He observed with satisfaction that dozens of Postum competitors had fallen by the wayside. “It is fairly easy to make a good palatable and pure food and quite another thing to sell it.” Post was among the first advertisers to approach his subject psychologically. “Observe the acts of men day by day,” he said, “their habits, likes, dislikes, methods, hopes, disappointments, bravery, weakness, and particularly study their needs.”
Post solicited testimonial letters by placing ads in popular magazines, promising “Many Greenbacks.” Post selected the best and rewrote them to make them more punchy. “I was a coffee slave,” began one such edited letter. “I had headaches every day.” When the woman quit coffee and imbibed Postum, all her troubles vanished. “The rheumatism is gone entirely, blood is pure, nerves practically well and steady, digestion almost perfect, never have any more sick headaches.”
A nurse from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, wrote, “I used to drink strong coffee myself, and suffered greatly”—until she switched to Postum, of course. “Naturally, I have since used Postum among my patients, and have noticed a marked benefit where coffee has been left off and Postum used. I observe a curious fact about Postum used among mothers. It greatly helps the flow of milk.”
A St. Joseph, Missouri, man attested, “About two years ago my knees began to stiffen and my feet and legs swell, so that I was scarcely able to walk, and then only with the greatest difficulty, for I was in constant pain.” His problem? Coffee. The solution? Postum.
The independent Post eventually fired his advertising broker and in 1903 created the Grandin Advertising Agency, named after Frank C. Grandin, his employee in charge of advertising. Grandin’s only client was Postum. Later Post acquired his own newspaper in Battle Creek, which he used as a platform for disseminating his rather quirky views, as well as advertising Postum, Grape-Nuts, and Post Toasties.
The Coffee Merchants React
C. W. Post had amassed a fortune more quickly than any other American of his era. At the beginning of 1895 he had just made his first batch of Postum. Seven years later he was a millionaire.
By 1906 resentment over the success of Postum had reached fever pitch among coffee men. William Ukers, editor of the Tea & Coffee Trade Journal, wrote a nasty editorial upon the marriage of Marjorie Merriweather Post. “It is interesting to note,” wrote Ukers, “[that] it was announced . . . the fond father had settled $2,000,000 on his daughter and had carefully drilled her in business methods. . . . But what’s $2,000,000 to Post, who every year spends a million and a half in advertising alone? My, what a commentary on the gullibility of the American public!”
Many coffee advertisements of the era only made matters worse. “I TOLD YOU TO BRING ARBUCKLE’S PACKAGE,” one ad read, showing a wife socking her husband on the jaw and spilling a bag of coffee. “Be real angry if they send you a substitute,” read the ad copy, “which is not as good, and may in time ruin your digestion and nerves.” Such a come-on may have been good for Ariosa in the short run, but it conveyed the impression that most other coffee was harmful. Another ad for Dern Coffee asserted that “if coffee makes havoc with your nerves and digestion, it is because you are not using a fresh roasted, thoroughly cleansed, correctly cured coffee.” Consequently, Dern Coffee “gives you the strength and aroma of the coffee without its nerve-destroying qualities.”
Similarly, many defensive articles on coffee wound up damning it. A May 1906 piece in the Tea & Coffee Trade Journal by John G. Keplinger titled “The Healthfulness of Coffee” began with the assertion that “almost any nonsense makes an impression on the public mind if only reiterated often enough in print.” But then Keplinger proceeded to admit that “without doubt coffee has been the cause of much discomfort, headache, sour stomach, blurred vision, etc.” The reason? Coffee was harmful, according to this author, if diluted with milk and sugar; it should only be drunk black.
Apparently unaware that he failed to practice what he preached, Keplinger went on to advise coffee advertisers to emphasize positive attributes, rather than stating that their brand of coffee did not produce headache, constipation, dyspepsia, or nervous trouble. He then offered sample advertisements of which he approved. The very first headline was: “Is Coffee Harmful?” His other ads approached the absurdity of vintage patent medicine claims. “Coffee is a valuable remedial agent, or rather a preventive, when there are epidemics of typhoid fever, cholera, erysipelas, scarlet fever and the various types of malarial fever.” Another headline suggested that “Good Coffee Soothes the Nerves” because it is “a nonreactive stimulant, as has been proved time and again by the sphygmograph and as a brain stimulant it may be termed an intellectual drink.”
