Wholly Smokes Read online

  WHOLLY SMOKES

  The Rise and Fall of the GST Tobacco Empire

  John Sladek

  www.sf-gateway.com

  Enter the SF Gateway …

  In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:

  ‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.’

  Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.

  The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.

  Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.

  Welcome to the SF Gateway.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Gateway Introduction

  Contents

  Introduction

  Henry Badcock and the Noble Red Man’s Gift of Golden Tobacco

  Erasmus Badcock and the Great Business Opportunity

  Samuel Badcock and the Gob Heard ‘Round the World

  Jezreel Badcock and the Gettysburg Address

  As American as Base Ball

  The Tobacco Gin

  A Cure for Malaria

  A Good Cigar is a Smoke

  A Lucifer to Light Your Fag

  Charleston Snuff, and Other Disasters

  Sophisticated Ladies, Satin Dolls, and Brothers Who Could Spare a Dime

  Lord Chamberlains

  “Keep ‘Em Smoking!”

  Morse Code

  Filtered Dreams

  Castro’s Cigar

  Hazardous to Your Health

  Puff Love

  The Final Days

  Chronology

  Website

  Also by John Sladek

  Author Bio

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Today, in 2020 A.D., it is easy to look back and dismiss GST as “just another tobacco company.” But this kind of 20-20 (or 2020 A.D.) hindsight is possible only because we have forgotten so much. There was nothing ordinary or common about GST; it was one of a kind. If we Americans loved it – if we hated it – it was always for GST itself, and never because it was “just another” anything.

  It is hard to find a company more deeply American than the General Snuff and Tobacco Company (GST). The roots of GST are deeply twined around the roots of the USA. It has grown with this nation, from the settlement at Jamestown to the War of Independence, to the Civil War, the dawn of baseball, two world wars, and on into the twenty-first century. The story of GST is also the story of the Badcock family, who owned and operated the company throughout its magnificent history.

  This book follows that history, stopping to explore a few of its more dazzling events. You will meet the Badcock who kidnapped Pocahontas, the Badcock who burned London, the Badcock who started the American Revolution, the Badcock who almost killed a president, the Badcock who delivered the real Gettysburg address, the Badcock who wanted to prolong World War One (because he was doing so well out of it), the Badcock who tried to bribe Roosevelt, the Badcock who tried to kill Fidel Castro, and many others. They are all connected with GST, the firm that grew from a humble plantation in the woods to a powerful international conglomerate, marketing tobacco and food products throughout the world.

  But the history of GST is also the history of advertising and marketing in America. An early GST genius not only inventedbaseball cards, but made sure that all ballplayers henceforward would chew and spit their way through games. Later the “Lady Fantasy” campaign brightened the lives of American soldiers through a world war. Still later, a GST market research study led to the Hindenburg disaster. And will America ever forget the (1950s) audacious live TV commercial of Horace Badcock? Or the (1990s) even more audacious – some would say outrageous – campaign for the hearts and minds of America’s children – called “Operation Puff Love”?

  Whether we read it as a great family romance or a cautionary tale, the story of GST is a story for all times, all Americans, all family folk everywhere.

  Henry Badcock and the Noble Red Man’s Gift of Golden Tobacco

  The earliest European visitors found the natives of the New World using tobacco in most of the ways we know of today: they smoked it in pipes (called tobagos) and cigars, they made cigarettes of thin perfumed reeds, and they chewed. As early as 1511, Roderigo de Jerez observed natives “drinking” smoke through a rolled-up leaf, and began smoking himself. He took the habit back to Spain, where the Inquisition imprisoned him for it. Seven years later, when he was released, smoking was already a fad in Spain. Soon, Spanish colonists were cultivating tobacco in Cuba.

  The broad-leafed plant was just as popular across Europe. Catherine de Medici, queen of France, used snuff in 1566 (as a cure for migraine). Sir Walter Raleigh persuaded Queen Elizabeth to try smoking in 1600.

  In England, tobacco became known as “sotweed,” because it was believed to make the user “besotted”, or drunk. Some thought it had medicinal properties, curing everything from asthma and flatulence to cancer and epilepsy. Others argued that breathing smoke made men as sick as chimney sweeps. Whatever its effects, tobacco was colonial gold. Virginia and Maryland, which had little success selling other crops, grew prosperous on tobacco.

  In 1604, James I of England wrote A Counterblaste to Tobacco, denouncing it as

  [a] custome Lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the black stinkingfume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomlesse.

  His words fell on deaf ears. Englishmen (like all other Europeans) continued to use the vile weed from America in ever-increasing numbers. “Hatefull” it might be, but tobacco, from the very beginning, earned money for everybody, including the government. Holding its Nose, James’s government raised the tobacco tax by 4,000%, and soon grew rich by taxing the Lothsome substance.

