Brown Brothers Tobacco Company
Brown Brothers were known for the following cigar brands: Newsboys, Cremo, Fontella, Carmencita, Evangeline and Detroit Free Press.
In the summer of 1895, a city-wide strike of the unionized cigar makers occurred as a result of the manufacturers utilizing lower cost and wage options such as machine rolling and female employees and child labor.
The issue of female and child labor became a cause-celeb in this struggle with an executive in the American Federation of Labor being quoted as saying: When a cigar manufacturer runs a "Union shop" and employs union men and women he is allowed the use of the Cigar Makers' International Union blue-label, which guarantees to the public that the cigars having this label upon the box have been made by well paid, clean and skilled labor, but when a manufacturer...takes cigars made by underpaid women and children and mixes them with the cigars made by union labor in his regular shop, he not only takes advantage of the helpless women and children, but aims to reduce wages and impare [sic] the standard of workmanship of union labor, and through false pretenses defrauds the smokers of Union labeled cigars.The strike wore on throughout the summer and in August, the Brown Brothers made headlines by importing fifty scab laborers from Cuba under the guise that these men would be involved with the manufacture of high end, Havana cigars only.
The suit alleged that Torrence and Bucher conspired to offer a substandard 5-cent cigar, by the trade name of "La Camerita", to under-cut Brown Brothers by deceiving the customers who were interested in buying Brown Brothers' premium 10-cent cigar by the similar name of "Carmencita".
The suit alleged that "La Camerita" was a "fanciful name invented and adopted by the defendant because of its close resemblance to the trade-mark of the plaintiff" (Brown Brothers).
In a speech to the striking employees in late May 1902, Brown admitted that he did not like having to report to the third vice-president of the American Cigar Company; a man named "Weiss".
[6][22] Through 1906, the American Tobacco Company purchased a number of other cigar and cheroot manufacturers across the country and into Cuba and Puerto Rico.
[17] The next year, trade journals began to report that the American Tobacco Company did not intend to renew its lease on the Brown Brothers factory on State Street in Detroit.
The business was managed by William Lichtig at the factory, a position he had held since 1903 shortly after John Brown left the operation.
He died in early 1914 at the age of 65 and was survived by four sons: Percy M., John Stanley, Harry and Alfred D. Brown.
[30] In September 2015, it was announced that the building at 119 State Street would be sold to Lear Automotive by Dan Gillbert's Bedrock Real Estate Services.
