Once out of GMA, Robert Woodruff caved in to his father’s demands that he go to college, and in the fall of 1908 he departed for Emory College at Oxford, Georgia, where he excelled at cutting classes, spending money, and writing home with multiple complaints—his eyes bothered him, he didn’t have enough ready cash, the dormitory roof leaked and he caught a cold. He paid other students to do his math homework, remaining unrepentant about it even in later life. One of his widely quoted dictums was “If you can get somebody to do something better than you can do it yourself, it’s always a good idea.” By the end of the semester, even Ernest Woodruff had to admit defeat when James Dickey, the president of Emory, wrote a devastatingly direct letter: “I do not think it advisable for him to return to college this term. . . . He has never learned to apply himself, which together with very frequent absences, makes it impossible for him to succeed as a student.” * Furious, Woodruff’s father insisted that he get a job and pay him back for the wasted tuition, room, and board.
AN INAUSPICIOUS EARLY CAREER
Robert Woodruff harbored two adolescent fantasies about his adult life—he would either make a million dollars or hunt big game like Buffalo Bill Cody, whom he had once met. He eventually achieved both goals, but they must have seemed far away to the nineteen-year-old who went to work in February of 1909 at the General Pipe and Foundry Company as a general laborer shoveling and sifting sand. That lasted only a week, after which he became a machinist’s apprentice, learning to work a lathe and other machinery. After a year, he was fired for no apparent reason but was rehired by the parent corporation, the General Fire Extinguisher Company, as an assistant stock clerk, soon shining as a salesman. Or so it seemed. Again, he was inexplicably fired.
After bouncing from one manual job to the next, Robert Woodruff received a magnanimous offer from his father: a position as purchasing agent at the Atlantic Ice and Coal Company. He was about to marry Nell Hodgson, who came from a prominent Athens family, and he needed steady work. Still cocksure despite his checkered career, Woodruff soon horrified his father by purchasing a fleet of White motor trucks to replace the horses and wagons that had been delivering ice and coal. Ernest Woodruff, apparently annoyed at this extravagance, vetoed a promised pay raise.
When Robert Woodruff found, through his immediate manager, that his father was behind the decision to deny him a raise, he became suspicious and discovered that his father was also responsible for having him fired from his previous jobs. Ernest Woodruff wanted to impart a lesson in hard knocks, proving that life wouldn’t automatically be easy as a rich man’s offspring. The angry son promptly quit, vowing never to do business with his father again—a vow he later broke.
Walter White, impressed with the way Woodruff had negotiated for his trucks, offered the young man a job as southeastern salesman for the White Motor Company. Almost overnight, Woodruff created a sensation as a truck salesman, with his unerring way of nosing out the right contact, the “man of consequence.” Unlike many salesmen, Woodruff was direct, honest, and relaxed, radiating confidence and stability. He represented a quality product that he was graciously offering to a needy public. He rose quickly through the ranks, becoming sales manager of the southeastern region. During World War I, he left White to serve in the U.S. Ordnance Department, developing a troop transport carrier that gave the White Motor Company considerable business, then rejoined the firm after the war. Ernest Woodruff, who had counseled his son against the “terrible mistake” of selling trucks, must have decided that his son was worthy after all, inviting him to join the board of the Trust Company of Georgia, where Robert participated in the Syndicate’s scheme to buy The Coca-Cola Company in 1919. He purchased a substantial chunk of insider stock at five dollars a share and also persuaded his hunting buddy, Ty Cobb, to buy Coca-Cola stock, laying the foundation for Cobb’s fortune.*
As vice president of White, Woodruff was riding high, with a huge salary of $75,000 a year plus commission. He also lived high, much to his father’s disgust, borrowing heavily to finance a luxurious lifestyle and further investments. During the recession of 1921, he narrowly avoided having his notes called in, and he watched his falling Coca-Cola stock with dismay. Although by the end of 1922 the stock had turned and sales had improved, the soft drink’s future was still uncertain. The Coca-Cola board was unhappy with Howard Candler at the helm. He lacked any real drive or leadership ability and had been responsible for the disastrous sugar purchase. There was considerable discussion about bringing in a more aggressive president who would provide much-needed direction. Robert W. Woodruff was a natural choice. Initially reluctant, Ernest Woodruff finally had to admit that Robert was a gifted salesman and offered the presidency of Coca-Cola to his son at a salary of $36,000 a year.
