New Britain Herald Newspaper, January 30, 1917, Page 13

NEV BRITAIN DATLY HERALD, TUESDAY, JANUARY 30, 1917. To every smo Rer in the cit A.{statement by The American Tobacco Company We have been asked how it is pos- sible to make a high grade cigarette of fine Turkish and Ameri- can tobacco for 6nly five cents a package. Here are the facts —we believe the public has a right to know them. Sixteen years ago,, three Turks came to! NewYork from Egypt L with a few bales of Turkish Tobacco. They rented a small store on Broadway and began to make and sell their ciga- rettes. = : This was the beginning of the Turkish cigarette business in this country. Till then there were no Turkish ciga- rettes on the market. The only big sellers were made of American tobacco. The new Turkish cigarettes caught on well at first—they had a rich flavor hitherto un- known to the American smoker. But they were very expensive. Moreover, smokers soon found that straight Turk- ish tobacco lacked that “some- thing” which they found in American tobacco. It had At the packing tables The old way Not Iong ago, all cigarettes were made by hand A skilled cigarette maker could turn out 2,500 a day. the flavor, but it lacked the character. Straight American tobacco, on the other hand, lacked the mellow flavor of the Turkish leaf. Made to order —the “blended” cigarette It was then that a member of the American Tobacco Company, seeing how the Turkish flavor had caught on, got the idea “blending’’ Turkish and American Tobacco, and giving the public what it was really asking for— a fair priced cigarette ecombininge the flavor of the Turkish with the body and character of American. The new way —56.875 miles an hour At the rate of 400 finished cigarettes a minute, ONE machine does the work of 76 hand operators. 56.875 miles of Mecca are made in an hour. 'He knew that if we could get our volume of sales big enough, we could put out a good “blended” cigarette at a low price. After many tryouts with high grade American and Turkish tobaccos the Mecca blend was finally made. It was named Mecca because we believed it would be the cigarette that more people would want to smoke than any other —the goal of all ciga- rette smokers. Public confirms choice of name The public soon proved the fitness of the name. From the very start the sales of Mecca cigarettes have grown steadily. This “blended” cigarette is today selling by the billion. We have given the public what it wanted — the char- acter of American tobacco with the flaver of Turkish leaf, It's a real man’s cigarette — the goal of all cigarette smokers. We set the price of Mecca cigarettes at 5 cents, ‘We figured we could afforc that price when the sales reached into the billions. We profit; you get bigger value It isn’t generosity that . makes us sell at this price. " We do it because it's good business. The lower price means bigger sales and pays us better than a high price and small sales. With these big sales we buy in great quantities at better prices. We manufacture on a big scale, so the “‘overhead” or indirect costs are low. We profit by this while you get bigger value for your money than would be possible otherwise. A triumph of right business methods W believe that this success is one . of the remarkable achievements of modern industry; a triumph of right business methods consistently applied. ‘We could not have done all this i the public hadn’t liked the cigarette — if the blend had not been exactly right. But from the day it was put on the market, the public did like the Mecca blend. That is why your dealer sells so many Mecca cigarettes. We recommend Mecca to the most critical smoker. We want you to see for yourself why this business achieve- ment has been p8ssible. In the handy slide box, 5c for 10; in the oval foil package, 10c for 20. 455 miles of Mecca are made and sold every day. If Mecca were not a good cigarette, cll the advertising in the world sould not make it sell at that rate. +These girls throw aside any cigarettes which show the slightest imperfection. Passing among the packing tables, a score of examiners open at random some &f theycigarettes put up by each packer. The new Mecca factory In order to meet_the growing demand for Mecea cigarettes, this big eight-acre factory has just been completed for the manufacture of this popular brand.j