A QUEER COMBINE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 271, 17 April 1914, Page 6

A QUEER COMBINE.

Another great business absorption is being discussed in i,e\v York. This time it is the ease of the big tobacco ompany wiiicii controls nearly a thousnd retail tobacco shops in the United States securing a one-half interest in a druggist concern which controls a:) stores. Tobacco and medicine are regarded here as a queer combination, but it is. only one of many developments! of [America's new economic age. It is known that the tobacco magnates wanted to control the druggist business root and branch, but the larger stock holders in tne latter were unwilling to sell at any price, stf the Tobacco Trust rests content for the moment with a half victory. The tobacco people propose to extend their new selling methods, to the chemists' business, widen means a distribution of coupons to purchasers, redeemable in any article desired. By this means it is predicted that the druggist concern in question will take over the counter during the first year of the new business organisation £4,000,000 instead of £3,000,'OOO last year. In the meantime, Washington proposes to investigate the tobacco concern, which trades as the United Cigar Stores Company, to ascertain whether it is a trade monopoly. Tobacco magnates ridicule the idea, and explain that their company has less than one-eighth of 1 per cent of the retail stores in America. The average American, though thundering against trusts in America, recognises clearly that the

"trust idea" as illustrated in the tobacco and druggist shops, has been followed by cheaper prices and superior goods (remarks a London paper). The same may be said of the restaurant business ii: most of the big American cities.