  Still, the royal family continued to rail against the new substance. James’s son and successor, Charles I, declared that Virginia was “wholly built on smoke.”

  The strange story of GST begins in James-town, Virginia in 1614, at the wedding of John Rolfe to the Indian princess Pocahontas. Rolfe had recently introduced a Caribbean variety of tobacco into Virginia. Stronger, sweeter than the local weed, it would become popular both in the colony and in England. Everyone at the wedding feast agreed, this was the best tobacco ever tucked into a clay pipe and touched by tinder.

  No one was more enthusiastic than Henry Porteus, a young cousin of the bridegroom. Having accepted a cigar from one of the Native American guests, young Henry liked it so much that he made it the subject of his speech at the wedding feast, calling it “The Noble Red Man’s Gift of Go
lden Tobacco.” He made the startling (and at the time, treasonous) prediction that tobacco wouldbuild a new “Empire of America – the mightiest the world hath ever beheld.” How right he was! America would indeed rise to become a mighty world power, and the General Snuff and Tobacco Company would rise with it.

  Henry was of course speaking simply as a high-spirited youth, boisterous with tobacco and wine. He became increasingly tiresome throughout the evening, making endless ribald toasts to the happy couple, repeatedly claiming kisses from the bride, and boasting that smoking augmented his own manliness, “making mee large and stiff as any cigarro.” Finally he capped off the evening by abducting the bride.

  Henry Porteus Kissing the Bride (Pocahontas)

  He had staggered off to bed very late in the evening. Either by design or mistake, he had wandered into Rolfe’s cabin – the bridal bower, where the newlyweds lay sleeping. On realizing his mistake, he started to creep away, but the sight of the lovely Pocahontas seemingly changed his mind. Henry removed his coat and flung it over the bride’s head. He then seized her and carried her outside. (The good-natured maiden did not struggle or cry out, supposing it all to be some sort of obscure English joke, like the shivaree.)

  When the wedding party caught him, Henry had already tied Pocahontas over his saddle and was preparing to ride away. Had he done so, it might have led to an international incident between the English settlers and the followers of Chief Powhatan. Fortunately, he paused to light his pipe, so history did not take a bizarre turn.

  Henry Badcock

  Instead, Henry was expelled from the settlement, and his name expunged from all records. After changing his name to “Henry Badcock,” he made his way into the wilderness, where he hacked out a small clearing and used his meager savings to start a tiny plantation – tobacco, of course.

  It was a success from the start. Within a few years, Henry Badcock’s plantation had grown to medium size, making him a moderately wealthy man. He could even afford a wife – literally, since he paid 180 lb. of tobacco to have his bride shipped from England. The same ship brought him an African slave – the first of many.

  The Wonderful Weed:

  Nicotiana tabacum

  Erasmus Badcock and the Great Business Opportunity

  “Oh the miserable and calamitous spectacle!” – John Evelyn

  Erasmus Badcock

  When Henry Badcock died in 1665, he left a plantation of 11,000 acres and 24 slaves. He was succeeded in the family business by his grandsons, Enoch and Erasmus Badcock. Enoch managed the estate, but young Erasmus had a hankering to see the world, which was becoming a very different place for tobacco. Some praised the wonderful medicinal properties of tobacco, which was said to cure toothache, worms, halitosis, lockjaw, and cancer. Others believed that it caused tremors, staggering, and a withering of the “noble parts.”

  Some countries (Russia, China, Persia) executed people for using tobacco. Others (England and France) encouraged its use and levied enormous taxes upon it. Turkey, which had earlier banned tobacco (and daily executed up to 18 smokers) now legalized the weed as no more dangerous than other everyday drugs: wine, coffee, and opium.

  In America, tobacco had become so precious that it was now the official money of Virginia and Maryland. In England, tobacco was now hedged around by a thousand regulations: Englishmen could buy it only from the colonies, which in turn, could sell it only to England. And always in the middle sat the government, levying punishing taxes on every leaf. It rankled young Erasmus to see the labor of his slaves turned into precious tobacco, only to have the Crown and other parasites snatch away the best part of it.

  He wondered if there was not some way of cutting out the government and other middlemen. He traveled to England with a shipment of his family’s tobacco.

  I thoughte that I shd see for myself how the tobaccoe factors, brokers, diverse merchants, &c. do grow rich from our golden leaves, and how we might ourselves increase our profitt from trading direct to tobacconists.

  When he arrived in London in 1666, the city was still in the clutches of the Great Plague. This worked in Erasmus’s favor, for many customs officials and other watchdogs had fallen ill. Erasmus, an enterprising lad, managed to evade the duty and secretly convey a large consignment of tobacco from the docks to a riverfront warehouse in Thames Street. From there, he took small quantities out to sell to retailers. (By this time, there were some 7,000 tobacconists in London.) Nor did he neglect advertising.

