Manhattan Briar Pipe Co.

Manhattan Briar Pipe Co. was an American pipe company operating in New York at the start of the twentieth century. It did not emerge from the growth of a small workshop but from an investment decision made in the years when the tobacco industry was at its most monopolistic: according to the record, it was founded in 1902 as a New York corporation by the American Tobacco Company, the era's giant tobacco firm, following an agreement reached with the owners of the Brunswick Briar Pipe Company. Details of its founding capital and address appear only in secondary compilations and are not repeated here.

The Trust's Pipe Arm

Understanding Manhattan Briar requires knowing the company behind it. American Tobacco Company was born in 1890 from the merger of a series of tobacco firms under the leadership of James B. Duke, and because it held such a large share of the market, it became popularly known simply as the "Tobacco Trust." Adding pipe manufacturing alongside cigarette and tobacco production was a natural extension of this expansionist logic.

The takeover did not happen in a single step. Although the majority of shares passed into the trust's hands within the first year, the former partners retained a sizable minority stake for a time; it is reported that these shares too were bought out in 1906, at which point the company became entirely the trust's pipe arm. Yet this arrangement did not even last five years: when the Supreme Court's 1911 ruling broke up the American Tobacco Company, Manhattan Briar continued on as a separate business. This phase, in which large capital entered pipe production, is an American tendency that can also be traced in the example of the American Smoking Pipe Co..