and so what? You think we don’t care about our kids? We love them, but we don’t want to shield them from the real world. It’s time to let them step up to the plate and experience some tough love. Some Puff Love.

That’s what we’ll call our new campaign: OPERATION PUFF LOVE. Through it, we intend to sell far more than cigarettes. We can sell the GST concept, the entire GST family of friendly products.

Call me crazy, but I think this just might work.

Some members of the board did indeed call him crazy (later they would wonder if he wasn’t showing the first signs of his tragic illness). But others looked upon Dwight’s “madness” as nothing short of genius. In any case, they all went along with Operation Puff Love.

This campaign eventually divided the target market into three groups, ages five to ten, ten to fourteen, and fourteen to eighteen. These corresponded closely to grade school, middle or junior high, and high school. A completely different approach was mapped out for each group.

The Group One Campaign: Cap and Snap

Kids in Group One, ages five to ten, were most easily influenced by animated cartoons. What was needed was an endorsement of the product by a cartoon character.

For a time, the GST marketing people hoped the character would be Pinocchio. They imagined showing cuts from the Disney movie, namely, those terrific scenes where the boys are taken to an island with cigars growing on trees (naturally they would leave out the part where the boys get sick or turn into donkeys).

A vain hope in any case, for there was no way to get the Disney people to go along with such a scheme. So GST decided instead to start from scratch with its own unique cartoon hero. Heroes, rather, for there must be one for boys and one for girls.

The boys would be introduced to Cap’n Savage, a feisty little pirate who gets into numerous scrapes but always vanquishes his gigantic opponents. Any boy who likes violence – and what boy doesn’t? – will love Cap’n Savage.

The girls wouldbe introduced to Snapdragon, a lovable little pink-and-lavender dragon who breathes flowers instead of fire. Any girl who likes cuddly pet toys – ponies or unicorns – would love little Snapdragon.

The plan was to feature each character in a regular Saturday morning TV show without mentioning the product. Later, once younger children had become “imprinted” upon the character, ready to buy anything it stood for, it would be time to introduce a compendium of tie-in products: toys, clothes, food, and, almost as an afterthought, cigarettes – the tobacco connection – though not on broadcast TV, of course.

Dwight’s confidential internal memo painted a vivid picture:

We will be marketing a full range of irresistible products: tote bags, jeans, lunch boxes, sand pails, crayons, coloring books, comics, t-shirts, sweat-suits, sneakers with lights, pajama bags, in-line skates, radios, just about anything kids ever touch. We’ll be talking to Nintendo and Sega about licensing possible video games.

Try to picture the little boy of next year. He will get up in his Cap’n Savage pajamas, and brush his teeth with his Cap’n Savage toothbrush. He’ll breakfast on Cap’n Savage cereal, put on his Cap’n Savage sneakers, his Cap’n Savage jeans, and his Cap’n Savage sweatshirt. He will carry his Cap’n Savage lunchbox to school, where he will use his Cap’n Savage crayons and his Cap’n Savage calculator. And maybe out on the playground, he and his friends will light up a Cap’n Savage, the great tastin’ sport cigarette.

The little girl of next year will like-wise be surrounded with Snapdragon products, from the moment she gets up in her Snapdragon pajamas, all through the day. Snapdragon dolls, Snapdragon t-shirts, Snapdragon breakfast food, Snapdragon songs, and so on, right up to the moment on the playground when, we hope, she and her friends light up a Snapdragon, the fashion fun cigarette.

Thus we’ll be selling not one product, but a whole family of interlocked products. The Saturday cartoons themselves will earn a modest amount, but really they’ll be half-hour commercials for all our Cap’n Savage and Snapdragon products. We’ll have Cap dolls and Snap dolls, plus their full range of accessories. To this we can add their friends plus their accessories. Right now a top-shelf toy manufacturer is working up designs for a full complement of clothes, jewelry, tampons, weapons, and so on. What little girl will be able to resist Snapdragon’s tiny purse, with its cute little pack of Snapdragon cigarettes!

The company was of course aware of one snag: no tobacco product could be mentioned on commercial broadcast or cable TV. The Saturday morning broadcasts (Cap’n Savage, Scourge of the Caribbean, and My Little Snapdragon) must remain forever free of tobacco advertising.

