Come to Where the Flavor Is...

"From the start we set out to build a beautiful factory...By 'beautiful,' we at Philip Morris meant: a new approach to factory design. We saw no reason why a building in which people spend approximately eight hours of each working day need be ugly, forbidding or institutional." Joseph F. Cullman 3rd   Chairman of the Board.   Philip Morris, Inc.

AS THE TOURIST (camera slung over shoulder, baseball cap planted on head) wandered by, Mr. R. Campbell, (blue blazer, red Philip Morris crest) grabbed him, twisted his arm behind his back, and asked "May I help you?" "I'm looking for the tour," the tourist replied logically, adding that a more relaxed grip would aid him as well. "But you're not in the right area. And you have a camera. Have you been taking any derogatory pictures?" Mr. Campbell asked. The tourist hadn't taken any pictures at all, much less any that would cast a dim light on the "world's most modern cigarette manufacturing center," and he told Mr. Campbell this. "I know you haven't taken any. I've been watching you. Now get the hell out of here," was his reply, and the tourist was shoved in the direction of his automobile. This is not to suggest that Mr. Campbell acted ugly, forbidding or institutional in any way.

Philip Morris does a lot of things well. It sells beer--Miller and Lite are numbers two and three in American sales. It sells Seven-Up, which tops every other lemon-lime soft drink on the planet. It sells thousands of homes a year in Mission Viejo, Calif..and the suburbs of Denver. But most of all. Philip Morris sells cigarettes--Marlboro, Merit, Virginia Slims. Benson and Hedges. Parliament, Alpine, Saratoga 120s and others. Machines in the Richmond facility put tobacco into paper tubes, hand the cigarettes, cut them, insert filters, box them, put the boxes into the cartons and the cartons into cases and the cases into trucks. How many? These figures are from one factory- 600 million cigarettes a day, 140 billion cigarettes a year. Overall, Philip Morris churns out 191 billion cigarettes a year--about 30 per cent of U.S. consumption.

The noise inside "the world's most modern cigarette factory" is so deafening that workers are required to wear earplugs. Employees must also stand while they work. Thoughtfully, Philip Morris has installed a parquet wood floor, "easy on they eyes and easy on the feet," as the brochure puts it. And to aid the workers further, the management installed "floor to ceiling, glare-resistant" windows that look out on gardens, foliage, lawns, reflecting pools and a fountain.

CIGARETTES, THOUGH, are only a byproduct of Philip Morris's real task--the creation of joy. Not only do they provide "simple pleasures to millions of people every day" with their beer and smokes, they also pay for a lot of paintings. Just for instance, they sponsored "Expressionism: A German Institution of 1905-1920," which toured the country. And an Edward Hopper retrospective. And a Seven-Up toy display titled "Small Folk." And in other ways: when they design cigarette packages and beer bottles. Philip Morris personnel engage in "an endless search for innovative development of quality items with compelling appeal." As the annual report insists:

We do not separate our social activities--our support of the arts, our contributions to worthy causes, our commitment to people and our plant communities--from our regular day-to-day activities. They are all of one piece. Our business activities must make social sense, and our social activities must make business sense.

The uncharitable might chide that certain Philip Morris business activities--their lobbying efforts against returnable bottles, for example--might do more harm than the German expressionists do good. PM says look at the facts--"beverage prices in deposit states are higher than in neighboring non-deposit states." Environmental fanatics draw birdshot compared with the artillery reserved for the health nuts who have suggested that smoking might somehow be tied to cancer. As a pamphlet available to plant visitors insists, no one has ever been able to do more than show that smokers are more likely to die from lung cancer, a mere "statistical association." They have failed utterly "to establish a cause-and-effect relationship." The pamphlet features a series of questions. For example, "Are cigarettes with low 'tar' and nicotine 'safer' for smokers?" The answer begins, "Cigarettes have never been proven to be unsafe," and "What about the alleged 'right' to breathe smoke-free air?" As this Tom Paine of flue-cured leaf points out, "the issue really involve[s] personal freedom."

And Philip Morris can produce experts who disagree with the prevailing wisdom. As the director of the Tobacco Research Institute, Gary L. Huber, points out, "the truth is that the vast majority of smokers suffer no disease." In fact, Philip Morris will concede a single difference between smokers and non-smokers: "Generally, smokers tend to be more assertive, time-conscious and energetic than non-smokers."

I can barely wait for the Hopper retrospective to reach Cambridge.