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Factory building of the Bloch Brothers Tobacco Company (also known as Helme Tobacco Company) on Wheeling Island, a part of Wheeling, West Virginia, in the middle of the Ohio River
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Title, date and keywords based on information provided by the photographer.
The company was best known for its Mail Pouch chewing tobacco, a popular chew advertised on more than 20,000 of barns, mostly in the rural Ohio River Valley. Each barn had an end or side painted with the familiar Mail Pouch lettering and advertising, "Treat yourself to the best." The brothers began manufacturing cigars in 1879 as a side-line to Samuel Bloch's wholesale grocery business. It was discovered that the left-over cigar clippings could be flavored and packaged in a paper bag, and then sold for chewing. The Bloch Brothers company was eventually purchased by the Swisher company, a maker of small cigars, which still makes Mail Pouch chewing tobacco as of this date (in 2015).
Credit line: West Virginia Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Purchase; Carol M. Highsmith Photography, Inc.; 2015; (DLC/PP-2015:055).
Forms part of: West Virginia Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive.
In 2015, documentary photographer Carol Highsmith received a letter from Getty Images accusing her of copyright infringement for featuring one of her own photographs on her own website. It demanded payment of $120. This was how Highsmith came to learn that stock photo agencies Getty and Alamy had been sending similar threat letters and charging fees to users of her images, which she had donated to the Library of Congress for use by the general public at no charge. In 2016, Highsmith has filed a $1 billion copyright infringement suit against both Alamy and Getty stating “gross misuse” of 18,755 of her photographs. “The defendants [Getty Images] have apparently misappropriated Ms. Highsmith’s generous gift to the American people,” the complaint reads. “[They] are not only unlawfully charging licensing fees … but are falsely and fraudulently holding themselves out as the exclusive copyright owner.” According to the lawsuit, Getty and Alamy, on their websites, have been selling licenses for thousands of Highsmith’s photographs, many without her name attached to them and stamped with “false watermarks.” (more: http://hyperallergic.com/314079/photographer-files-1-billion-suit-against-getty-for-licensing-her-public-domain-images/)
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