When the firm purchased Brown Brothers, press reports indicated another 1,000 employees would be hired at the factory. Initially, John Brown was retained as the manager of the operation however, he resigned in May 1902 after being directed to reduce operating expenses which meant a reduction in workers' wages. Brown officially claimed that he resigned due to "ill health" and the "need for a rest". In protest of Brown's departure and with concerns of wage cuts, the employees staged a strike. The strike involved 1200 female and 50 male employees. In a speech to the striking employees in late May 1902, Brown admitted that he did not like having to report to the third vice-president of the American Cigar Company; a man named "Weiss". He did however, encourage the employees to return to work, stating, "Go back to work. Go back until you find your wages are really being cut and then quit." The employees refused to listen to Brown and remained out on strike through June. The women formed a union but in the end, lost the strike and Brown Brothers remained a non-union enterprise. By July 1903, John Brown had raised over $1M in capitalization to found an independent cigar manufacturing company that would compete against the "trust" or against the American Cigar Company as it moved to monopolize the cigar industry. Later that year, John's brother Robert, died in Florida, having suffered as an invalid for the last eight years of his life. Through 1906, the American Tobacco Company purchased a number of other cigar and cheroot manufacturers across the country and into Cuba and Puerto Rico. The next year, trade journals began to report that the American Tobacco Company did not intend to renew its lease on the Brown Brothers factory on State Street in Detroit. Rather, they intended to build a new factory in the Polish district of the city where the majority of the workers resided. By 1910, it was announced that the American Cigar Company had purchased a build site and intended to build a seven story factory. The business was managed by William Lichtig at the factory, a position he had held since 1903 shortly after John Brown left the operation. Lichtig left the business in 1911 to form the Surety Cigar Company along with Mose Eisenberg in 1911. In 1911, in a landmark antitrust case against American Tobacco, United States v. American Tobacco Co. the courts ruled that the company had violated the Sherman Antitrust Act and divestiture of American Tobacco was ordered. The obituary of John H Brown was announced in the United States Tobacco Journal.