Mono Cigarettes - An Intrispective Look at the Brand and its' History

[jimonym]

Great work, Jon.

The revenue collector's main office for California's Revenue District Number 1 was located in San Francisco. Los Angeles was home base for Revenue District Number 6. The only other active revenue district number in California at the time was District Number 4, headquartered in Sacramento. Broadly estimating, I'd guess your Mono manufacturer was located in Central California, probably San Francisco or Oakland, despite the preponderance of LA subjects in T217.

[jimonym]

Ron,

The requirement to put factory and revenue district information on tobacco inserts was, at the latest, promulgated by August 1, 1907. The Commissioner of Internal Revenue periodically revised their published regulations on the various aspects of the tobacco trade. The first I've seen the requirement is in the regulations as of 8/1/1907, but they may actually have been promulgated earlier. The repeal of the ban on inserts (i.e. cards) in tobacco packages was passed by Congress on July 1, 1902. So sometime between those dates the regs came into effect.

You raise an excellent point about Monos not bearing the factory and district information. It's made me wonder whether they might have been point-of-sale giveaways rather than actually packaged with the product. The federal law is extremely clear on the requirement, and there were heavy penalties (fines and forfeiture of all the offending product) for violation. It doesn't mean they weren't ignoring the law anyway, but to me that would suggest they were a very small operation, because they'd be the kind to try to get away with it.

[canjond]

Jamie - thanks for providing the info. That being said, I can confirm with almost 100% certainty that Mono's were not a point of sale giveaway. As you may recall, Lew came across a Mono pack in the mid-1980's that had it's original T217 still stuck inside. The card was packaged in the front of the cigarette packs with the back of the card in direct contact with the cigarettes. The back of some Mono's display extensive tobacco staining as well.

[canjond]

Adding to my post above, the my belief is that the manufacturer of Mono was probably a small time company that more or less skirted the law and did not comply.

I also agree with you assessment of the manufacturer being located in San Fran or Oakland. However, I still would venture to guess that the majority of Mono smokers may have been located in the L.A. area and so Mono had the greatest distribution in that area.

[Bridwell]

Why would a small company risk a huge fine and forfeiture of product when it would have been a simple matter to add the Factory number? Just because they are small would not be a reason to try and skirt the law.

Perhaps we can speculate that they were not aware of the law, and perhaps were caught violating it. That might explain why this brand is so rare and the cards few.

[toppcat]

Excellent article-thanks Jon for sharing it.

Any possibility they never made it to market and were merely a "dry run" and only done in house? I could see that and then if marketed they would have added the factory information to the finished product. Whatever testing they were doing ended or failed and then whatever was left could have been sold under the table.

Interesting that Mono is not in quotes; I recall Ted Z's insight into the use of same on Coupon and another brand or two while trademark was being secured.

What a difference 100 years makes in the business world. Two clicks and you have a wealth of information about any recent company in the world these days!

[teetwoohsix]

Excellent article Jon!! Thank you for sharing this with us,I have learned alot from it.

Sincerely,Clayton