‘Purity as life’: H.J. Heinz, religious sentiment, and the beginning of the industrial diet

Abstract

Between 1880 and 1930 the application of new technologies not only reshaped the US landscape by introducing large‐scale manufacturing into urban settings, but it also transformed what Americans ate. This transformation to foods made outside of the home created opportunities for adulteration as exemplified by Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Equally, widely reported toxic effects of various chemicals fed to Harvey Wiley's Poison Squad only heightened the public's and Congress's fear that there was something fundamentally wrong with the foods Americans ate. Using the H.J. Heinz Company as a case study, this article examines how one large industrial food processor built consumer trust based on his belief that religion and good works were essential to his business and crafting pure foods was his moral obligation. As a pioneer in the nascent food industry, Henry Heinz wanted to infuse both his products and his company with purity to differentiate his products and put consumers' fear of industrial foods to rest.

Keywords:

• Henry J. Heinz
• canning industry
• applied Christianity
• purity
• industrial food
• product tasting

Notes

1. Throughout the paper I will use the terms H.J. or Henry Heinz to refer to the founder and H.J. Heinz Company or Heinz to refer to the company.

2. H.J. Heinz Company, ‘Salesman's Convention,’ 10.

3. Most of the literature on the H.J. Heinz Company focuses on its marketing strategies and attribute the success of the company to advertising and marketing innovations rather than H.J.'s religious convictions and ability to build trust through personal relationships. On the H.J. Heinz Company and brand creation, see Koehn, ‘Henry Heinz and Creation,’ 349–93 and Koehn, Brand New, 43–90. See also Gabaccia, We Are What We Eat, 46–92 and Watkins, ‘Heinz Varieties on Six Continents,’ 10–24.

4. Young, Pure Food; Tomes, Gospel of Germs; and Goodwin, The Pure Food.

5. Goodwin, The Pure Food, 1.

6. Butler, ‘Jack‐in‐the‐Box Faith,’ 1360.

7. Smith, ‘William Jennings Bryan,’ 41.

8. Smith, The Search for Social Salvation.

9. Chandler, The Visible Hand, 1–6, 79–121, 207–84, 287–314, 345–9, 363–81, 391–401, 455–500.

10. Cronon, Nature's Metropolis, 55–108, 207–62.

11. Levenstein, Revolution at the Table, 30–43. For an earlier work that examines American eating habits from the late eighteenth century to 1940, see Cummings, The American and His Food.

12. Horowitz, Putting Meat on the American Table; Anderson, Industrializing the Corn Belt; DuPuis, Nature's Perfect Food; and Hamilton, Trucking Country. See also Belasco and Scranton, Food Nations, and Belasco and Horowitz, Food Chains.

13. Fitzgerald and Petrick, ‘In Good Taste,’ 392–404; Petrick, ‘“Like Ribbons of Green and Gold,”’ 269–95; and Petrick, ‘An Ambivalent Diet.’

14. Heinz's attempt to differentiate its product from a large number of similar products has been addressed in the historiography of business and technology through discussions of batch vs. mass production. For an analysis of mass production, see Hounshell, From the American System; Noble, Forces of Production; Sawyer, ‘The Social Basis,’ 361–79. For an analysis of batch production, see Scranton, Endless Novelty; Sabel and Zeitland, World of Possibilities.

15. Bushman, The Refinement of America.

16. The Oxford English Dictionary definition of quality can be found at http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/00194227?query_type=word&queryword=quality&edition=2e&first=1&max_to_show=10&sort_type=alpha&result_place=1&search_id=qngC-GAQ4Mj-1364&hilite=00194227, specifically definition IV. 13.

17. H.J. Heinz Company, ‘How to Make a Good Salad.’

18. H.J. Heinz Company, Heinz Baked Beans.

19. Bockelmann's Grocery Economist. This Greenwich Village store published monthly newsletter with prices. In the May issue most Heinz items were twice as expensive as bulk or store brand products. See also H.J. Heinz Company, ‘Salesman's Convention,’ 33.

20. Smith, How to Conduct Store Demonstrations, 1. See also Levenstein, Revolution at the Table, 177.

21. There is a small but growing literature on industrial food production, see note 13. A companion literature to food industrialization and technology is the substantial literature on consumers and their response to mass consumption. The work credited for shifting the focus from production to mediating consumption is Cowan, ‘The Consumption Junction.’ For an examination of how large corporations attempted to control mass consumption through food packaging, see Beniger, The Control Revolution, 344–6. Historians who have addressed these questions include Goldstein, ‘Mediating Consumption’; Blaszczyk, Imagining Consumers; Blaszczyk, ‘“Where Mrs. Homemaker is Never Forgotten,”’ 163–80; and Kline, Consumers in the Country. For another perspective on how consumers use technology, see Fischer, America Calling. There is also a growing literature in labor history, particularly works that focus on working‐class women, that examines the economic power of consumers. The first was Cohen, Making A New Deal. Newer works include Hunter, To 'Joy My Freedom; Glickman, A Living Wage; Frank, Purchasing Power; Cohen, Consumer's Republic; and Deutsch, Building a Housewife's Paradise.

