Maltine: Moving to "The Safe Side"

Prior to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 one of the decisions that companies manufacturing medicines had to face was whether they played to the public with claims to cure a wide range of ailments, or whether to be more restrained and cater to the medical fraternity. Some, to potential peril, tried to straddle the line. This was brought home to me recently with my purchase of a paperweight advertising a product called “Maltine.”

Maltine turns out to be an extract of malted barley, wheat and oats, highly fortified by alcohol. It was the brain child of John Carnrick (1837-1903), a pharmacologist who invented a whole shelf of elixirs with such imaginative names as Lacto-peptine, Peptenzyme, and Kumysgen, this last a concoction purportedly made from fermented mare’s milk. In general, these nostrums and Maltine were drinks to impart nutrition, improve digestion, and remedy undefined stomach ailments.

First merchandised through Carnrick’s drug manufacturing firm, Reed and Carnrick, the product subsequently was sold through a spin-off, the Maltine Manufacturing Company of Brooklyn, New York. Maltine was heavily promoted to doctors through ads in medical journals, trade cards depicting leading doctors and surgeons, and a range of practical giveaway items aimed at physicians. These included a “home call book” -- remember that doctors once made house calls -- and a sign for the door when the doctor was out. All contained plugs for Maltine.

To meet stiff competition for the malt drink market, however, Maltine’s management could not resist going directly to the public. It issued trade cards that showed cherubic youngsters, sometimes hefting a Maltine bottle, thus making the case that their product was safe for children. Widely distributed owl bookmarks claimed: “Its effects in anemia, childrosis [an entirely fictitious medical condition], and other forms of blood impoverishment are almost magical.” Childrosis? Magical? Maltine seemed to be crossing the line of propriety.

This kind of advertising predictably brought howls of protests from physicians. As early as 1894 the company officials in letters to medical journals across the country vigorously insisted that Maltine was not a “patent medicine” and that their intention was to reach patients only through physicians.

On the other hand, the company could not resist mixing additional trendy ingredients with Maltine, including cod liver oil, peptones, and a triple combination of iron phosphate -- used today to poison garden slugs -- quinine, and, believe it or not, strychnine. Its best seller, however, became Maltine with Coca Wine. Ads suggested drinking a full glass of this potion during or after every meal. Children were advised to take only half a glass. In a given year, 10,000 bottles of Maltine with Coca Wine were sold.

Meanwhile, authorities were increasingly concerned about the growing number of cocaine addicts in the country. The substance derived from the coca plant was becoming so popular that it had become a public health problem. Maltine’s management was faced with a dilemma: Dump Maltine with Coca Wine and lose thousands of dollars in sales, or keep selling it and risk angering the medical fraternity.

In 1907 a company lawyer provided the answer in a statement to the Federal Bureau of Chemistry, the forerunner of the FDA: “Simply because all these cocaine preparations are getting into such bad odor, the Maltine Company does not want anything to do with one. We thought it advisable to be on the safe side and give up the the preparation altogether rather than get mixed up in something unpleasant.” Ironically, chemists had been able to find only minute traces of cocaine in Maltine with Coca Wine -- not believed enough to lead to addiction.

Nonetheless, It was a wise decision. By 1914 Congress had rendered it illegal nationwide to put cocaine in consumer products. The Maltine Company re-established its reputation for being an ethical drug company. It subsequently was bought by Chilcott Laboratories, which in turn was acquired by Warmer Lambert, itself swallowed up by Pfizer, Inc., in 2000. Maltine disappeared with Prohibition.

Vaseline Glass Goes to War

The picture of the nuclear explosion shown here reminds us of the ongoing struggle of countries like Iran and North Korea to join the “Nuclear Club.” A little known story of the effort to develop the first atomic bomb was the pivotal role played by American and British companies that specialized in making glassware with a yellow green hue that often are called “vaseline glass.”