  I posted bills on every wall of the citie, informing all and sundry how smoaking is a certain way to ward off the deadly Plague. Those accustomed to the Pipe need have no fear of falling Sick.

  By Saturday, September 1, Erasmus had unloaded most of his duty-free stock on the fearful public. He spent that evening drinking at the Star Inn with a new friend, Thomas Farynor, who ran a bakery next door. The two enterprising businessmen became great friends. Erasmus tried to persuade him to carry a line of tobacco in his bakery, but Thomas, who was the King’s baker, had no time for such foolishness. Erasmus walked him home, where Thomas put out the fire in his oven for the night, then sat down with him for a final pipe. When the baker said good-night and went up to bed, Erasmus sat finishing his pipe and meditating for a moment on the marketing possibilities of selling tobacco in bakeries, butcher shops, indeed, wherever food was sold. Finally he emptied his pipe and strolled back to his lodgings at the Star Inn.

  The fire seems to have begun near where Erasmus emptied his pipe. There were rushes on the floor, which must have smoldered for an hour or more, before blazing up to catch the baker’s store of firewood. By 1 a.m., the bakery was a-blaze. Thomas Farynor and his family escaped by clambering along a roof gutter to a neighboring house (all but one servant girl, who perished in the fire).

  The sparks from the burning home fell on hay and fodder in the yard of the nearby Star Inn. From there the fire engulfed the Church of St. Margaret. It spread in waves down Pudding Lane and Fish Hill Street to Thames Street, where it found fuel indeed: warehouses full of tallow, oil, brandy and hemp (and the small remainder of Erasmus’s tobacco), open heaps of hay, timber and coal. By 8 a.m., the fire was raging halfway across Old London Bridge.

  London was then a city of half-timbered medieval buildings, covered with pitch and thatched with straw, that flared up at the touch of a spark. A strong wind blew sparks everywhere. There was only the most modest equipment, such as buckets and bottles of water, to combat the blaze.

  “Imperial Grenade” or Bottle of Water

  to be Thrown at the Fire (1666)

  John Evelyn’s journal recorded the panic:

  The conflagration was so universal, and the people so astonished, that from the beginning, I know not by what despondency or fate, but crying out and lamentation, running about like distracted creatures without at all attempting to save even their goods; such a strange consternation there was among them, so as it burned both in breadth and length, the churches, public halls, Exchange, hospitals, monuments, and ornaments, leaping after a prodigious manner, from house to house and street to street…

  All the sky was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burning oven, and the light seen above 40 miles round about for many nights. God grant mine eyes may never behold the like…

  The Great Fire of London, 1666

  The Great Fire of London burned for four days, and was finally stopped only when the Duke of York began blowing up houses with gunpowder, to create a fire-break. By this time, it had destroyed four-fifths of London, over 13,000 houses and 86 churches. Though few lives were lost, the property damage ran to £10 million. For years, debtors’ prisons were filled with those ruined by the Great Fire of London.

  Erasmus, fortunately, was able to escape with his gold and even collect the remnant of his tobacco. He began visiting debtors’ prisons, now crowded with those ruined men who had lost their businesses and property. He explained to them how tobacco could be a great solace and comfort in their time of despair. Sometimes he helped a
poor unfortunate by buying up his ruined property at a bargain price. When he sailed back to Virginia, Erasmus was doing very well for himself, very well indeed.

  Samuel Badcock and the Gob Heard ‘Round the World

  The Badcock clan continued to grow and prosper over the next century. The plantation grew to a phenomenal 340,000 acres, manned by 780 slaves. It was rivaled only by the decidedly second-place plantation of Robert “King” Carter (a mere 300,000 acres and 700 slaves).

  One branch of the family moved to Boston where, in 1759, Samuel Badcock opened a small snuff mill. The Virginia Badcocks derided snuff as a foppish fad which would never last. Israel Badcock of Jamestown wrote:

  The habit of taking fnuff is no more than an Affectacion of the French, brought back to England by Charles II and fpread throughout his Court. Thofe Boftonians who fancy themselves to be Gentlemen will of courfe haften to take up this Frivolity, but it hath no ftaying power.

  In fact, it was the Virginia Badcocks who had no staying power, while the General Snuff Company of Boston (America’s first tobacco company) would form the basis of a world tobacco empire.

  But that’s getting ahead of our story. First came a slight contretemps with Britain.

  Samuel Badcock

  The oppressive English tobacco tax was weighing ever more heavily on the American growers along the Chesapeake Bay (nicknamed the “Tobacco Coast”). They also found themselves perpetually in debt to British merchants; by 1776, growers owed the mercantile houses millions of pounds.