22. Levenstein, Revolution at the Table, 93. The New Nutrition advocated less meat and more grains in the diet. John Harvey Kellogg, the brother of Kellogg cereal producer William, preached for more cereal in the diet at his Battle Creek, Michigan Sanatorium.

23. H.J. Heinz Company, Pickles; H.J. Heinz Company, Interior Store.

24. Wiley's findings were later proved false by the eminent chemist Ira Remsen.

25. Goodwin, The Pure Food, 221. See also Young, Pure Food. For contemporary perspectives on federal Pure Food legislation see Wiley, Harvey W. Wiley and Browne, In Memoriam. Harvey Washington Wiley. Although sodium benzoate was eventually allowed in products in very small amounts, Heinz and other branded products did not use it as a preservative. Other additives such as alum were banned outright by the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act.

26. Goodwin, The Pure Food, 41.

27. Henry Heinz sent his son Howard to Washington, DC to work with Harvey Wiley and to lobby for pure food legislation. Alberts, Good Provider, 172.

28. Yezierska, The Bread Givers, 110.

29. Goodwin, The Pure Food, 42.

30. Tomes, Gospel of Germs, 168.

31. On the early history of scientific research in the canning industry, see National Canners Association, The Story of the Canning Industry; Beardsley, Harry L. Russell; Thorne, History of Food Preservation; and Goldblith, Samuel Cate Prescott.

32. H.J. Heinz Company, ‘Money for Grocers in High‐Class Food.’

33. McCafferty, Henry J. Heinz, 68.

34. H.J. Heinz Company, The 57 Life.

35. McCafferty, Henry J. Heinz, 113.

36. Ibid., 12; Alberts, Good Provider, 5; Dienstaf, In Good Company; and Skrabec, H.J. Heinz.

37. ‘Grand Prize for Heinz,’ Good Housekeeping, 1904. See also Alberts, Good Provider, 135. On the history of employee welfare, see Strom, Beyond the Typewriter; Kwolek‐Folland, Engendering Business; and Jacoby, Modern Manors. Strom used the term employee welfare program to describe the programs employers established to ‘better’ their workers. Elizabeth Beardsley Butler acknowledged that while working at Heinz was hard work, the conditions and pay were better than rural canning factories and other types of employment for women, Butler and Underwood, Women in the Trades.

38. Weber, The Protestant Ethic. See also Hilkey, Character is Capital. Hilkey argues that success manuals placed a moral restraint on success; there was a right and a wrong way to wealth based on Protestantism; and truly successful people based their success on Christian ideals.

39. Alberts, Good Provider, 203.

40. Quoted in Alberts, Good Provider, 203.

41. Alberts, Good Provider, 52–85.

42. H.J. Heinz Diary Entry, January 1879, quoted from Alberts, Good Provider, 52.

43. H.J. Heinz Company, Pickle Manual, 1900. By 1903, the company owned over 20,000 acres of land. H.J. Heinz Company, Pickle Manual, 1903.

44. H.J. Heinz Company, ‘The Heinz Way,’ 21.

45. Ibid., 17.

46. H.J. Heinz Company, Pickle Manual, 1900.

47. Alberts, Good Provider, 136.

48. Tomes, Gospel of Germs, 169.

49. In Eliot Lord's pamphlet (ca 1910) (Lord, As a Visitor Sees Us), he took readers on a literary version of the plant tour offered by the company from the 1890s.

50. Alberts, Good Provider, 142.

51. H.J. Heinz Company, ‘Salesman's Convention,’ 3.

52. Alberts, Good Provider, picture facing p. 175. The same picture appears in H.J. Heinz Company, Pickles: Exposition Edition, 21.

53. There is a rich and growing literature on consumer culture in the twentieth century. Older works have focused on the power of producers to manipulate consumers and have used the growth of advertising as a central theme. These works include Marchand, Advertising the American Dream; Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul; Lears, No Place of Grace; Lears, Fables of Abundance; Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed; Leach, Land of Desire; and Levenstein, Revolution at the Table. For a critique of the power of advertising, see Schudson, Advertising, the Uneasy Persuasion.

54. As both Spears, 100 Years on the Road and Zunz, Making America Corporate argue the nature of salesmanship changed as the American economy shifted from proprietary capitalism to corporate capitalism. These new company men lost their autonomy and became subject to the marketing plans of the home office. See also Friedman, ‘John H. Patterson,’ 552–84 and Friedman, Birth of a Salesman. On the rise of the managerial class see Chandler, The Visible Hand and Chandler, Scale and Scope.