Oddly enough, there were no such restrictions on school cable TV. Kids at school could watch whatever an advertiser wanted to show them, at least on the Rousseau Channel. This privately funded cable channel, available only in schools, was already a pipeline into little minds for heavy advertising campaigns.

This was possible because the Rousseau Cable Company provided the schools with everything – the TV monitors, the VCRs, the cable, the satellite time – plus hours of free educational programming. In return, Rousseau only asked to be allowed to slip in a few minutes of commercials throughout the school day. So far they’d been selling only fast food, candy bars, sneakers, games, toys, movie promotional tie-ins for movies – all the usual kid stuff. But now GST could use the Rousseau Channel for direct smoking commercials.

The Rousseau Cable Company could of course be counted on to cooperate with GST, because Rousseau was a wholly-owned subsidiary of GST. But would the schools cooperate? As Dwight put it:

Naturally any school can refuse these commercials. If they do so, however, the Rousseau Cable Company will take back its TV monitors and VCRs, rip out its cable, and effectively black out school television. There will be nothing to keep the kids quiet with. Once teachers realize that, they’ll play ball.

It was about this time that board members began noticing Dwight Badcock’s increasingly eccentric behavior:

Dwight came into the conference room wearing a patch over one eye and a white bandanna tied over his head, and waving a cutlass.

“I’m Cap’n Savage,” he said. “Scourge of the Caribbean!”

We all applauded. He raised the cut-lass and brought it down – Wham! – chopping a notch in the conference table. We applauded again. The more outrageous he got, the more we loved it.

Up to a point. Dwight turned up the next day in the same regalia, and the day after that. When it went on for a week, we began to get worried.

The Group Two Campaign: Slamdunk and Slapshot

Kids in Group Two, ages ten to fourteen, were not so easily influenced by cartoon characters. No doubt R. J. Reynolds did well enough with their Old Joe the Camel character, just the kind of worthless lout that early teens could identify with, but GST was aiming for something even more effective.

Research showed that members of this cohort related far more strongly to three things: mindless rock music, athletics, and violence. Especially violence. As a memo from the marketing director explained:

We’ve been working with focus groups to develop a product image. Musical references, we felt, are too quickly out of date. We will of course rely on videos with music – gangsta rap especially – but our main thrust should be towards athletics and violence. We suggest two possible product names: Slamdunk or Slapshot.

For a further focus group study, we removed the blackboard from a classroom and replaced it with a two-way mirror. Seatedbehindit, abattery of motivational psychologists were able to study every nuance of the behavior of real kids in a real classroom.

We then showed the kids violent videos featuring both product names. The boys seemed generally to prefer Slapshot. In later discussions, they agreed they would like to smoke a cigarette with that name.

Girls showed less interest in either name. Indeed, our team found them paying little attention to the screen violence. Instead, they spent the time discussing dates and nail polish, yawning, and even doing schoolwork. Clearly, we need to do a lot of work in this area.

We see ourselves putting together an ad with a dozen violent scenes – hockey, football, karate, etc. We would give prominence to Dennis Rodman kicking a cameraman, Mike Tyson biting the famous ear, and the like. Or how about O.J. Simpson demonstrating a knife? (It’s necessary to tread carefully here – we can’t imply an athletic endorsement.)

Dwight Badcock (as Cap’n Savage) 1996

The Group Three Campaign: Streetlife

The campaign for the hearts and minds of high school kids was relentless. Dwight laid it all out at a board meeting (recorded on video tape):

DWIGHT (wearing Cap’n Savage regalia): High school has to stay our main target. Much more important than the tiny tots.

BOARD MEMBER: I suppose you have qualms about marketing to the tiny tots.

DWIGHT: Naturally. Let’s face it, they have very little disposable income. We need to crack the teen market – the kids with real money.

For the teens, we emphasize how cigarettes can make you mysterious and interesting, and even improve your complexion and hair. Our provisional name is Street-Life. We’ll package them in a shiny black flip-top box – like black leather – with the name scrawled across it in Dayglo letters, kind of a cross between a spray-painted graffito and a neon sign. With a slogan like NOW YOU SMOKIN’!

BOARD MEMBER: I like the slogan. How do we deliver our message?

DWIGHT: We’ll hit them all day, beginning with the school buses. We’ll put ads all over the sides of buses. Just think of a kid standing waiting for the bus, and here it rolls in, bringing our message up at eye level.

BOARD MEMBER: Is that legal?

