Red Sun - Is it really a Louisiana exclusive?

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by G1911

From what I can tell from the Tobacco journals of the period, factories didn't have set areas of distribution.

There do not seem to be distributors tied to a factory, or distributors at all for the most part. Jobbers are ordering direct with ATC or ATC's subsidiary holding firms like Continental, Lorillard, Anargyros and using an internal network. They seem to have had control of distribution themselves. ATC control of distribution and their network seems to have been one of the major headaches they gave the few independent firms that were still around.

From what I can find, there was national (or at least, broad eastern) distribution of most brands. The exceptions seem to be new brands; where they are given a test market for a limited time to see how they perform and then they either disappear or go widespread (geographically, some of them don't seem to move a whole ton of orders).

It would certainly be easiest to pack the same for everywhere. We have the note about Philadelphia, as I recall Pat has shared some articles before indicating local laws that might have posed problems. Some SP'ing patterns may be indicative of geographic differences (like the racial short printing in T226 Red Sun). I wouldn't say that this is the case, it might be. I'm not compelled that they went to the trouble to issue, say, T206 minor leaguers only in the area of those minor leagues. I don't think anyone has claimed that, but that logic seems to be the only basis for Red Sun being limited geographically (with no evidence whatsoever for the Louisiana exclusive distribution).

The ATC Ledger singles out two areas the state of Ohio and the Philadelphia territory's.

ATC Ohio excluded.jpg

ATC Ohio only.jpg

ATC Phila.jpg

I know I have it somewhere but I couldn't find the Philadelphia law clipping that I saved but I did find this clipping that mentions the "queer" cigarette market in Philadelphia.

Philly The_News_and_Observer_Thu__Jun_29__1911_.jpg