4. “Mecca Building,” The Economist (Chicago), December 27, 1919; 62(26): 1310; Christopher Gray, “Streetscapes: The Studebaker Building,” New York Times, January 1, 1989, p. R4; David W. Dunlap, “Change, as It Does, Returns to Times Square,” New York Times, November 8, 2004.
5. Among the building’s many uses, from 1939 to 1941, Robert Ripley, of “Believe It or Not” fame, rented out the first two floors for his “Odditorium.” Neal Thompson, A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert “Believe It or Not!” Ripley (New York: Crown Archtype, 2013). It is interesting to note that in 2016 the Kellogg Company announced the opening of a new Kellogg’s “breakfast boutique store” in Times Square at the site of the former Mecca Building, 1600 Broadway. Jonah E. Bromwich, “$7 for Corn Flakes? Cereal Gets Makeover at Kellogg’s Store in Times Square,” New York Times, June 30, 2016, accessed July 19, 2016, at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/nyregion/7-for-corn-flakes-cereal-gets-makeover-at-kelloggs-store-in-times-square.html?_r=0.
6. Powell, p. 138.
7. “The Largest Electric Sign Ever Built,” advertisement for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Saturday Evening Post, August 17, 1912 (back cover), Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine. In 1915, Will tried to default on his lease agreement because the building owners erected other signs that, he felt, obstructed the view of his sign. He won the case. See Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, First Department, Mecca Realty Co. (Appellate) v. Kellogg Toasted Corn Flake Co. (Respondent), February 11, 1915; “A Skeleton Structure Is a Building Under the Law,” Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, First Department, 166 App. Div. 74 (New York App. Div. 1915); Printer’s Ink, February 25, 1915; 90(8): 92.
8. State of Michigan Supreme Court Record, Volume 3, Kellogg v. Kellogg, Box 21, File 3, Exhibit No. 525, pp. 984–85, J. H. Kellogg Papers, MSU.
9. Powell, p. 119.
10. Francis X. Blouin, “Not Just Automobiles: Contributions of Michigan to the National Economy, 1866–1917,” in Richard J. Hathaway, ed., Michigan Visions of Our Past (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1989), pp. 151–61, quote is from p. 155; Alfred D. Chandler Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977), pp. 79–82, 195, 299.
11. Everett Rogers, The Diffusion of Innovations (New York: Free Press of Glencoe/MacMillan, 1962).
12. Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History, 1690–1960 (New York: Macmillan, 1962, 3rd edition), pp. 495–513. See also Richard Kluger, The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), pp. 151–52.
13. John Hendel, “Celebrating Linotype, 125 Years Since Its Debut,” The Atlantic, May 20, 2011, accessed August 29, 2015 at http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/05/celebrating-linotype-125-years-since-its-debut/238968/.
14. Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Juliann Sivulka, Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes: A Cultural History of American Advertising (Boston: Wadsworth Cenage Learning, 1998); Stephen R. Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997); Susan Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 1989); Charles Goodrum and Helen Dalrymple, Advertising in America: The First 200 Years (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990), pp. 56–68; Larry Tye, The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations (New York: Henry Holt, 1998).
15. T. Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic Books, 1994), p. 1.
16. James Harvey Young, Toadstool Millionaires: A Social History of Patent Medicines in America Before Federal Regulation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 205–46; James Harvey Young, The Medical Messiahs: A Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); James Harvey Young, Pure Food: Securing the Federal Food and Drug Act of 1906 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).
17. Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1885–1905 (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957), Chapter 2, “The Counting Houses,” pp. 15–35; Chapter 13, “Newspapers and Advertising,” pp. 243–49; Chapter 21, “Women’s Activities,” 354–70. W. K. Kellogg, incidentally, was a great supporter of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. He was especially supportive of the first chief administrator of what became the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Harvey W. Wiley, an activist chemist and reformer many food manufacturers resented because of the regulations he imposed and the investigations he conducted. See Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, p. 35.
18. Samuel Hopkins Adams, “The New World of Trade, II. The Art of Advertising,” Collier’s, May 22, 1909; 43: 13–15.
19. State of Michigan Supreme Court Record, Volume 3, Kellogg v. Kellogg, Box 21, File 3, Exhibit No. 525, pp. 977–91, J. H. Kellogg Papers, MSU.
20. Powell, pp. 132–33.
21. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, p. 34.
