In order to promote market competition, four firms were created from the American Tobacco Company’s assets: American Tobacco Company, R. J. Reynolds, Liggett & Myers, and Lorillard. The monopoly became an oligopoly.[3]
In 1938 Thurman Arnold in the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division began hosting hearings in the Temporary National Economic Committee to determine whether the four companies were further engaged together in monopolistic practices.[4] That committee found that 3 of the 4 companies where guilty of the charges presented to the court.[4]