The Kelloggs Read online

  Perky invited the droves of American and Canadian honeymooners coming to the Falls directly after pledging “I do” for free tours of his factory. For decades, millions of newlyweds breakfasted on gratis samples of Perky’s crunchy “wheat pillows,” liberally handed out as they exited the tour. The majority of them purchased several larger boxes at the factory’s store. At the end of their honeymoons, the newlyweds began their new households with fond memories of their time in Niagara Falls. Thanks to Perky, they also had the catchy slogan, “Shredded Wheat. It’s All in the Shreds,” floating about in their heads and the actual cereal floating in bowls of milk at their breakfast table.25

  Shredded Wheat factory in Niagara Falls Credit 37

  In the longer run, John and Will ultimately won the battle over Shredded Wheat. John consoled his disappointed younger brother after the failure of the Shredded Wheat deal by characterizing it as a new opportunity for greatness on their own terms. “We’ll invent a better food,” he vowed.26 Perky’s success convinced the brothers that there was a market for their culinary ambition and pushed them to redouble their efforts by creating and perfecting the far superior, and ultimately far more popular, ready-to-eat flaked cereals.

  Thirty-four years later Will Kellogg enjoyed an even sweeter plate of revenge. In 1912, Perky’s patent on Shredded Wheat expired and Will, by now a successful cereal man, began manufacturing his own version of the “wheat pillows.” The “new” cereal, backed by his capable team of advertising men, salesmen, and a loyal American public eager to buy the Kellogg brand, became an instant hit. Perky was displeased, to say the least, and threatened a lawsuit. An obscure accord was reached between the two firms in 1919 and Will temporarily backed off on producing his shredded wheat product. As Will grew more successful, however, he increasingly enjoyed engaging in the business version of cockfights to maintain his company’s supremacy in the cereal industry. Consequently, in 1927 he ordered the Kellogg Company to enter the shredded wheat market in full force by duplicating (and improving) Perky’s process. More provocative, he sold identically shaped and tasting biscuits, brazenly labeled “Kellogg’s Shredded Wheat.”

  By 1930, the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) had purchased Perky’s company; two years later, Nabisco, no small shakes itself as a powerful corporation, decided to sue America’s largest cereal company over “unfair competition.” Citing brand-name infringement and that the Kellogg Company appropriated their product’s distinctive biscuit shape, the case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court. In a 7–2 decision, written by Associate Justice Louis Brandeis in 1938, the Court ruled in favor of Will Kellogg’s cereal company. The shape, the Court determined, was fairly generic and not protected by any patent, let alone an expired one. The name “shredded wheat” was deemed to be equally generic, descriptive, and represented “truth in labeling,” long before that became a commonplace phrase. It was a double victory for Will.27 His company made a mint off a highly profitable product that should have been his all along had not John’s indecision bungled the deal to purchase Perky’s Shredded Wheat outright in 1894.28

  Ella Kellogg, wife of John Harvey, with some of their adopted children Credit 38

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  THE UNSUNG HERO in the corn flake story is John’s devoted wife, Ella Eaton Kellogg.29 She was nearly an equal partner in the Kellogg health empire and the undisputed mistress of their grand Queen Anne home replete with turrets, a wraparound porch, twenty rooms, including bathrooms with the most modern conveniences in indoor plumbing (of course), an office for the doctor and his on-call stenographer, as well as a small laboratory and an indoor gymnasium. Outside were nine acres of grounds, with a greenhouse for growing vegetables, and groves of trees, a small apple orchard, a playground, and an elaborate and fragrant flower garden.