The young executive wasn’t eager to leave White for a $39,000 pay cut. Complicating his decision further, Walter Teagle had offered him a high-paying executive position at Standard Oil. Woodruff was tired of New York, however, and longed to return to Atlanta. He also saw an enormous potential for increased sales of Coca-Cola, both domestically and overseas. The 3,500 shares of Coca-Cola stock he owned ultimately motivated him: “The only reason I took that job,” he later said, “was to get back the money I had invested. . . . I figured that if I ever brought the price of stock back to what I had paid for it, I’d sell and get even. Then I’d go back to selling cars and trucks.”†
Woodruff made a counteroffer: he would take the presidency for a base salary and 5 percent of any annual increase in sales. His father rejected that idea. Finally, Woodruff agreed to take the job with the proviso that he be given free rein, making it clear that he would brook no opposition from his father. With the Standard Oil offer in his pocket and a promise of his old job at White if things didn’t work out, Robert Woodruff assumed the presidency of Coca-Cola. For over sixty years, the charismatic leader would guide the soft drink’s fortunes, making it the world’s most famous product.
THE BOSS
Even to his closest associates, Robert Woodruff remained an enigma. He stood an even six feet tall, but his commanding presence made him seem much larger, as he chewed his ever-present cigar and silently assessed a room he had just entered. “You knew when the Boss had arrived,” one acquaintance recalled, “even if you were facing the other way. You could feel it. He had an indescribable presence, a magnetism.” Coca-Cola men would do anything to win his favor and demonstrated fanatical loyalty to him over the years. Yet, on the surface, Woodruff was a singularly uninteresting man. He didn’t read. Several of his intimates swore that he never finished a book in his life, and he refused to look at any correspondence that went beyond a single page, relying on aides to digest material for him.* He didn’t appreciate culture, history, or art. When stuck in traffic only minutes from St. Peter’s in Rome, he impatiently ordered his driver to turn around. “But Mr. Woodruff, we’re only five minutes away!” his secretary exclaimed. “That’s close enough,” Woodruff snapped.
Although Woodruff was a poor speaker who avoided the limelight, many of his sayings were more widely quoted by Coca-Cola men than biblical verse. Woodruff’s simple pronouncements, such as the dictum that “everyone who has anything to do with Coca-Cola should make money,” often cut to the heart of the obvious. Others were trite generalizations, such as “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.”
While the gregarious Harrison Jones held forth in the company cafeteria with the common man, Woodruff had a private elevator installed so that he could go directly to his office, where he ate in his private dining room with a select group. Prowling bear-like through the halls at Company headquarters, Woodruff chomped on his cigar, passing most people as if he didn’t know they were there. When someone had the temerity to accost him with, “Good morning, Mr. Woodruff,” he would often growl back, “What’s so good about it?” The Boss could, however, suddenly turn friendly and charming, putting his arm around an ecstatic employee while he talked.
<
br /> Phobic about being alone, Woodruff made sure that he was always surrounded by people. It was common for him to call at 5 p.m. and say, “Come over for dinner tonight.” Regardless of what the employee or acquaintance might have planned, he would obey the summons. Likewise, if the Boss couldn’t sleep, he would wake up someone for company. The groggy friend was often baffled about why he was there, however, because Woodruff had little to say. He preferred to sit in companionable silence, dismissing company when he felt sleepy again. “Being too close to Mr. Woodruff was dangerous,” recalled one Company man. “It was like being a moth near a flame.”