22. State of Michigan Supreme Court Record, Volume 3, pp. 977–90; File 3, Box 21, J. H. Kellogg Papers, MSU.
23. The underlining of the word “all” is in Kellogg’s letter and is his (or Arch Shaw’s) emphasis. Powell, pp. 132–34. This July 1906 advertisement still carries the “Sanitas” label; so, too, does an advertisement called “The Lady and the Grocer: Two Minds with a Single Thought,” Ladies’ Home Journal, November 1906; 23(12): 55. An advertisement in an early 1907 issue of the Delineator continues with the Sanitas label but does have Will’s signature prominently displayed under the banner “But they can’t use this signature.” An advertisement in the February 1907 (Volume 69, No. 2), Delineator, p. 327, still uses the brand Sanitas but does show Will’s signature on a box. By late summer, 1907, Sanitas disappears as a label and the product is known as Kellogg’s and made by the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, which soon after simply becomes the Kellogg’s Toasted Corn Flake Company. These advertisements are from the Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine.
24. N. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, pp. 34–36. Will owned 70 percent of the company’s stock at this point in time.
25. Powell, p. 123; Michigan State Supreme Court Record, Volume 3, p. 971, File 3, Box 21, J. H. Kellogg Papers, MSU.
26. Powell, pp. 134–35.
27. Ibid., 134–35; Letter from J. R. Smith, Food Broker for Kellogg’s Toasted Corn Flakes, to Grocers on the “Wink Campaign,” June 10, 1907 (Images 3970–80), Box 20, File 6, J. H. Kellogg Papers, MSU.
28. Kellogg’s Funny Jungleland Moving-Pictures, pamphlet (Copyright 1909; Patent 1907), Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine.
29. See, for example, All-Bran advertisement featuring the Captain and the Kids, Women’s Home Companion, circa 1940; All-Bran advertisement featuring Alphonse and Gaston, Literary Digest, circa 1939; All-Bran advertisement featuring Mutt and Jeff, Life magazine, circa 1939. Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine. Throughout the years, Kellogg’s would use numerous cartoon characters to advertise their cereals to children, ranging from Disney’s Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy to Hanna-Barbera’s Yogi the Bear and Huckleberry Hound and, most famously, their own cartoon stars such as Tony the Tiger, introduced in the early 1950s, and Snap, Crackle, and Pop, who date back to the 1930s. See, for example, “Boys! Girls! Get Your Walt Disney Character ‘Joinies,’ ” Kellogg’s Raisin Bran and Rice Krispies advertisement appearing in syndicated Sunday color funnies section, circa 1949, Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine. For the origins of Snap, Crackle, and Pop, see Kellogg’s Rice Krispies website, accessed January 27, 2016, at http://www.ricekrispies.com/snap-crackle-pop.
30. “It Sho Do Crackle. K
ellogg’s Rice Krispies,” advertisement in Good Housekeeping, September 1930, unpaginated, Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine. An earlier Kellogg’s Toasted Corn Flakes ad circa 1908 features an African American bellhop wheeling a giant box of cereal, with the slogan “Everywhere they go—everywhere they know—the original—the genuine—the kind with the flavor.”
31. Nan Robertson, “Ireene Wicker Hammer Dies, 86; Storyteller to Millions of Children,” New York Times, November 18, 1987, accessed June 16, 2015, at http://www.nytimes.com/1987/11/18/obituaries/ireene-wicker-hammer-dies-86-storyteller-to-millions-of-children.html.
32. Carson, p. 212; “Kellogg’s Krumbled Bran for Better Health,” advertisement, The Literary Digest, November 15, 1919; 63(7): 85. The ad carries a message from W. K. Kellogg: “Don’t be constipated. Eat our bran every morning as a cereal. You’ll like its looks, enjoy its taste, and value its benefits. Each package is identified and guaranteed by my signature.” Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine.
33. Powell, p. 142; Carson, p. 225.
34. Much of this section is drawn from earlier papers I wrote for the academic, peer-reviewed press: Howard Markel, “Caring for the Foreign Born: The Health of Immigrant Children in the United States, 1890–1925,” Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 1998; 152: 1020–27; Howard Markel, “For the Welfare of Children: The Origins of the Relationship Between U.S. Public Health Workers and Pediatricians,” American Journal of Public Health, 2000; 90: 893–99; Howard Markel, “ ‘When It Rains It Pours’: Endemic Goiter, Iodized Salt and David Murray Cowie, MD,” American Journal of Public Health, 1987; 77: 219–29; Howard Markel, “Academic Pediatrics: The View from New York City a Century Ago,” Academic Medicine, 1996; 17: 146–51; Howard Markel, “Henry Koplik, MD, the Good Samaritan Dispensary of New York City, and the Description of Koplik’s Spots,” Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 1996; 150: 535–39; Howard Markel, Quarantine!: East European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1892 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); Howard Markel and Frank A. Oski, The H. L. Mencken Baby Book: Comprising the Contents of H. L. Mencken’s What You Ought to Know About Your Baby, With Commentaries (Philadelphia: Hanley and Belfus, 1990).