DWIGHT: Why not? It worked for 7-Up at Colorado Springs, why not for us in other towns? And we also want to place more ads inside the bus. Like this (holds up a placard):

NO SMOKING

BUT IF YOU COULD LIGHT UP,

WOULDN’T YOU RATHER TRY

STREETLIFE?

BOARD MEMBER: What about kids who don’t ride the bus?

DWIGHT (lifts the eyepatch to rub his eye): They probably smoke already. But don’t worry, we’re saturating the school, too. The idea is to place ads on every surface – the halls, lunchrooms, lockers, wherever kids look. Mirrors for instance: we’re placing mirrors with ads printed across them inside every kid’s locker door. What high school kid can pass up a mirror?

BOARD MEMBER: Good thinking.

What about the john? That has mirrors, and they probably do their smoking there, right?

DWIGHT: Yes, the restrooms are special sanctuaries for our ads. The boys’ ads will show some cool, tough dudes smoking. We can use movie posters of James Dean, Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum – and we can put speech balloons over their heads saying, “Don’t smoke in here. But if you do, try STREETLIFE.” Or one in the stalls, saying, “Whatever you’re doing in here, you can do it better with STREETLIFE.” In the girls’ john, the ad can show some anorexic model, more or less telling them “If I didn’t smoke STREETLIFE, I’d weigh 400 pounds!”

BOARD MEMBER: Ingenious! I suppose there’ll be lunchroom ads?

DWIGHT: Naturally. There are so many surfaces in a lunchroom. We see huge billboards on the walls, ads embedded in table surfaces and trays, printedon napkins, and of course paper placemats.

BOARD MEMBER: What about the gym?

DWIGHT: We have to be careful with gyms and sports fields. The problem is, parents come to watch Junior play b-ball and notice the ads. Next thing you know, they’re phoning the school board. In any case, our real coverage will be in the classroom materials. Once you get the teacher to pass out your brochures as textbooks, it just doesn’t get any better. In a sense, the teacher is endorsing the product. The kids are in no position to argue, even if they wanted to. So we’re providing free book jackets, free tests, free charts, free books and videos, free everything. Even better than free. If a school co-operates, they get a little bonus check at the end of the year.

BOARD MEMBER: Amazing.

DWIGHT: We’re of course planning a full range of teaching materials. That means books, pamphlets, charts, posters, videos, slide presentations.

This chart, for use in diversity appreciation courses, emphasizes the Native American contribution to our culture – so many of the products kids appreciate, like potatoes, corn, and tobacco. They will be represented here by the brands kids know and love: Heidi-Ho potato chips, Chompitos corn chips, and of course STREETLIFE cigarettes.

And here’s an excerpt from our pamphlet, Your Nutrition:

FACT: Smoking does keep your weight down. In clinical tests, people who smoked STREETLIFE weighed up to TEN POUNDS LESS than those who refrained from smoking. The non-smokers typically satisfied their cravings with fats and sweets, which often lead to skin problems, heart disease and diabetes.

And over here’s a math problem, figuringhow much tax the government gouges out of apack of cigarettes. Teens always like to ponder how the government is out to get them.

For those kids already smoking STREETLIFE, we’ll of course be offeringsales incentives. They can save our coupons and get all kinds of badass stuff with our logo: lighters, leather jackets, bandannas, boot holsters, special tattoos, jewelry to be worn in the nose, tongue, nipples, and so on.

BOARD MEMBER: What about music?

DWIGHT: We’ve created a music video that says it all.

THE MUSIC VIDEO (shows a popular rap group wearing caps, billowing t-shirts, baggy shorts, and shoes an inch thick. They flap their elbows and knees, glower at the camera, and periodically twist their hands into grotesque, spastic-looking gang signs. The logo on everything, like the huge graffito in the background, says, STREETLIFE):

They tell you don’t smoke, but that’s just jive

They don’t wanna let you just be alive Just B, just B, just B, Just B, just be, just B. A. live STREET LIFE!

Dad say, Don’t you smoke, son, cuz

you 2 young It bad fo’ you, it bad fo’ yo lung And we don’t wanna let you have no fun

Bring me that ashtray and shut yo face But Dad’s blowin’ smoke and he’s a

disgrace To the whole human race Dis, dis, dis, disgrace, Dis, dis, dis, disgrace, to the whole human race.