  “The Residence,” as it was called, was five blocks west of the San on leafy Manchester Street.30 Ella kept the house immaculately clean, even with forty-two children living in the house at different points of time, at least seven of whom were formally adopted and all of whom were home schooled by Ella and a teacher named Mary Lamson. Decades later, Lamson recalled how much Dr. Kellogg loved these children. He would frequently “romp and roll [with the children] on the floor” as a means of relaxation before going off to the operating room.31 Four of the brood were Mexican (one of whom became a physician and another a dentist), at least seven were African American, and another Puerto Rican. There existed a strict set of rules and deportment in the Residence. Ella made certain each child understood the importance of loyalty to the family, the health principles they practiced, and her cardinal rule, “If a member of the household sees or hears (in other words, knows) of misdemeanors on the part of other members of the household, it shall be their care not to speak of the matter to others who do not know of it, but to go to the offender and urge him or her to reform.” As a fail-safe, Ella cautioned if “after due time there is no appearance of reform the matter should be reported to our parents for consideration.”32 Ella also instructed them about “never speaking to outsiders in regard to anything which is either a personal or family matter.”33 Ella and John insisted they never selected any of their adopted children; instead, “[the children] selected them.” Perhaps most notable about Ella and John’s parenting was the unconditional love they showered on these children.34

  The Residence, home of John Harvey and Ella Kellogg Credit 39

  Married for more than forty-one years, Ella and John, apparently, never consummated their marriage. Dr. Kellogg was quite open about their separate bedrooms and his determination to live a life without sexual gratification. Even though he had no scientific evidence to back up his medical opinions on the matter, John felt that sex sapped vital energy, harmed health, and was unnecessary except for procreation. There was also the real risk of contracting incurable sexually transmitted diseases, all of which he associated with clandestine and impure sexual activities. Over the years, the doctor had seen more than his share of sexual encounters gone clinically awry, from the infected New York “rakes” presenting themselves with great embarrassment at Bellevue Hospital to the well-heeled “playboys” sent by their fathers to the San for a “rest cure.” Ella, too, was a confirmed believer in abstinence and composed a “Purity Pledge” for girls and boys along with much practical advice on the pitfalls of adolescence in an 1885 pamphlet, Talks with Girls, which was widely circulated by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.35 For years Battle Creekers gossiped about the Kelloggs’ sleeping arrangements. Some respected their privacy or simply accepted their chastity as part of their religious or health reform beliefs. Others whispered that the doctor had mumps as a youngster resulting in sterility and a nonexistent libido.36 Regardless of the precise reason, theirs was a marriage of neither passion nor convenience, but it was a brilliant working partnership.

  At nineteen and two months, Ella became the youngest graduate of Alfred University, in Alfred Center, New York, in 1872. Her Bachelor of Arts degree was in nutrition. Ella gave the valedictory address at her commencement exercises and went on to teach grammar school for the next four years. In the summer of 1876, she accompanied her sister to Battle Creek to visit an aunt. The Eaton girls arrived to find a terrible typhoid fever epidemic brewing in south-central Michigan. Soon after, Ella’s sister became so ill that a Sanitarium doctor named Kate Lindsay was called in for an emergency consultation.

  Today, we know that the causative organism of typhoid fever is Salmonella typhi, a bacterium that infects the gut, yielding bloody diarrhea, high fevers, and dehydration. In the late nineteenth century, when doctors knew neither the cause nor cure for this all too common malady, typhoid fever often resulted in death. The incubator was incomplete sewage systems and the fecal contamination of drinking water or food. Such conditions and disease spread were hardly restricted to small towns in the Midwest or squalid shanties in poor urban neighborhoods. For example, eight years later, in February of 1884, Theodore Roosevelt’s mother, Martha, died of
typhoid in the family’s posh Manhattan townhouse.37

  Dr. Lindsay and Ella were successful in nursing her sister back to health. Ella discovered she had a real knack for this type of work and she subsequently volunteered to help Dr. Lindsay nurse many more typhoid victims back to health, including one case so serious that Dr. Kellogg was called in for an emergency visit. John was so impressed by Ella’s compassionate nursing skills that he urged her to stay in Battle Creek. He bolstered his pitch by telling her that the patient she was caring for had no chance of survival without her constant attendance. After the epidemic finally burned itself out, Ella delayed her return to New York once again and this time for good. She began studies in nursing and hygiene at the Battle Creek College as well as working alongside the doctor in the editing and composition of his monthly magazine, Good Health.38 The tiny woman, with wavy brown hair parted in the middle and rimless gold spectacles, formed an immediate bond with the dashing young physician, especially after John asked her to join the Sanitarium’s staff. For Ella, it turned out to be far more than a professional offer. Although she had other serious suitors, it was John who thrilled her heart the most.