The unique color of this glass, shown here in several examples, is imparted by the use of uranium oxide in the molten mixture. Employing uranium in glass goes back at least to 79 AD, the date of a mosaic containing yellow glass with 1% uranium found in a Roman villa on the Bay of Naples. Used through the ages, uranium in glass became particularly popular in the mid 19th Century with a peak period between 1880 and 1920.

American glass makers, such as the Fenton Glass Company of Williams, West Virginia, became primary suppliers to the U.S. market, turning out decanters, goblets, beer steins, and paperweights, all with a distinctive yellow green cast. The material, technically a glass-ceramic, acquired the name vaseline glass because of its reputed similar appearance to petroleum jelly.

Production ceased sharply with the outbreak of World War Two. In one of the most tightly held secrets in history, the United States embarked on a project to build a new and highly destructive explosive device, known popularly as the atomic bomb. Uranium oxide was a necessary component of this bomb and government agents began clandestinely to gather up supplies wherever they could be found. Factory managers were approached and told that the government was confiscating their uranium oxide. They were pledged to absolute secrecy on the pain of criminal prosecution.

The amount of uranium oxide obtained in this way has been highly classified, but the British, who followed Uncle Sam in collecting the material, have revealed that three tons were taken from just one of its glass factories. It is highly possible that some of the glass company supplies found their way into the two bombs dropped on Japan at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The ban on using uranium oxide in glass remained in force until 1958 when sufficient supplies of uranium were deemed available. By that time concern had arisen about the safety of the use of uranium to glass house workers and consumers. Less toxic depleted uranium dioxide was substituted. Because of tight regulations on its use and the expense of the ingredient, however, only a handful of glass houses have continued to produce vaseline glass.

Vaseline glass has continued to be popular with collectors. A sure way to tell if a particular item has a uranium content is to place it under ultraviolet light. As shown here by the side by side pitchers, the glass fluoresces bright green under the light. A highly sensitive Geiger counter will also detect the trace radiation, although most pieces of vaseline glass are considered to be only slightly radioactive and not harmful.

Franchising Buster Brown

In 1904 an Ohio-born cartoonist went to the St. Louis World’s Fair where he hoped to sell the rights to a pair of comic page characters he had created. He came away having signed up an estimated 200 businesses eager to merchandise the images of a naughty boy named Buster Brown and his dog, Tige. More than a century later, we still have the pair with us.

The cartoonist was Richard Outcault (1863-1928), shown here. He is consider the father of the modern comic strip, having been the first to use multiple panels and speech balloons. For the the Hearst New York Journal in 1902, he introduced Buster Brown, a mischievous boy dressed Little Lord Fauntleroy style, with an odd-looking dog. The strip was an instant hit with kids and parents alike. “Buster was drawn to be marketed,” one writer has observed.

Given the sensibilities of our time, perhaps the most unusual product making use of the Buster Brown image was a Jacksonville, Florida, cigar company. The Buster Brown Cigar featured a picture of a man blowing smoke from his eyes and ears while Tige and Buster look on approvingly. This image appeared on cigar boxes, canisters, trade cards, cigar bands and, as shown here, even on paperweights.

A different, but no less startling message appeared on another Buster Brown cigar box lid. Shown here it depicts Buster offering a cigar to Tige who seems eager to take one. The text reads: Resolved: That to be spanked for smoking is an injustice when I took such pains to resist temptation and Pa smokes “em.” Hardly a statement 21st Century parents would be happy to read.

Buster and Tige also advertised for less controversial products. Among them were spices from the Forbes Tea and Coffee Company, clothes from Stewart & Co. of Baltimore, and Buster Brown Bread which used his image widely on a range of items. One of the bread company’s Buster Brown match holders recently sold for $355.

By far the most famous and successful company to exploit the Buster Brown image was the Brown Shoe Company, which had been founded 25 years earlier in St. Louis by George Warren Brown. For the princely sum of $200 he bought the right to market Buster and Tige and never looked back. Brown Shoe made marketing history in 1905 when it sent on the road a series of actors, each dressed as Buster and accompanied by a Tige-imitating dog. These troupes roamed the entire United States selling Buster Brown shoes as they performed in theaters, department stores and shoe stores. In those pre-TV days, such a touring show could bring out a whole town. Shoe sales soared.