35. Manfred J. Wasserman, “Henry L. Coit and the Certified Milk Movement in the Development of Modern Pediatrics,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 1972; 46: 359–90.
36. Richard Meckel, Save the Babies: American Public Health Reform and the Preservation of Infant Mortality, 1850–1929 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), 62–91; The Mellin’s Food Method of Percentage Feeding (Boston: The Press of Mellin’s Food Company, 1908).
37. Markel, “For the Welfare of Children,” pp. 893–99; Thomas R. Pegram, “Public Health and Progressive Dairying in Illinois,” Agricultural History, 1991; 65(1): 36–50; J. B. Frantz, Gail Borden: Dairyman to a Nation (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1951); Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The Democratic Experience (New York: Random House, 1973), pp. 312–16.
38. Boorstin, The Americans, pp. 109–10, 115, 316–22, 327. See also Susanne Freidberg, Fresh: A Perishable History (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010); Aaron Bobrow-Strain, White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf (Boston: Beacon Press, 2013); John H. White Jr., The American Railroad Freight Car: From the Wood-Car Era to the Coming of Steel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). And also see: John Harvey Young, Pure Food: Securing the Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).
39. Mark Levinson, The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America (New York: Hill & Wang, 2012); Avis H. Anderson, A&P: The Story of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (Images of America) (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2002); William I. Walsh, The Rise and Decline of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1986); Guru Madhavan, Applied Minds: How Engineers Think (New York: W. W. Norton, 2015), pp. 59–61; Mike Freeman, Clarence Saunders and the Founding of Piggly Wiggly: The Rise and Fall of a Memphis Maverick (Mount Pleasant, SC: The History Press, 2011); John Brooks, “A Corner in Piggly Wiggly: Annals of Finance,” The New Yorker, June 6, 1959; 25(16): 128–60.
40. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, p. 29.
41. Neal Gabler, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), pp. 111–64, quote is from p. 155.
42. Powell, p. 93.
43. Schwarz, John Harvey Kellogg, p. 212.
44. Powell, p. 111.
45. Schwarz, John Harvey Kellogg, pp. 211–12; Powell, pp. 111–13.
46. Powell, pp. 111–12.
47. Ibid., p. 98.
48. Ibid., pp. 111–14.
49. Ibid., pp. 113–14.
50. Interview of William S. Sadler by Richard Schwarz, November 13, 1960 (Card IX-A-3), B10, F14, Sadler, Richard Schwarz Collection, Center for Adventist Research.
51. In W. K. Kellogg’s obituary, it states he bought this plant from the Hygienic Food Company, where it made “Maple Flakes,” for $26,340.50, half of which was in cash. “Community to Mourn W. K. Kellogg for Week,” Battle Creek Enquirer and News, October 7, 1951, p. 12. The entire obituary appears on pp. 1, 12, 13, and 14.
52. Powell, p. 123.
53. Ibid., p. 117.
54. Carson, p. 205.
55. Norman Williamson Jr. gives this explanation, too, in his An Intimate Glimpse, p. 30.
56. Powell, p. 118. The Norka plant was later abandoned and it burned down in 1912.
57. Ibid., p. 135. Morehouse would later design an “annex”—which was actually a fifteen-story patient tower—for the Battle Creek Sanitarium in 1928. Laura R. Ashlee, ed., Traveling Through Time: A Guide to Michigan’s Historical Markers (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005).
58. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, p. 34.
59. Carson, p. 206.
60. Powell, pp. 124–25.
61. Carson, p. 205.
62. Powell, pp. 125–26. The italics are Powell’s.
63. Carson, p. 206.
64. Powell, p. 125; Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, p. 33; “Community to Mourn W. K. Kellogg for Week,” Battle Creek Enquirer and News, October 7, 1951, p. 14. The entire obituary appears on pp. 1, 12, 13, and 14.
65. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, pp. 30–31.