In some ways, Woodruff resembled Asa Candler. He was intensely restless, constantly on the move. He once invited a group of friends to a Florida resort for a week’s relaxation. After two days, he abruptly announced he was leaving, but of course everyone else should stay and have fun. He had accomplished whatever he had come for, and he had to move on. “The world belongs to the discontented,” was one of his maxims, echoing Asa Candler’s Hawthorne quote. Woodruff seemed truly at home only at Ichauway, the thirty-thousand-acre plantation he bought in southwest Georgia in 1929, where the Boss was in definite command. Otherwise, he frequently moved from his home in Atlanta to his penthouse in New York or, later, the T.E. Ranch in Wyoming, where he pursued big game on Buffalo Bill’s former spread.
The favorite poem of both Candler and Woodruff was Rudyard Kipling’s “If,” though Woodruff managed to live by the poem’s injunctions better than Candler had. Through the years, Woodruff did indeed keep his head while others were losing theirs. Woodruff also resembled Candler in never paying exorbitant salaries, though he at least understood the value of nicely timed bonuses. Finally, both men demonstrated a devotion to Coca-Cola that approached idolatry. Even in his old age, the multimillionaire would squat next to a rural gas station’s vending machine and count the number of bottle caps to see which percentage belonged to Coca-Cola.
Notoriously competitive as an outdoorsman, crack shot, and fine horseback rider, Woodruff proved mediocre at golf, which his friend Ralph McGill called his “hair shirt.” Still, Woodruff never lost, even on the links. He would set a high enough handicap for himself so that he even beat his friend Bobby Jones Jr., the famed golfer. More often, he snagged Jones—who owned Coca-Cola bottling plants throughout the United States, South America, and Scotland—as his partner. Likewise, Woodruff never lost at poker, keeping the game going into the early hours of the morning if necessary. In one famous instance, he insisted that the Company plane fly in a holding pattern over the airport until he won at gin rummy.
Above all else, Robert Woodruff valued control, which he exercised even over himself. One acquaintance praised him for “the capacity of becoming angry and not revealing it.” Instead, the Boss moved to deal with his enemies quietly but effectively, assuming natural command in virtually any situation. He rarely attended social functions. “I give parties,” he said, “I don’t go to them.” Early on, he realized that those who wielded the greatest power often remained in the background, and so he became a master of subtle influence, of exercising velvet-gloved authority.
But Woodruff didn’t use that power in a vacuum. A superb listener, he constantly questioned and asked advice. Often, he had already made up his mind about a course of action, but he asked for opinions anyway—to verify that he was right, and to make everyone feel a part of the action. His advisers ran from his top executives down to his servants. At one point, a vice president asked Woodruff’s chauffeur whether the Boss had sought his input on an important matter. “No, sir,” the driver answered, “but he will.”
CHANGES IN THE TWENTIES
Though Robert Woodruff is usually given credit for “saving” the Company, he actually took over a well-managed business that had already weathered its most difficult period and was well on the way to recovery. The annual report for 1922 proudly noted that a whopping loan of $8.4 million (due to sugar losses) had been paid in full over the previous two years. Harrison Jones had effectively restored morale while dividing the country into more efficient sales districts. Archie Lee and Bill D’Arcy had begun to refine Coca-Cola advertising. Sales were booming. Inflation and sugar prices had moderated, assuring a nickel drink for decades to come.
More important, Woodruff inherited the corporate culture of Coca-Cola, a drink that already had a semi-mystical aura. Company men cherished a deep-seated belief in the product itself, regardless of whether Candlers or Woodruffs were shaping its future. The real protagonist of the drink’s history would be Coca-Cola itself. Woodruff’s genius lay in recognizing this fundamental principle and building on it, resisting all efforts to diversify. As Justice Holmes had said, Coca-Cola was a single thing coming from a single source, and Woodruff fiercely adhered to his solitary product in the six-and-a half ounce hobbleskirt bottle until he was literally forced to change it decades later.
In some ways, Coca-Cola typified major corporations in the twenties—the era of the first professional managers, who relied increasingly on lawyers, public relations experts, market researchers, psychologists, and advertisers. Woodruff, a consummate manager, brought an almost military precision to what had essentially been a family business, run in a brilliant but amateurish fashion by Asa Candler and his relations. The Boss insisted on procedure manuals for every aspect of the Company.