One of the favorite ploys of coffee boosters throughout the first part of the twentieth century was to cite anecdotal stories to illustrate the drink’s beneficial effects on longevity. On her ninety-second birthday, for instance, Mrs. Hannah Lang nimbly performed a set of folk dances. “It is the proud boast of Mrs. Lang that she has never been sick a day in her life. . . . About the only health rule she follows is to drink four cups of strong coffee every day.” Mrs. Christine Hedin of Ironwood, Michigan, celebrated her hundredth birthday by “drinking coffee all day long,” as was her normal habit (from four to ten cups daily). A centenarian Frenchman was told that coffee, which he drank to excess, was a poison. “If it is poison,” he said, “I am a fine example of the fact that it is a very slow poison.”26
In July 1906 Tea & Coffee Trade Journal editor Ukers offered a call to arms:Here and there manufacturers and dealers are waking up to the fact that the substitute beverage-makers have stolen a march on them and now they are determined to regain the lost ground. . . . The Postum Company certainly have had a wonderful opportunity and have made the most of it. The retail coffee dealers of the country did nothing to upset their plans. . . . The advertising of this substitute for coffee has attacked coffee strenuously and bitterly and with consummate skill, and the result is that thousands of people who have been in the habit of drinking coffee regularly have given it up.
Frustrated and baffled, the coffee men even considered hiring Post clandestinely to write copy for them, though the plan never materialized, which was just as well, said Post. “Could I advertise coffee as I advertise Postum? No! I believe in Postum, and have no such belief in coffee.”
It would take another decade or two before coffee advertisers learned Post’s lesson that a positive image was at least as important as taste.
The Collier’s Libel Flap
A prominent national periodical, Collier’s Weekly, pointedly refused questionable patent medicine ads after printing Samuel Hopkins Adams’s widely read 1905 muckraking series, “The Great American Fraud,” which lambasted misleading ads and contributed to the passage of landmark food legislation the following year. Yet, as one outraged reader complained later that year, Collier’s ran Post’s ads, which invariably touted medicinal cures. Stung, the magazine’s advertising manager wrote to Post, explaining that he could no longer print such ads. In 1907 the magazine published an editorial criticizing Grape-Nuts advertising for claiming that the breakfast cereal could cure appendicitis. “This is lying, and potentially, deadly lying.” The article called Postum testimonials by physicians and health officials “mythical.”
Post responded with a venomous $18,000 article-advertisement campaign run in newspapers across the country in which he asserted that the author of the Collier’s article had “curdled gray matter.” Post had the nerve to assert that it was he who had refused to advertise in the magazine and that he had been attacked as a result. Moreover, he defended his testimonials. “We have never yet published an advertisement announcing the opinion of a prominent physician or a health official on Postum or Grape-Nuts when we did not have the actual letter in our possession.”
In 1907 Collier’s filed a libel suit against Post. When it finally came to trial three years later, Post had to defend his earlier writings, such as I Am Well! in which he claimed miraculous healing pow
ers for, among other things, a molar abscess and a wheelchair-bound invalid. “And now you’ve reached the point where you propose to relieve pains, not by the use of mental suggestion, but by Grape-Nuts and Postum?” the prosecuting attorney asked. “At fifteen cents a pound?” Post: “Yes.” The lawyer got Post to admit that he gave prizes for good testimonials and that he did not have time to investigate whether all were genuine.
In his final arguments the plaintiff’s attorney dramatically pointed at Post and begged the jury, “Help us to make this man honest.” They complied, finding Post guilty of libel and fining him $50,000. Eventually the trial verdict was reversed by the New York Court of Appeals, but Post had learned his lesson. From then on he moderated his claims. Within a few years Postum was advertised to cure constipation rather than brain fatigue or appendicitis.
