T220 Silver - Uncut Edition

[G1911]

So we have the company, we have the panels, we have the deductive probability that these were printed alongside the tobacco cards and used the same permission letters used for T218. Earlier, though, we have deduced that their must have been an exclusive element to the T card agreement between American Lithography and it's probably-but-still-not-proven-beyond-doubt shadow subsidiaries, and the ATC and its subsidiaries. If there had not been an exclusive element, then there's no reason Knapp and team wouldn't have produced card images for other products, as it quickly spawned a fad and numerous small operations in the 1909-1912 timeframe started putting out their own, generally lower quality, card issues.

Either one of the deductions must be false, or National Licorice must be owned by the ATC. So I went searching.

National Licorice was a subsidiary of the American Tobacco Company. A November, 1907 issue of The Tobacco Worker contains much discussion of government action against the ATC, the case for the monopoly, and the companies involved. I will link rather than screen cap as there is much else here of interest for researchers beyond a single page, it goes into detail about the takeover of Bollman, the structure of the monopoly, and more. The part pertaining to National Licorice is on page 14 of the issue (page 305 in the pdf file of the compilation book here: https://books.googleusercontent.com/...KkC61ZBE6AH1-O.

It states that the Continental Company, which we have discussed in other threads as an ATC front, purchased the MacAndrews & Forbes firm, created a new firm of that name in New Jersey, and consumed the old firm as well as Mellor & Rittenhouse. Of the $3,000,000 worth of voting shares, the ATC owned $2,112,000. This company went into the business of importing licorice root and paste and selling licorice products. In 1902, MacAndrews & Forbes bought the Stamford Manufacturing Companies root and paste business, and Stamford agreed not to compete in that area of business.

In 1902, MacAndrews & Forbes (Owned by Continental, owned by American Tobacco) founded the National Licorice Company, which bought the businesses of Young & Smylie and F.B. & V.P. Scudder. Frederick Scudder seems to have been managing part of the company after the acquisition. National Licorice, their subsidiary, agreed "not to manufacture licorice paste to be used in tobacco products", i.e. a different subsidiary would be doing that part.

It is noted that two competitors were left by the end of 1902, and that the ATC's subsidiaries began to sell paste far under cost to drive them out of business.

So licorice's components were apparently used in tobacco, and licorice was dominated by the ATC as a result. The E229's were produced by the monopoly for a subsidiary firm (3 times removed from them), and thus the American Lithographic partners could and did produce cards for them.