TRUSTS IN AMERICA.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1294, 24 November 1911, Page 7

TRUSTS IN AMERICA.

MEAT PACKERS ATTACKED. ROCKEFELLER INVITED TO EXPLAIN A PECULIAR TRANSACTION. Ey Telegraph—Press Assocl/jlton-CoDyrlaM (Rcc. November 23, 10 p.m.) New York, November 2.1. Counsel representing tho uino Chicago packers indicted under llio criminal clause of tho Anti-Trust Act left for Washington to submit an appeal to tho Supremo Court against quashing tho writ of habeas corpus in tho preliminary procoedings of tho Government suit. Mr. Rockefeller is to bo invited ta reply to tho testimony givon before tho Houso Committee investigating tho Steel Trust reorganisation scheme, charging Mr. Rockefeller and his agents of taking from tho representatives of the Inesaba iron mines and Duluth Railway Company ton million dollars (.£2,000,000) in securities in order to satisfy a call loan amounting to four hundred and twenty thousand dollars (i'Sl.OOO).

AMERICAN TOBACCO TRUST. REORGANISATION A SHAM. Washington, November 22. Mr. Felix Levy, the Attorney representing the Independent. Tobacco Companies before the Congressional Committee on Inter-State Commerce, declared that tho Tobacco Trust's reorganisation was a sham and a subterfuge, leaving tho Trust's monopoly unimpaired. \ PLAN OF DISSOLUTION. IN COMPLIANCE WITH ORDER OF COURT. A New York press dispatch dated October 15 states:—Tho plan for the dissolution of the American Tobacco Company in compliance with tho direction of the United States Supreme Court, decreeing it an illegal combination, officially was mado public last night, and will be submitted to tho Unites States Circuit Court of the southern district of New York for approval to-morrow. The official plan provides for division of tho new American Tobacco Company into four companies, no ono of which, it is stated, will havo a controlling influence. The four companies aro the present American Tobacco Company, which will continue in iis corporato existence; tho Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company, 1 which is to bo reorganised: the C. P. Lorillard Company, also to be reorganised ; and the It. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, an existent corporation. Disintegration is to be brought about by selling 115,000,00(1 dollar* ot tho property of the American Tobacco Company, consisting of factories, brands, business and capital stock of tobacco manufacturing companies now owned and controlled by it, to the Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company and the C. P Lorillard Company for cash and securities of the two vendee companies, and by distributing to common stockholders of the American Tobacco Company two-thirds of the stock of "the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, now owned by the American Tobacco Company. The plan also provides for the distribution in the form of dividends, of the securities of the various subsidiary companies controlled by the American Tobacco Company, to tne American Tobacco Company, common stockholders and tho division of some of these subsidiary companies, which were held to be illeral combinations, into separate companies having no interest in each other. It provides further for radical changes in the voting power of the stock, so that the twenty-nine individual defendants who formerly controlled the American Tobacco Company will surrender this control. The principal financial feature of tho plan is an assessment of tho. 40,260,000 dollars common stock of tho American Tobacco Company amounting to 36,651,925: dollars, or about 91 per cent., which will bo used towards the proposed retirement and cancellation of tho company's existing bonds. For this assessment, however, the common stockholders will received common stock of tho Liggett and Myers and C. P. Lorillard companies.