Like his father, Robert Woodruff understood how to manipulate corporate structure to maximize profits, privacy, and control while minimizing taxes and governmental scrutiny. Shortly before he took over as president, Woodruff helped his father create Coca-Cola International. Despite its name, this holding company had nothing to do with foreign sales; it simply replaced the awkward three-man voting trust. Its purpose was the same—to assure that Woodruff and his friends retained control of the corporation. Over 251,000 Coca-Cola voting trust certificates were traded on a one-to-one basis for International shares, although the New York Stock Exchange initially balked at listing the new issue, objecting to holding companies that conducted no actual business.
Generally, circumstances in the 1920s favored Woodruff. With economic recovery following the brief postwar recession, the United States entered the free-swinging, self-confident Jazz Age, and Coca-Cola fizzed along as a vital part of the times. The muckraking Progressive Era was essentially over, and Coca-Cola emerged from its cloud of controversy to match the image it had always sought—a wholesome family drink, a temperate alternative to bootleg liquor during Prohibition. Those who continued to attack the soft drink now appeared old-fashioned holdovers from a prior era.
Tom Watson, in his last hurrah as a U.S. senator in 1921, the year prior to his death, excoriated Coca-Cola from the floor of the Senate. “An addict who consumes from fourteen to twenty bottles of the stuff every day is no uncommon case,” he thundered. “I have had the best doctors in the State of Georgia tell me that Coca-Cola destroys . . . the brain power and the digestive power and the moral fabric and that a woman who becomes an addict to it loses her divine right to bring children into the world.” But no one paid attention to him any more than they did to the predictable ravings of octogenarian Harvey Wiley. Though Southerners continued to call for their “dope” with a shot of lime, cherry, or ammonia, it was just a nickname. Coca-Cola did retain a vaguely risqué mystique, but that only led to greater consumption, not persecution.
Out of the public view, however, the coca leaf content continued to plague Woodruff. In 1925, Woodruff retrieved the Coca-Cola formula from the Guarantee Trust in New York City and brought it back to Atlanta, where he placed it in a vault in the Trust Company of Georgia, his father’s bank. There, no one could see that it still contained fluid extract of coca, albeit without its drug content.
That didn’t stop chemists at the U.S. Food, Drug and Insecticide Administration,* protégés of Harvey Wiley, from testing a batch of Merchandise No. 5 in 1928. Alarmingly, they found a tiny amount of ecgonine, an alkaloid derived from coca leaf that could be chemically altered to make c
ocaine. When Coca-Cola chemist W. P. Heath tested for himself, to his horror he found not only ecgonine, but an infinitesimal amount of cocaine.
While the Maywood Chemical Works chemists scrambled to refine their decocainization process, Robert Woodruff authorized production of Merchandise No. 5 at a secret Company-leased plant in Lima, Peru, as an emergency backup measure. A few months later he was appalled when a company employee in Peru sent a $1,152 check to Atlanta, the amount he had received for selling forty pounds of cocaine, the by-product of decocainization, to a Paris broker. Fortunately, neither that sale nor the minuscule cocaine content in Coca-Cola ever became public knowledge. The Maywood chemists removed the last trace of cocaine, and the Peruvian plant stopped production.
Thus, by 1929, a WCTU campaign against Coca-Cola was ripe only for ridicule. “At the spectacle of men returning home, sodden with Coca-Cola, to beat their wives,” William Allen White wrote sarcastically, “the sight of little children tugging at their fathers as they stand at the Coca-Cola bars long after midnight, . . . we remain unmoved.” Another journalist commented that the WCTU might as well wage a campaign against using toothpicks in public. The same year, the New York Times formally announced the end of Coca-Cola’s public persecution, noting that a future “studious historian” would find the assaults on the soft drink worth only an interesting paragraph. Ultimately, however, the drink “gently took its place in Big Business, where it now is.”
While Woodruff may have inherited a going concern, he had a positive genius for locating the heart of its strength. He may not have saved the Company, but he unquestionably catapulted it to a higher level. Involved in all aspects of the Company from the beginning of his reign, he approved every major decision, while his own snap judgments, based on a simple philosophical framework, proved uncannily on the mark, time after time.
For God, Country, and Coca-Cola Page 24