STREET LIFE!

Teacher say, Don’t smoke on the schoo’ proppity

Drive by, smoke her, hippity hoppity She puffin’ away on the playground herself

She only worried about my healf

It legal fo’ them, why not fo’ me?

It legal, it legal, it legal

It legal, it legal, it legal fo’ them, why not fo’ me?

STREET LIFE!

DWIGHT (suddenly draws his cut-lass, leaps up on the conference table, and begins a wild dance. His sea boots kick over coffee carafes, he stomps on papers, he writhes and screams and whirls the cutlass overhead): Yes, yes, I’m the scourge. I’m the scourge. I’m the scourge of the goddamn Caribbean!

(Grabs a woman and hauls her up on the table. They struggle. Dwight’s “white bandanna” comes off. It turns out to be not a bandanna at all, but a bandage. Its removal reveals a shaved head bearing a large scar.)

BOARD MEMBER: Stop him, someone! And for God’s sake, turn off that camera.

In secret, Dwight Badcock had been undergoing surgery for a massive brain tumor. He was now taken away again to the hospital, for more surgery. Was the tumor producedby grandfather Horace, painting the infant Dwight’s little head with tobacco tar? We may never know for sure. In any case, Dwight was no longer head of the company.

The Final Days

Dust in Badcock

Dwight was succeeded by his son, Dustin Badcock, an anti-tobacco activist. He was able to stop all cigarette advertising aimed at children, especially the infamous Operation Puff Love. He vowed that he would close the tobacco side of the business entirely, and concentrate on food. The shareholders threatened lawsuits to stop him. Dustin soon found that he had…

a tiger by the tail. If I stay in charge, I am guilty myself of producing the very poisons I’ve always fought against. If I resign, or they force me out with a lawsuit, GST will become even bigger and better at poisoning Americans. Somehow I’ve got to find an acceptable way to shut it all down. Maybe all these state and federal health lawsuits will help… or maybe new federal regulations…

Yet his final rescue came neither from state nor federal government, but from an unexpected quarter.

In January, 2009, an out-of-work factory worker named Delmar Birtwhistle, of Soybean Station, Nebraska, was smoking as he drove his pickup on an icy country road. When he attempted to remove the cigarette from his mouth after a puff, it stuck to his lip, and Mr. Birtwhistle pulled the hot coal off the end. It fell into his lap. While pawing frantically at it, Mr. Birtwhistle managed to run his pickup off the road. He was fortunate in that he ran off on a driveway. He was unfortunate in that the driveway led him straight through the glass front of a fast-food restaurant. Moreover, the restaurant happened to be filled with handicapped children.

Though no children were actually hurt, many were said to be traumatized by the crash. Their guardians sued GST; the restaurant sued GST, and even Mr. Birtwhistle sued GST.

The essence of Delmar Birtwhistle’s case was that his whole life had been plagued by tobacco. His mother had smoked heavily during pregnancy. His parents hadboth chain-smoked all during his childhood, saturating his little lungs with second-handsmoke. His only childhood toys were ashtrays, lighters, pipe-cleaners, and Christmas cartons of cigarettes. When they went shopping, his parents would lock him in a smoke-filled car with the windows rolled up (This fact gave rise to the new legal concept of “third-hand smoke.”)

At school, his teachers and all of the older kids smoked incessantly. He held out for a time, but finally Little Delmar, just seven years old, inhaled his first Hit. Soon he was up to three packs a day, a habit he maintained for life.

When Delmar reached adolescence, he was able to support his habit only by crime. He began by breaking into vending machines, and moved on to gas station holdups. In prison, where cigarettes were precious currency, his habit forced him to smoke up a fortune.

After prison, Delmar tried going straight. He married Thelma Harris, a woman who workedin the Hits factory. She too was addicted. They filled their house with thick smoke and with Hits smoking memorabilia – lighters, ashtrays, placards, neon signs. Delmar tried to get a job at the Hits factory himself, but there was the problem of his prison record. It was hard to find work anywhere – those companies who hired excons usually had no-smoking policies.

When he saw his little son playing with ashtrays and lighters, Delmar realized his own life had been ruined by GST, and now they were about to ruin his son’s life too. Distraught and suicidal, Delmar jumped in his pickup and went for a drive in the country. He lit a Hit to soothe his jangled nerves. Because of its “defective construction,” the cigarette stuck to his lip. The hot coal fell into his lap, “burning him severely” says the lawsuit, “in a tender area.”