Dr. Wiley’s Ambivalence
“If some isolated case is found where a man has sold roasted peas and chicory as coffee, a terrible howl goes up,” editor William Ukers observed in spring 1906. “And yet when Millionaire Post proceeds to offer burnt cereals as coffee nobody says a word. And where is Dr. Wiley all this time?” Harvey Wiley, who was then lobbying hard for the new pure food act that would pass soon, had become an enormously influential spokesman for truth in advertising and labeling. Wiley mounted a moral crusade against fraud and vice. “The injury to public health,” he said, “is the least important question . . . [and] should be considered last of all. The real evil of food adulteration is deception of the consumer.”
Wiley’s obsession with deceit rather than health issues was reflected in his legislation. The Pure Food and Drugs Act did not make poisonous substances illegal; it simply said they had to be identified on the label. Caffeine was not placed on the list of poisonous substances that had to be so labeled. With twelve pounds consumed by every man, woman, and child, coffee was the most popular beverage in America; most coffee men therefore must have felt they were relatively safe and hoped that Wiley would direct his attention to the mislabeling of products such as Postum.
Eventually he did, forcing Post to remove the word coffee from his label and advertising. But the pure food law also caused trouble for coffee men. If government agents found chicory or other substitutes in coffee, they prosecuted. If they found “black jack” beans—that is, discolored or moldy from blights or improper processing—being imported, they put a stop to it. Over the next few years, scores of coffee prosecutions cleaned up the coffee and coffee-substitute industry.
Though such enforcements were salutary, other prosecutions seemed merely bureaucratic, malicious, or stupid. Although Brazilian and Central American beans had been widely misrepresented as Java coffees, this term was traditionally and correctly applied to coffee coming not only from the island of Java itself but any of fourteen nearby islands. Nonetheless, the Board of Food and Drug Inspection ruled the same year that coffee grown in Sumatra had to be labeled Sumatra coffee rather than Java. No one in the industry could see the harm in such long-standing practices, but the government did.
Since Harvey Wiley had championed the pure food law that had helped police their industry, Ukers and other coffee experts wanted to believe that Wiley was on their side. Yet in 1910 the crusading chemist got carried away in a speech reported by the newspapers. Wiley asserted that “this country is full of tea and coffee drunkards. The most common drug in this country is caffeine.”
Soon after the pure food law passed, Wiley instituted an attack on Coca-Cola. He disapproved of caffeinated beverages but felt that coffee and tea were safe from legal assault since they naturally contain caffeine, just as peaches and almonds naturally contain hydrocyanic acid. Coca-Cola, however, was consumed regularly by both children and adults, and caffeine was deliberately added to it. Wiley therefore persuaded his reluctant superiors to allow him to seize forty barrels and twenty kegs of Coca-Cola syrup that had crossed the state line between Georgia and Tennessee.
Bringing Coca-Cola to trial in 1911 at Chattanooga, Tennessee, the government charged that the drink was adulterated, defined by the pure food law as containing a deleterious added ingredient. The government consequently had to prove that caffeine was both harmful and an added ingredient under the law. Coffee men must have watched the dramatic trial with mixed feelings. On the one hand, they squirmed when expert witnesses attacked caffeine as poisonous. On the other hand, they recognized that the popular soft drink was beginning to erode their own market.
Despite their impressive credentials, most expert witnesses relied on flawed experiments highly colored by their own opinions. Harry and Leta Hollingworth’s groundbreaking double-blind experiments on caffeine’s effects on humans—still-cited classics of the literature—were the exception. The experiments indicated that caffeine, in moderate amounts, improved motor skills while leaving sleep patterns relatively unaffected.27
Coca-Cola eventually won the case, though not on any scientific grounds. All of the testimony proved irrelevant. Judge Sanford issued his opinion from the bench, ordering the jury to return a verdict in favor of Coca-Cola. Without deciding whether caffeine was a poison, Sanford said that it was not an added ingredient under the law, but had been an integral part of the formula since the drink was invented. The trial had an impact on Dr. Wiley as well. His superiors, looking for any excuse to ditch the bullheaded chemist, accused Wiley of having illegally paid a witness too much for his testimony. Wiley resigned in March 1912, at the height of his national popularity.