  On the evening of George Washington’s birthday, February 22, 1879, the Sanitarium guests were instructed to assemble in the parlor. Once there, a band struck up the opening chords of Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March.” Through the doors entered the doctor and his favorite nurse for a wedding ceremony officiated by the Sanitarium’s chaplain, Lycurgus McCoy. After getting the rice out of their hair, they left for a six-week honeymoon in New England, where John spent most of his days and evenings revising new editions of two of his most popular books, Plain Facts About Sexual Life and The Proper Diet of Man. The former volume contained some of the doctor’s harshest warnings against self-abuse, recreational sex, and lascivious activities. It is safe to assume that Ella, who spent her evenings editing John’s manuscripts in their honeymoon suite, hardly enjoyed the typical and time-honored wedding night experience.39

  According to the John Harvey Kellogg scholar Richard Schwarz, Ella may have been a rebound choice for John. His first true love, it seems, was a Battle Creek Adventist named Mary Kelsey, who worked as a proofreader in the Review and Herald office. In 1876, she chose to marry Ellen White’s son William (John’s friend and rival since childhood and who attended the Trall Institute with him). On top of their competition for dominance in the Adventist Church, if true, this triangle may have contributed to the strained relationship between William White and Dr. Kellogg, one that deteriorated with each passing year and would eventually rupture.

  Nevertheless, there did exist a deeply loving and mutually admiring relationship between John and Ella, even if modern-day observers might scoff at their chastity. John referred to Ella as his “helpmeet” in eulogy for her in 1920.40 He admired her “bookishness” and love of learning. He frequently boasted to others how in both her writings and conversations, Ella was able to reel off exact quotations of such diverse social thinkers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Friedrich Froebel, Margaret Fuller, and Herbert Spencer.

  It was in the kitchen, however, where Ella’s light shined the brightest. An excellent cook and creator of many new, healthy dishes, Ella insisted, “the repast [served at the San] must suggest not the handing out of food medicine or medicinal foods, but…a good share of life’s joys.”41 Well versed on nearly every aspect of modern hygienic homemaking, she was also the chief of the Sanitarium’s dietary department, supervised its kitchen, founded and ran the San’s School of Home Economics and Cooking, organized the nearby Haskell Home for Orphans—where she helped train foster mothers to prepare nutritious meals—as well as writing scores of magazine articles on food and diet for Good Health and some highly regarded tomes, including a 508-page cookbook called Science in the Kitchen.42 Ella was also an active leader in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and a close friend of its president, Frances Willard, who asked her to become the society’s national superintendent of hygiene, director of its Social Purity department, and, later, to direct the WCTU’s Mothers’ Meetings and Child Culture Circles.43

  Never very physically robust, Ella endured a long battle with neurasthenia, depression, deafness, and what became a semi-invalided state due to colon cancer. As her tumor metastasized, she suffered from an incontinence of stool and urine, debilities rarely mentioned in public then or now. One can only imagine the humiliation the mistress of a medical empire built on intestinal regularity and integrity experienced each time she soiled herself, not to mention her having to wear the adult version of diapers. In 1919, Ella underwent a tumor debulking operation performed by William Mayo at the Mayo Clinic, but it was only palliative; Dr. Mayo found too many deadly metastases to her liver. She “lingered” for a year after the procedure, but needed constant nursing care, before going into a coma and dying on June 14, 1920. The doctor long grieved her death and made sure to note, “without the help derived from this fertile incubator of ideas, the great food industries of Battle Creek would never have existed. They are all direct or indirect outgrowths of Mrs. Kellogg’s experimental kitchen, established in the fall of 1883.”44 With the exception of Will, it is safe to state that no one was more important in the corn flake saga than Ella. Especially in the early years of the doctor’s food creating, Ella was often at his side, rolling pin in hand. As both always colorfully insisted, it was in her kitchen, and with her “kneading rollers,” where boiled wheat dough was rolled out to become the first successful batch of flaked cereal.45