“My client’s entire life has been corrupted and devastated by GST. Its shadow lay over him from before his birth until the day of his terrible accident. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we ask only that GST, at long last, begin to pay for this wanton destruction!” The plaintiffs asked for punitive damages of 130 billion dollars.

As the scent of money spread in the water, GST was soon surrounded by the circling fins of many more lawyers. There developed a class action suit for all persons injured by smoking-related accidents, including not only car accidents, but several light plane crashes, a forest fire, many hotel fires, and a bizarre incident somehow involving a breast implant.

Buried under an avalanche of lawsuits, GST filed for bankruptcy in October 2011. An American era had ended.

The End

Chronology

1614     Henry Badcock abducts Pocahontas.

1665     Enoch and Erasmus Badcock inherit plantations.

1666     Erasmus Badcock starts Great Fire of London.

1776     Samuel Badcock’s tobacco starts American War of Independence.

1862     Tristram Badcock dies in Civil War.

1865     Jezreel Badcock meets Scarlotta, gets an address in Gettysburg.

1878     Fillmore Badcock invents the baseball card.

1885     Fillmore Badcock’s death by tobacco gin (Cleveland).

1898     Adair Badcock dies in Cuba.

1898     Blessington Badcock dies in Cuba.

1917     Augustus Badcock invents Lady Fantasy.

1937     LeRoy Badcock takes passage on the Hindenburg.

1937     Augustus Badcock chokes to death on Cairo Cut Plug. Horace (“Boomer”) Badcock takes power.

1941     Horace Badcock invents Hits cigarettes, becomes two-star general.

1952     Horace Badcock paints cigarette tar on his grandson’s head.

1952     Elwood (“Woody”) Badcock begins medical commercials.

1961     Woody Badcock creates exploding cigar for Castro.

1975     Dwight Badcock takes over, introduces menthol cigarettes.

1990s   Dwight Badcock starts Operation Puff Love.

1998     Death of Dwight Badcock. Dustin Badcock takes power.

2009     Delmar Birtwhistle’s accident.

2011     The end of GST.

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Also by John Sladek

Novels

The Reproductive System (1968) (aka Mechasm)

The Muller-Fokker Effect (1970)

Roderick (1980)

Roderick At Random (1983)

Tik-Tok (1983)

Bugs (1989)

Wholly Smokes

Collections

The Steam-Driven Boy (1970)

Keep The Giraffe Burning (1977)

Alien Accounts (1982)

The Lunatics Of Terra (1984)

Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek (2001)

John Sladek (1937 – 2000)

John Sladek was born in Iowa in 1937 but moved to the UK in 1966, where he became involved with the British New Wave movement, centred on Michael Moorcock’s groundbreaking New Worlds magazine. Sladek began writing SF with ‘The Happy Breed’, which appeared in Harlan Ellison’s seminal anthology Dangerous Visions in 1967, and is now recognized as one of SF’s most brilliant satirists. His novels and short story collections include The Muller Fokker Effect, Roderick and Tik Tok, for which he won a BSFA Award. He returned to the United States in 1986, and died there in March 2000.

Copyright

A Gollancz eBook

Copyright © The Estate of John Sladek 2003

All rights reserved.

The right of John Sladek to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by Gollancz

The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

Orion House

5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

London, WC2H 9EA

An Hachette UK Company

A CIP catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 575 11067 0

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

www.orionbooks.co.uk

Table of Contents

Title Page

Gateway Introduction

Contents

Introduction

Henry Badcock and the Noble Red Man’s Gift of Golden Tobacco

Erasmus Badcock and the Great Business Opportunity

Samuel Badcock and the Gob Heard ‘Round the World

Jezreel Badcock and the Gettysburg Address

As American as Base Ball

The Tobacco Gin

A Cure for Malaria

A Good Cigar is a Smoke

A Lucifer to Light Your Fag

Charleston Snuff, and Other Disasters

Sophisticated Ladies, Satin Dolls, and Brothers Who Could Spare a Dime

Lord Chamberlains

“Keep ‘Em Smoking!”

Morse Code

Filtered Dreams

Castro’s Cigar

Hazardous to Your Health

Puff Love

The Final Days

Chronology

Website

Also by John Sladek

Author Bio

Copyright