Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company

During the Depression of 1873–79, the production of cigars, pipe, chewing and snuff tobacco in the United States mostly stagnated; however, cigarette production, took off from 28 million in 1873—to 371 million in 1879. During the first post-depression 1880 year, 533 million cigarettes were manufactured. Until 1880 when James Albert Bonsack invented the first cigarette rolling machine, all cigarettes were rolled manually, on average about four cigarettes per minute by experienced workers.

Seeing the commercial opportunity, Francis Sherwood Kinney, a tobacco manufacturer and founder of the Kinney Tobacco Co. of New York who already experimented with hand-rolled cigarettes starting from 1869, channeled his energies into the mass production of cigarettes with a blend of Turkish and Virginia tobacco in his factories in New York City and Richmond, Virginia. Kinney even invited experienced cigarette-rollers from Europe to serve as instructors. Kinney Tobacco Co. sold cigarettes under the brands of Full Dress, Sweet Caporal, Kinney’s Straight Cut and Sportsman’s Caporal in addition to already established Sweet Caporal Smoking Tobacco. Francis Kinney was joined by his brother, Abbot Kinney and the firm became known as Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company.

In the 1870s, Kinney Tobacco Co. along with Allen & Ginter, Goodwin & Co., W.S. Kimball & Co., Marburg Brothers & Co., and F. W. Felgner & Son Co. formed the Big Six of the American cigarette industry; these six tobacco firms jointly controlled 75 percent of the national cigarette business.

In 1887, Francis S. Kinney patented an apparatus for delivering packages of cigarettes and a machine for applying saliva-proof mouth pieces to cigarettes (with W. H. Butler), as well as distinctive designs for the company's cigarette boxes and cigarette cases. In 1890, the Kinney brothers received $5 million in stock after merging their firm into the American Tobacco Company, which acquired control of 90-percent of the cigarette market in the country, establishing a corporate trust with a near monopoly on cigarette production.

The Kinney Tobacco Co. production facility in New York City was housed in a row of buildings stretching from 515 to 525 West 22nd Street. Additionally, at 513 West 22nd Street there was a salesroom and at No. 529—a five-story building of the packing department built in 1888. The facility on West 22nd Street was known to be able to manufacture 18,000,000 cigarettes weekly.

On October 6, 1892, the Kinney's production and logistics complex on West 22nd Street was gutted by a five-alarm fire. It was supposed that the fire originated around 5:30 a.m. in the basement storage area of the four-story brick building, address No. 521-525 West 22nd Street, from a gas leak that was ignited by a gas-powered chandelier (gasalier). Later, it spread to a five-story brick building No. 527-529 West 22d Street, and onto a four-story brick building No. 513 West 22d Street.

An estimated 40,000,000 cigarettes were destroyed by flame and/or water damage. The loss was estimated at $350,000; later it was adjusted to $243,618.56. Due to the early morning timing of the fire, no one was injured.