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  THOMAS EDISON FAMOUSLY USED a “hit and miss” process of scientific inquiry while devising the proper filament for his world-changing light bulb but he was hardly alone in such methods.46 During the winter and early spring of 1894, Dr. Kellogg applied a similar late-nineteenth-century approach of experimental tinkering as he embarked on a series of failures before finally hitting on the precise formula for flaked cereal. In one of his earliest trials, John channeled Henry Perky by forcing the boiled dough through the equivalent of a colander. He, too, succeeded only in making a sticky mess as the dough’s wheat bran clogged up all the holes. After several more attempts, Ella suggested rolling out the boiled dough as thinly as possible. This was a critical improvement because the thin sheets facilitated their subsequent scraping the dough off the board with a knife and then turning them into small pieces. John baked these bits of wheat dough in the oven until they were brown, crispy “little pieces of toast.”47 The next advance was a mechanical one. John designed a set of rollers, at Ella’s suggestion, turned by a crank just like the old-fashioned “water ringers” used to dry clothing. This allowed for the rapid production of many more flat dough sheets than the few he could roll out by hand on Ella’s dough board.

  John contended that the precise recipe for flaked cereal was revealed to him in a dream. He had long been fascinated by dreams, and as early as 1892 gave lectures on the topic at the Sanitarium. On a hot, muggy August evening that year he told an audience packing the San’s spacious parlor, “we can find a great deal of our true character there. We must not forget…that our dreams are made by our daily lives.”48 Dr. Kellogg was hardly a Freudian; in 1910 he compared psychotherapy with healing “cults” such as faith healing, mind healing, and Christian Science.49 Nonetheless, John did appreciate the power of dreams and visions as an explanatory and convincing medium, most likely a product of his years of devotion to Ellen White and the Adventist cause.

  Undoubtedly, the doctor’s most famous nocturnal reverie was what he later referred to as the “corn flake dream”:

  One night about three o’clock I was awakened by a ’phone call from a patient, and as I went back to bed I remembered that I had been having a most important dream. Before I went to sleep again I gathered up the threads of my dream, and found I had been dreaming of a way to make flaked foods. The next morning I boiled some wheat, and, while it was soft, I ran it through a machine Mrs. Kellogg had for rolling out dough thin. This made the wheat into thi
n films, and I scraped it off with a case knife and baked it in the oven. That was the first of the modern breakfast foods.50

  A slightly different version involved John working on a batch of dough in his home kitchen in the late evening when the telephone rang. His telephone was one of the few private home lines in Battle Creek at the time. On the other end was the chief surgical nurse at the San calling him to come immediately to perform an emergency operation on a patient in extremis. Realizing that he would not likely return home until late the following day, John decided against trashing the raw wheat dough and left it out in the open for the several hours he planned on being gone. Upon his return, he fed the waiting dough through the rollers, just as he did with the many previous batches, scraped it off, and baked the bits. This time, however, when he removed the resultant flakes from the oven, he was astounded to discover that they were perfect, which inspired the doctor to pursue the critical query, What was so different about this particular batch?

  It was at this point in the narrative where the collective memory of events takes a series of twists and turns. Ella, of course, vigorously insisted that it was she, not Will, who was John’s principal helper on the night flaked cereal was invented. Several years after the event, one of the Kelloggs’ adopted children, Dr. Josephine Knapp, and John’s brother-in-law, Hiland Butler, each claimed to have held the knife needed to scrape the flakes off the rollers while the doctor fed raw dough into the device on that momentous evening.51

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  IN WILL’S VERSION, the invention of Corn Flakes was an equal partnership. Although he was always careful to defer to the doctor’s importance in every telling of the tale over the span of more than fifty years, Will maintained they each contributed important innovations essential to arriving at the perfect recipe. The one person Will rarely mentions in his recounting of the events, however, was his sister-in-law Ella. A generation later, his grandson Norman Jr. also made a point of denying her integral involvement claiming it as a myth. The great moment, Norman Jr. insists, based upon discussions with his grandfather, occurred in the San’s experimental kitchen.52 Yet this version fails to correspond with John’s (as well as Ella’s, Butler’s, and Knapp’s) contention that the first batch was made in his wife’s home kitchen. There was, however, a long history of animosity between the brother-in-law and sister-in-law. Ella took an almost cruel pleasure in complaining to John about Will’s performance at the San and, on several occasions, campaigned for his being fired. It may have been this dynamic that compelled Will to minimize her involvement when retelling the event that underpinned his commercial legacy.