66. “Community to Mourn W. K. Kellogg for Week,” p. 14; similarly, a memorial issue of the company newspaper, The Kellogg News, for October 1951, Collections of the Willard Library of Battle Creek, Michigan, cites this same figure on page 7. Powell, however, lists a far lower figure on p. 126 of only 24,000 cases per day for 1920, which is clearly too low for this late date and success of the company.
67. Powell, p. 182.
68. Ibid., pp. 181–82.
69. Robert Froman, “Here’s the Latest Exciting Chapter in the Cereal Story,” Collier’s, April 12, 1952; 129: 28, 78–81, Reel 34, Images 525–30, J. H. Kellogg Papers, U-M; photographic postcards of the W. K. Kellogg Toasted Corn Flake Company employees, circa 1908, and of the process of making Corn Flakes, circa 1920s, Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine.
70. The Kellogg Company, postcards of the manufacturing process, circa 1920s, Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine.
71. Powell, p. 121.
72. Ibid., p. 162.
73. Ibid., pp. 161–63, quote is from p. 163. Robert Updegraff was the author of numerous books and articles on business and marketing as well as a valued advisor to the top management of several major companies including the Aluminum Company of America, American Brake Shoe Company, General Foods Corporation, W. T. Grant Company, John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company, Hart Schaffner and Marx, Lever Brothers, and Westinghouse Electric. He was a frequent contributor to System, a trade magazine published by Arch Shaw’s company, and was likely
introduced to W. K. Kellogg through Shaw.
74. Powell, p. 115.
75. Carson, p. 217; Powell, pp. 157, 161–62.
76. Benjamin K. Hunnicutt, Kellogg’s Six-Hour Day (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996); Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, pp. 140–42.
77. “You Won’t Believe It Until You’ve Tried It. Delicious! Kellogg’s Corn Flakes Served Piping Hot with Hot Milk or Cream,” 1939 advertisement, Ladies’ Home Journal, Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine.
78. Powell, p. 279.
79. Williamson Jr., An Intimate Glimpse, pp. 128–29, 153, 169–73. Among the interim (and in Will’s view unsuccessful) chief executives of the Kellogg Company during this period were Lewis J. Brown and Walter Hasselhorn.
80. Powell, pp. 210–11, quote is from p. 209.
81. “Watson Vanderploeg Dies at 68; President of Kellogg Company; Head of Cereal Concern Since 1939. Previously Had Been a Banker in Chicago,” New York Times, May 29, 1957, p. 21. The three U.S. plants were in Battle Creek; San Leandro, California; and Omaha, Nebraska. By 1955, Kellogg’s operated plants in London, Ontario, Canada; Sydney, Australia; Manchester, England; Quarétaro, Mexico; Springs, South Africa; along with the three contracted plants in Ireland, Sweden, and Holland. By the early 1960s, according to a company promotional brochure, that number increased to plants in sixteen countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Denmark, Finland, Great Britain, Holland, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Switzerland, the United States, and Venezuela and more than “100 countries enjoy Kellogg’s Corn Flakes for breakfast!” See promotional postcard, “Kellogg’s Company Plants,” circa 1955; and brochure, “Let’s Take a Peek at Kellogg’s of Battle Creek (featuring Yogi Bear as your tour guide),” circa 1960. Kellogg’s cereals are currently sold in over 180 countries around the world. Collections of the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine.
82. Powell, p. 210.
83. Scott Bruce and Bill Crawford, Cerealizing America: The Unsweetened Story of American Breakfast Cereal (Boston and London: Faber and Faber, 1995), pp. 103–13. The current public health problem of obesity, of course, is much more multi-factorial and complicated than indicting the cereal companies alone. See, for example, K. M. Flegal, M. D. Carroll, B. K. Kit, and C. L. Ogden, “Prevalence of Obesity and Trends in the Distribution of Body Mass Index Among US Adults, 1999–2010,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 2012; 307(5): 491–97; C. L. Ogden, M. D. Carroll, B. K. Kit, and K. M. Flegal, “Prevalence of obesity and trends in body mass index among US children and adolescents, 1999–2010.” Journal of the American Medical Association, 2012; 307 (5): 483–90; A. S. Singh, C. Mulder, J. W. Twisk, W. van Mechelen, and M. J. Chinapaw, “Tracking of Childhood Overweight into Adulthood: A Systematic Review of the Literature,” Obesity Reviews, 2008; 9(5): 474–88.
The Kelloggs Page 53