In ensuing years Buster Brown became a nationally advertised figure, was featured in movie shorts, on radio, and on television -- selling shoes. By 1958 the Buster Brown line had become largest brand of footwear for children. Today the company’s annual revenues are about $2.4 billion. Clearly Buster Brown must be considered one of advertising’s most successful icons, having survived more than a full century. Through the years the Brown Shoe Company has updated the image of this “good little bad boy” and his faithful canine, but the final product is always true to the concept Richard Outcault invented and sold so capably.

Whiskey at Sea: The Economics

About 1865 the scion of a wealthy and politically connected family who bore the improbable name of Outerbridge Horsey returned from from four years in Europe, having avoided service in the Civil War, to rebuild his whiskey distillery in Burkittsville, Maryland, at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Young Horsey brought home with him the idea that sloshing around inside barrels on the high seas mellowed and aged whiskey in beneficial ways that sedentary storing in warehouses failed to do. Scotch distilleries were accustomed to aging their product on long sea voyages to the U.S. and beyond. A few American distillers occasionally sent their whiskey into the Caribbean and back.

But Outerbridge, who aimed at producing the highest quality whiskey, went further than anyone else. Carried on oceangoing steamships, Horsey Rye was shipped down the East Coast of the United States, traveled the length of Latin America, rounded Cape Horn (remember, no Panama Canal at that time), headed up the Pacific Coast of the Southern Continent, cruised past Mexico, and finally docked in San Francisco weeks later. Then by railroad the barrels were transported across the length of the United States back to Maryland where the whiskey was decanted into bottles.

Horsey marked his crates, like the one shown here, with the message: “This whiskey was shipped by sea to San Francisco per S.S. ______, thus acquiring a unique and most agreeable softness.” If it was a gimmick, it worked. As Jim Bready, the guru of Maryland distilling, has put it: “For many years, this funny name whiskey from an obscure coil somewhere in the outback, this hundred-proof Maryland marvel, ‘rich in all the qualities that epicures require,’ had a Massachusetts-to-California clientele--at hotels and clubs, not corner saloons.”

For a long time the economics of this situation escaped me. How could it possibly have been profitable to Horsey to send his whiskey around two continents only to have it return to the exact place where it was made before bottling and selling it? Some Internet research has helped provide an answer.

First, not all of Horsey’s whiskey came home. Some was sold in San Francisco. An 1897 San Francisco guidebook subtitled “Good Things to Eat and Drink and Where to Get Them” touted Horsey Rye to local residents and told them the saloons where it could be purchased. Horsey also featured a second brand called “Golden Gate Rye” that also may have been sold in California.

Second, and more important, the economics of the time did not make the long sea journey all that expensive. For example, The New York Times reported in August 1903 that: “Distillers have found that it costs less to send whiskey to Bremen and Hamburg and ship it from there by way of Cape Horn than it costs to send it from Louisville to San Francisco by rail.”

Statistics provided at an 1887 Interstate Commerce Commission hearing back up that astonishing claim. A distiller documented to the ICC that a barrel of whiskey could be sent from the Port of Baltimore around the Horn to San Francisco for about $1 a barrel. That was five times cheaper than shipping a barrel cross country by freight train.

Horsey’s round trip expenses, when divided into 40 gallons of whiskey per barrel, add up to an around-the-Horn transit cost to San Francisco of only about 3 cents per gallon. To send the shipment back by rail to Baltimore was an additional 7 cents a gallon, for a total transit expense of 10 cents. That makes the cost for each quart bottle only 2.5 cents.