55. See note 5.

56. Bockelmann's Grocery Economist. See also H.J. Heinz Company, ‘Salesman's Convention,’ 33.

57. H.J. Heinz Company, ‘Salesman's Convention,’ 15.

58. H.J. Heinz Company, Pickle Manual, 1900, ‘Spoilage: Chow Chow.’

59. H.J. Heinz Company, Pickle Manual, 1900, ‘Spoilage: Dill Pickles.’

60. Ibid.

61. Ibid. The brine consisted of 3 ounces of salt to 1 gallon of water or a 2% saline solution.

62. H.J. Heinz Company, Unloading Department Supplies, 17.

63. H.J. Heinz Company, The 57, London Edition, 12, and H.J. Heinz Company, Interior Store Displays.

64. McCafferty, Henry J. Heinz, 112.

65. H.J. Heinz Company, The Quality of Salesmanship, 11.

66. Ibid., 8.

67. McCafferty, Henry J. Heinz, 127.

68. H.J. Heinz Company, The Quality of Salesmanship, 11.

69. McCafferty, Henry J. Heinz, 128–9.

70. H.J. Heinz Company, The Quality of Salesmanship, 30.

71. Ibid.

72. H.J. Heinz Company, ‘The Importance of Being Well Dressed.’

73. Kidwell and Steele, Men and Women Dressing the Part, 87.

74. Ibid.

75. H.J. Heinz Company, ‘Manager's and Salesmen's Convention,’ 2, 4.

76. Robinson, The Man in the Bowler Hat, 27. Like Kidwell and Steele, Robinson also concludes that men's business suites distinguished masculine men from effeminate ones. See also Bederman, Manliness and Civilization and Carby, Race Men.

77. Harvey, Men in Black, 20.

78. H.J. Heinz Company, Consumer Promotion Work.

79. H.J. Heinz Company, The Quality of Salesmanship, 11.

80. Hilkey, Character is Capital, 127.

81. McCafferty, Henry J. Heinz, 32.

82. H.J. Heinz Company, The Quality of Salesmanship, 28.

83. Ibid.

84. Ibid.

85. H.J. Heinz Company, The 57, 1903, 3; Esterline, ‘Hard Knots,’ 3; H.J. Heinz Company, ‘Pages from the Travelers' Note Book.’

86. Alberts, Good Provider, 120. Several thousand people visited the Heinz exhibit at the 1893 Chicago Exposition. Some other expositions Heinz participated in included the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the 1891 Piedmont Exposition, Atlanta, the 1894 Exposition Universelle, Antwerp, the 1901 Pan‐American Exposition, Buffalo, the 1904 St Louis Exposition, and the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco. H.J. Heinz Company, Heinz 57 Varieties.

87. Smith, How to Conduct Store Demonstrations, 1.

88. Ibid.

89. Tomes, Gospel of Germs, 168.

90. H.J. Heinz Company, Demonstration Manual, 4.

91. Smith, How to Conduct Store Demonstrations, 2.

92. Ibid.

93. Goldstein, ‘Part of the Package,’ 271–96.

94. Stage and Vincenti, Rethinking Home Economics; Ehrenreigh and English, For Her Own Good, 141.

95. Orvell, The Real Thing, xvii.

96. For an analysis of social relations through hospitality, see March, ‘Hospitality, Women,’ 351–87. See also Korsmeyer, Making Sense of Taste; Bourdieu, Distinction; and Peterson, Acquired Taste. For an anthropological approach, see Farb and Armelagos, Consuming Passions; Mintz, Sweetness and Power; and Counihan and Esterik, Food and Culture.

97. H.J. Heinz Company, Demonstration Manual, 17.

98. Smith, How to Conduct Store Demonstrations, 9.

99. H.J. Heinz Company, Demonstration Manual, 5.

100. Smith, How to Conduct Store Demonstrations, 11.

101. H.J. Heinz Company, Demonstration Manual, photograph facing p. 6.

102. Ibid., 9.

103. Ibid., 8–9.

104. Ibid., 11.

105. Lipartito, ‘When Women were Switches,’ 1088. See also Strom, Beyond the Typewriter.

106. Susman, Culture as History, 277.

107. Alberts, Good Provider, 146.

108. H.J. Heinz Company, How to Conduct Store Demonstrations, 14.

109. Benson, Counter Cultures.

110. New York Tribune, ‘Man Whose “57 Varieties,”’ 10.

111. Petrick, ‘An Ambivalent Diet,’ 36–7.

112. On the changing formulation of Heinz products, see Petrick, ‘Larding the Larder,’ 383. On the company's most recent change to their ketchup recipe, see Mitchell, ‘Ketchup Fans Mourn.’