That same year the coffee men, hopeful that Wiley would support them, paid him to deliver the keynote address at the National Coffee Roasters Association on the topic “The Advantages of Coffee as America’s National Beverage.” In his opening remarks the truculent chemist told them that pure water should be the national drink. In his rambling speech he reserved his primary venom for Coca-Cola, but he also lambasted coffee and caffeine. The southern soft drink was “a first artificial cousin of coffee, because the dope that men put in Coca-Cola is the dope the Lord puts in coffee—caffeine.” He went on to say, “I would not give my child coffee or tea any more than I would give him poison.”
Wiley shamefacedly admitted that, like C. W. Post, he drank coffee himself. “I know it is harmful, that it makes many dyspeptics, and many other nervous wrecks by the hundreds of thousands, yet I sit down every morning and drink my coffee. I like it.”
The Birth of Decaf
Owing to the very public contemporary controversy over caffeine, entrepreneurs began to look for a naturally caffeine-free coffee. Four varieties were identified, mostly in Madagascar. Unfortunately, the drink produced from their roasted seeds was bitter and unpalatable. The famed agronomist Luther Burbank opined that a decent-tasting hybrid was certainly desirable and might indeed be possible, but it would involve years of experiments in the tropics. “It would be absolutely impossible for me to pay any attention to the coffee plant, as it would require removing to another climate.” He added another important question: “Would coffee be used, except for the exhilaration accompanying the caffeine? I think it would, but this is for someone else to decide.”
Soon Burbank’s question could be answered with a qualified yes. Convinced that his father, a professional coffee taster, had died prematurely as a result of too much caffeine intake, Ludwig Roselius, a German merchant, succeeded in extracting caffeine from green beans by superheating them with steam, then flooding them with the solvent benzol. He patented his process and incorporated his company in 1906. Within a few years his decaf coffee was available in Germany as Kaffee Hag; in France as Sanka (sans caffeine); and in the United States, from the Merck drug company, as Dekafa. Competitors sprang up on both sides of the Atlantic. Robert Hübner, another German, introduced his Hübner Health Coffee in 1911 to the American market, claiming to extract the caffeine through a pure-water process without using a chemical solvent. The next year two brands of “instant” coffee—the condensed particles of a regular brew—went on sale.28
Post’s Last Act
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br /> The decaffeinated and instant coffees made only a small dent in regular coffee consumption and did not unduly disturb the coffee men. At least they were coffee, unlike Postum, whose ads continued to malign their product. C. W. Post regularly appeared in the Tea & Coffee Trade Journal as the Antichrist of Coffee.
In January 1914 Post suffered a nervous and physical collapse. The newspapers reported that he had fled to his Santa Barbara ranch “for a complete rest,” along with his personal physician and his wife. In the pages of the Tea & Coffee Trade Journal, editor William Ukers couldn’t resist pointing out that Post, who warned constantly of “coffee-slugged nerves,” had succumbed to a nervous breakdown himself. “We would not appear to gloat over his misfortune,” Ukers wrote, doing just that. “Indeed, if his breakdown is in any measure due to his drinking Postum all these years, he has our deep sympathy.” Ukers wished the millionaire a speedy recovery, suggesting that a nurse “slip him a cup of coffee now and then during his convalescence.”
In March, Post’s doctor diagnosed him with appendicitis—ironic, since only four years earlier Post had declared repeatedly during the Collier’s trial that Grape-Nuts prevented or cured appendicitis. Admitting that he needed an operation must have created a crisis of faith for the man who had written, “Sickness, Sin, and Disease are creations of the human intellect, and exist only in a mesmeric or abnormal state.”
Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World Page 14