Whiskey in the late 1800s and early 1900s, as today, varied significantly in price. Although Jack Daniels at 18-years-old went for a pricey $2.50 a quart, perfectly respectable whiskey could be had for $1.00. I have not seen a quote on Horsey Rye but as a quality product, we can guess it sold for about $1.75 a quart. If that price is accurate, then sending Horsey Rye around the Horn added only 1.4% to its total cost. Well worth it, we may agree with Outerbridge, if only for the bragging rights.

Solving the G.O. Blake Mysteries

I have three whiskey paperweights in my collection that had baffled me for a long time. One shows two bottles, comparing the volume of a quart with that of a “fifth” - four-fifths of a gallon. A second is illustrated with a crate that is advertised to hold 12 quart bottles. The third pictures two barrels of whiskey. In themselves these items are not unusual, but the messages they contain were confusing.

All advertise G.O. Blake Bourbon Co. Ky. Whisky (the British spelling). In addition, each also mentions the Adams, Taylor & Co. identifying it as a firm with offices in Boston, Massachusetts and a distillery in Louisville, Kentucky. Bourbon County, however, is almost 100 miles from Louisville.

Ads for G.O. Blake whiskey fail to shed any additional light on the subject, nor do the embossed bottles, some of which bear other distributor names. Who was G.O. Blake? What kind of whiskey was sold under his name? What is the relationship to Adams, Taylor & Co.? My search of Internet sources proved largely fruitless until one clue sent me back to an old standard among collectors of whiskiana -- a book called “Spirits Bottles of the Old West.” Written by Bill and Betty Wilson, the volume is a font of information about the early American distilling industry. There the G.O. Blake mysteries are cleared up.

According to the Wilsons, from 1866 to 1871 George O. Blake was a junior partner in the J. H. Cutter firm in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. His job was to select good bourbon from distillers and oversee the “rectifying,” or mixing of raw spirits, to control the quality of Cutter Whiskey. As a result of his work for Cutter, Blake became a well-known and respected broker on Whiskey Row -- the trade hub of the American industry located in Louisville.

In 1871 Blake decided to establish a brand in his own name. He formed a partnership with two wholesale druggists in Louisville and the Adams, Taylor Company in Boston to distribute the brand; the former to the Midwest and West, the latter to the East Coast. A third firm was selected in San Francisco to merchandise Blake’s whiskey in states bordering the Pacific.

G.O. Blake whiskey did well all over the country, possibly as a result of advertising campaigns. In 1876, the Adams, Taylor Co. -- doubtless sensing the profits to be made -- bought out the brand ” bottle, crate and barrel” from the others participants, including George Blake, who subsequently disappeared into obscurity, Adams, Taylor, never distillers, continued to rectify Blake whiskey in Louisville, distributing it from there and from Boston.

Initially they were careful not to emboss their names on the bottles, permitting their sub-distributors around the country to issue G.O. Blake Whisky under their own label. As these distributors gradually dropped away, Adams, Taylor took full control of the brand name, embossing their own on each bottle beginning in the late 1880s. All this took place a distance from Bourbon County and the product was in no way bourbon but a rather a “spirits blend.” Truth has never been a strong point in marketing whiskey.

If there is a moral to this story it is this: Not every back story can be found electronically. Sometimes it pays to look into a book. At least for the moment.

Mini-Mug Match Strikers

Some of the more unusual advertising giveaways of the late 19th and early 20th Century were small ceramic items shaped like beer mugs with handles and circular serrated bases. They could be used to store and then strike safety tipped matches. Approximately 2 and 1/8th inches high and 1 and 3/4 inches at the base, today they are avidly sought by collectors. A Scottdale, Arizona, man, for example, has accumulated more than 60.

Although a wide range of businesses issued mini-mugs, including pottery and glass companies, they were a natural for breweries. The tiny cup advertising beer presumably could trigger a thirst for the same brew in a larger drinking vessel. The first example shown here is of a monk ready to quaff a glass of beer. It replicates the pictures that triggered the first post of this blog (April 29, 2009) under the title “New Finds.”

