This was a post-industrial revolution era that was still bringing about major innovations and changes in the way that products were thought of from a manufacturing standpoint, and Coca-Cola would soon become available, not just at pharmacies and soda fountains in Georgia, but all across the United States. In 1899 the company began to move away from the soda fountain market and sell mass-market bottles of their product. This move made the drink accessible to people of colour for the very first time. The soda fountains of old were segregated areas, like so many businesses of the era.
The intention wasn’t to market to people of all races, but rather just to expand the national scope of the business. The backlash was unexpected, but severe, as reports of ‘negro cocaine fiends’ were being spread by newspapers nationwide. An editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association even went so far as to say: ‘The negroes in some parts of the South are reported as being addicted to a new form of vice – that of ‘cocaine sniffing’ or the ‘coke habit’, as it appears to have this name also.’ The article goes on to discuss ‘the negroes of Kentucky’ and the hopes that the cocaine habits there will remain isolated to those areas. There is also talk of how some areas had made it illegal for a doctor to prescribe cocaine to a patient for anything but medicinal purposes.
The major backlash against cocaine was absolutely racially charged, and as evidence anti-narcotic legislation, like the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act was introduced. It would be this purely racist movement against cocaine in the United States that would eventually lead to Coca-Cola removing all traces of the drug from their drink.
In 1908 Dr Hamilton Wright became America’s first Opium Commissioner. He attended the Shanghai International Opium Commission in February of 1909 and gave a full report on the subject, which included not only findings on chronic opium use in the United States, but also highlighted what he felt was a problem with cocaine. ‘It is certain, however, that the use of cocaine among the lower order of working negroes is quite common.’ Wright goes on to say:
This class of negro is not willing, as a rule, to go to much trouble or send to any distance for anything, and, for this reason, where he is known to have become debauched by cocaine, it is certain that the drug has been brought directly to him from New York and other Northern States where it is manufactured.
The Harrison Narcotics Act was: An Act To provide for the registration of, with collectors of internal revenue, and to impose a special tax on all persons who produce, import, manufacture, compound, deal in, dispense, sell, distribute, or give away opium or coca leaves, their salts, derivatives, or preparations, and for other purposes. The term narcotic was utilised, so that the act could cover not just opium, but the growing concern regarding cocaine. This law also made allowances for doctors to continue prescribing said narcotics to their patients as a part of normal treatments, but could not supply it to existing addicts to quench their habit.
Coca-Cola began bending to the public pressure and in the early twentieth century began developing processes for lessening the amount of cocaine in the drink and ceased advertising its benefits and use. In 1922, the Jones-Miller Act was passed, which banned the importation of cocaine to the United States. It was discovered years ago that Coca-Cola received a special exception from this law by the government and continued to import the plant. It wasn’t until 1929 that the company was able to begin removing the cocaine content completely from their drink, but to this day they still import the narcotic-laced plant.
The coca leaf was still a part of the Coca-Cola mixture in recent years. There was a special extraction process that was developed in conjunction with the government of Peru in the 1980s. This was amidst the Reagan administration’s ‘war on drugs’ campaign, but special permission was given for coca leaves to be imported into the United States to the Stephan Maywood plant. There, the company would have the cocaine removed from the plant through a special process. The cocaine by-product is then sold to Mallinckrodt, a company that purifies the drug into cocaine hydrochloride U.S.P., which is used as a local anaesthetic by many ear, nose and throat doctors. The coca leaves, minus cocaine content, are then sent to Coca-Cola for inclusion in their drink.
Coca-Cola Today
The Coca-Cola company is a corporate giant in today’s world. The total assets of Coca-Cola were over ninety billion dollars in 2015. The company is still based in Atlanta, Georgia, but they have grown far past the days of their morally ambiguous Southern Confederate creator and the days of cocaine inclusion. Now, Coca-Cola makes it a point to take a stand in matters of social justice. In a press release in April of 2016 titled: ‘The Coca-Cola Company Statement on Importance of Equal Rights for LGBT Community’, the company stated their dedication to equal rights for all:
The Coca-Cola Company does not support legislation that discriminates. We believe policies that discriminate are contrary to our Company’s core values and also negatively affect the lives of our associates, consumers, customers, suppliers, and partners.
In March 2015 they also expressed publicly their support of marriage equality:
As a believer in an inclusive world, The Coca-Cola Company values and celebrates diversity. We have long been a strong supporter of the LGBT community and have advocated for inclusion, equality and diversity through both our policies and practices.
Coca-Cola totals a staggering 700,000 employees worldwide. They sell 1.9 billion servings of Coke every day and their dividends have steadily increased each year for over fifty years. Coca-Cola merchandise remains collectible, especially the vintage merchandise and advertising materials. Thankfully, Coke is here to stay.
