CIRJE-F-352. Hannah, Leslie, "The Whig Fable of American Tobacco, 1895-1913", July 2005.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, US tobacco manufacturers were not forging ahead of their leading European counterparts in technology, productivity or managerial techniques. On some indicators, including per capita cigarette consumption, the USA strikingly lagged much of the rest of the world. Fiscal discrimination against cigarettes, amplified by the monopoly pricing, strategic choices, and organizational overload of the American Tobacco trust, are among the retarding factors.