This mini-mug confirms the thesis that items with this transfer originated with the Theumler Manufacturing Co. of Pittsburgh and Rochester, Pennsylvania. Theumler appears to have been a major creator of mini-mugs. It also made the Pabst Beer mini-mug showing Old World gnomes drinking beer around a barrel of the brew that “Made Milwaukee Famous,” and the 1904 example from the Sehring Brewing organization of Joliet, Illinois, a family-owned business that survived from 1868 until Prohibition. The picture of the Sehring mug shows the ribbed base that allowed matches to be struck.

Theumler almost certainly made the Iroquois Brewing mini shown here. The company’s characteristic mark appears on the Buffalo brewery’s larger beer mugs of the time. As noted before, Theumler was not a ceramics manufacturer. It bought base stock from regional potters and then its decorators went to work supplying the designs requested by its customers. Iroquois Brewery existed in Western New York State from 1892 to 1971.

The final example, for the Bartholomay Brewing Co. of Rochester, New York, is from Germany and dated 1911. Although the Theumler firm decorated Bartholomay’s normal sized mugs during the early part of the 1900s, after owner Hugo Theumler died in 1909, his company ceased operation almost immediately. As a result, in 1911 Bartholomay was forced to import this mini-mug from Germany where Hugo originally had learned the trade. The item was issued for a Shriner’s Convention in Rochester, known as “Feel-Ter-Hum.” The brewery itself closed in 1934 after 82 years in operation.


Key words: Mini-mug match strikers, Theumler Manufacturing Co.

American “Drys”: Loving the Russian Czar

In 1914 members of the American Prohibition movement fell in love with the Russian Czar, He was Nicholas II, shown here in his prime. With the outbreak of World War One, Nicholas was convinced by his ministers to prohibit all forms of alcohol because of its assumed detrimental impact on the readiness of Russia’s military forces. Drinking vodka, as shown in this prewar photograph, was a daily ritual in the Russian Army and Navy.

The ease with which the Czar could cut off the alcohol spigot was aided by the fact that since 1894 the Russian government had controlled all production of vodka and other spirits, reaping huge revenues in the process. American Prohibitionists took admiring notice of the Czar’s action.

Under a 1914 headline entitled, “A Despot Need,” one American Dry commentator rhapsodized that: “Enlightened Russia knows the way, great Russia, with her tyrant czar; he twists his wrists and in a day the lid is placed on every bar....I wish we had a despot here, just long enough to kill Old Booze.” The Washington DC Evening Star editorialized that a “miracle” had occurred in Russia, noting cheerfully that the miracle had been made possible by Russia’s autocratic form of government.

As two cartoons published by the Dry lobby suggest, the Czar had become someone to be looked up to and emulated. In the first a Cossack has arrested a vodka bottle and is marching it off to detention. In the second “King Alcohol,” personified as a wicker covered bottle, salutes a Russian official while four Americans look on approvingly.

Seen in the light of history, however, the Czar’s decision was a disaster. Fully one-third of Russia’s revenues came from the sale of vodka, even then an annual billion dollar business. Without the funds from alcohol sales, the government entered World War One with substantially less money than it needed. Second, prohibition made large segments of the population angry. The rich still were able to buy vodka and other drinks at their clubs and in fancy restaurants. Only the lesser classes were forced to give up drinking.

Russia’s poor showing in the war and the growing unpopularity of Czar Nicholas gave rise to the Russian Revolution of 1918 in which the Communists came to power. The Czar and his family were executed. The new rulers, led by Lenin, initially were opposed to drinking but Russians gradually had ceased to worry about the ban on vodka. Just as Prohibition in the U.S. (1920-1934) gave rise to bootleggers, in Russia potatoes were everywhere and so were illegal stills. Numbers skyrocketed, by official count tripling from 1922 to 1924.

Gradually the Communist government eased up. Wine was legalized in 1921, beer in 1922, other alcohol in 1923, and, finally, in 1924 vodka sales again were permitted. Russians, as shown here, now could drink and drink and drink. And do it legally.