Chapter Two
Hugo Boss: Nazi Fashion
There were many manufacturers involved in the uniforming and arming of the German Nazi soldiers throughout the Second World War, but only one of those companies would become a household name in fashion that remains in the public eye today, and that is Hugo F. Boss. The Hugo Boss company features a namesake that is shrouded in disgrace and subversion, with accusations of forced labour and an allegiance to the National Socialist Party by Boss himself. There is no doubt that Hugo F. Boss agreed with and supported the ideals of the Nazi party, and his clothing company would be one of many that ended up making uniforms for the Nazi troops and the Gestapo prior to and throughout the Second World War.
Hugo Boss Early Life
Hugo Ferdinand Boss was born on 8 July 1885 in the Swabian town of Metzingen, in the Kingdom of Wurttemberg, Germany. Boss was the youngest of four siblings. His parents, Heinrich and Luise Boss, ran a modest lingerie shop, which Boss would eventually inherit when he married Anna Katharin Freysinger in 1908. It would be abnormal for the youngest child to inherit the family business under normal circumstances, but only Hugo and his sister survived infancy, therefore the then traditional responsibility was bestowed upon Hugo. The couple would have one daughter before Hugo enlisted in the German Army in 1914, at the start of the First World War. Hugo never received any medals or promotions while serving in the army, clearly not ambitious about an on-going military career. This isn’t surprising for someone who had a family business to fall back on.
The Beginnings of a Business
In 1924, a decade after enlisting in the military, Hugo F. Boss opened his very first clothing factory in his hometown of Metzingen. The start-up required financial support from two local manufacturers, but soon the company was employing twenty to thirty seamstresses. The connection with the Nazis began early, when one of the first major commissions in his first year of business included the now notorious brown shirts for the National Socialist Party.
The ripple effect caused by ‘Black Tuesday’ in America would change the course of the story of Hugo F. Boss, leading him right into the centre of the Nazis. The stock market on Wall Street crashed on 24 October 1929, driving the United States into the Great Depression, causing rampant unemployment and shattering America’s economy. The effect of this crash was also felt around the world and in Germany unemployment
began to rise as the economy continued to suffer. The textile manufacturers were hit hard and by 1931 Hugo Boss was facing certain bankruptcy. Boss would make a deal with his creditors that allowed him to continue production, but clearly things weren’t going in a good direction for Germany and something needed to be done. This series of events led Hugo F. Boss right to the door of the National Socialist Party, of which he became a literal card-carrying member in 1931, two years before Adolf Hitler would seize power of Germany. The party was promising economic solutions for Germany, including ways to help the unemployment levels that were plaguing the country.
The Third Reich gave a good amount of business to Boss once he became an official party member. This came with restrictions, of course, because what they primarily wanted producing were uniforms and work clothing, but despite this, sales began to grow steadily from 1933 to 1938. Then, in 1938, the big commissions for Nazi uniforms began to flood in. Boss and his workers were thrilled with the influx, feeling that they had finally ‘made it’. Boss would peak in profits around 1942, but that is where it would level out, because the Third Reich put a cap on the costs that manufacturers could charge, in an effort to manage their own finances. The Boss factory was a ‘Price Category 1’, which essentially meant that they had the ability to produce the uniforms that the Nazis needed at the lowest prices possible. Not great news for Hugo Boss, and his company wouldn’t develop into a huge corporation until long after his own death.
Prior to the war, Boss had produced everything from the early brown shirts, to black uniforms for the SS, and the Hitler Youth uniforms. During the war the Boss factory produced uniforms primarily for the German armed forces and Waffen-SS. The examination of the Hugo Boss company’s role in producing Nazi uniforms may be highlighted in this book, but they were far from the only manufacturer contributing to the cause; Boss was in no way a stand out in terms of production quantities or contributions. They were simply one of many in a vast country working as cogs in the Nazi machine. The fact that Hugo Boss is still a household name in high fashion today, despite the dark beginnings, is what makes it of such interest. It should be noted that while they produced uniforms for the Nazis, there is no reason to assume that Hugo Boss had anything to do with the design of any uniforms.
Forced Labour
The textile manufacturing trade in Nazi Germany wasn’t exactly the highest paid job that a worker could have. The uniforms were certainly a necessary part of the German war machine, but the serious workforce moved towards more lucrative trades, mostly involving weaponry and engineering. There was, therefore, a distinct lack of available and skilled workers for the textile industry. Enter one of the darker parts of the affiliation of Hugo F. Boss with the Nazis – forced labour. The Hugo Boss company first employed forced labour in April of 1940. The entire town of Metzingen would come to house a whopping 1,241 forced labourers during the war. There was a point when up to 180 of those workers were being made to work for Hugo Boss. This consisted of 140 forced labourers and forty French prisoners of war.
The majority of the forced workers were transplanted from Bielsko in Poland, because there was already a large textile manufacturing industry there, so the skilled workforce was already trained and ready to go. The Nazi Gestapo brought the workers in to be divided amongst the various textile manufacturers throughout Metzingen. When the workers arrived in Metzingen they were split up by gender; the women were placed with local families, while the men were moved into sheds in a dedicated Hugo Boss company encampment. Investigations into the male workers’ camp found that it was at least hygienic, but in 1943 a new camp was built to house all of the workers from the various Metzingen factories. The conditions at this camp were unstable at best, with food sometimes being scarce and the hygiene not to the standards of the previous accommodations. There is some evidence to suggest that Hugo F. Boss took certain measures to help the labourers receive treatment that was at least moderate, providing midday meals to them in the company canteen and trying to keep the female workers out of the camps. These measures were certainly a step in the right direction, but when you’re dealing with the topic of slavery, it’s all details.
Post-War Fallout
The allied forces occupying Germany at the end of the Second World War finally reached the streets of Metzigen in April of 1945. Between them, the allied forces of America, Britain, France and the Soviets split Germany into occupation zones. The zone that encompassed Metzigen would come to be occupied by the French troops. It was then that the denazification of the region began.
The concept of denazification was an effort to examine all of the public offices and positions of power and control within Nazi Germany and remove all traces of the National Socialist Party from those arenas. The denazification process would come to be especially critical of Hugo F. Boss. The Potsdam Declaration would detail the intentions of the Allied Forces clearly:
All members of the Nazi party who have been more than nominal participants in its activities and all other persons hostile to Allied purposes shall be removed from public and semi-public office and from positions of responsibility in important private undertakings. Such persons shall be replaced by persons who, by their political and moral qualities, are deemed capable of assisting in developing genuine democratic institutions in Germany.
This process would also trickle down to the educational and judicial systems, as well:
German education shall be so controlled as completely to eliminate Nazi and militarist doctrines and to make possible the successful development of democratic ideas. The judicial system will be reorganized in accordance with the principles of democracy, of justice under law, and of equal rights for all citizens without distinction of race, nationality or religion. The administration of affairs in Germany should be directed toward the decentralization of the political structure and the development of local responsibility. To this end: Local self-government shall be restored throughout Germany on democratic principles and in particular through elective councils as rapidly as is consistent with military security and the purposes of military occupation; All democratic political parties with rights of assembly and of public discussions shall be allowed and encouraged throughout Germany
The denazification process wasn’t intended primarily to remove or examine business owners, but rather was meant to focus on political offices. The unique amount of involvement with the National Socialist Party that Boss enjoyed made him a prime candidate to be singled out. Hugo F. Boss was not only an active member of the Nazi party himself, but he had also become good friends with the despised regional Nazi leader, Georg Rath. The council decided to fine Boss a hefty 100,000 reichmarks, the second highest fine imposed in the region. It is clear that the French felt that Boss needed to be made an example of. Ultimately, Hugo F. Boss was classified by the French as a ‘follower’, thus he only received the punishment of a fine.
Hugo F. Boss would die of a tooth abscess in his lifelong home of Metzingen on 9 August 1948, at the age of 63.
The Hugo Boss Company Apologises
The dark past of Hugo F. Boss plagued the fashion company that still brandishes his tainted name for years so, in an effort to expose the whole truth, the Hugo Boss company commissioned a historical study. The self-commissioned study was extremely revealing. It was made public by the Hugo Boss company in August 2011.
The company issued the following statement on their official website:
The study and its summary were produced in cooperation with the highly respected Gesellschaft für Unternehmensgeschichte – a German institution devoted to chronicling corporate histories – and its independent historians. The Group wishes to emphasize that it was not involved in the research or writing and that no influence whatsoever was brought to bear concerning the study’s form or content.
In the past HUGO BOSS AG has often been confronted by vague statements regarding its history. Hugo Ferdinand Boss established his workshop in 1924, as a consequence of which his company operated during the T
hird Reich and the Second World War. During this period the factory employed 140 forced labourers (the majority of them women) and 40 French prisoners of war. When the Group became aware of this fact, it made a contribution to the international fund set up to compensate former forced labourers.
Out of respect to everyone involved, the Group has published this new study with the aim of adding clarity and objectivity to the discussion. It also wishes to express its profound regret to those who suffered harm or hardship at the factory run by Hugo Ferdinand Boss under National Socialist rule.
Continuing Controversy
The Hugo Boss controversy continues to come to light from time to time. In fact, just a few years ago, shock-comedian Russell Brand was holding the microphone at the GQ Fashion Awards to accept the Oracle Award. The annual event, which was sponsored by the Hugo Boss company, included an audience of designers and celebrities. Following British Conservative politician Boris Johnson, a somewhat out-of-place character at the fashion awards, Brand made light of the historical origins that Hugo Boss shares with the Nazis:
Glad to grace the stage where Boris Johnson has just made light of the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Meaning that GQ can now stand for ‘Genocide Quips’. I mention that only to make the next comment a bit lighter, because if any of you know a little bit about history and fashion, you’ll know Hugo Boss made the uniforms for the Nazis. The Nazis did have flaws, but you know they did look fucking fantastic, lets face it. While they were killing people on the basis of their religion and sexuality. Genocide Quips are okay, no its okay its okay its already been sanctioned…its all cool.
A Secret History of Brands Page 3