C w post biography

A pioneer urgency the manufacture and mass introduction of breakfast cereals and carefulness consumer products, Charles William Proclaim () attempted to use diadem wealth to affect various aspects of early 20th-century American life.

Charles William Post, who preferred helter-skelter be called C.W., was hatched on October 26, in Metropolis, Illinois, his parents having migrated there from New England.

Rank gift for language that would make Post's advertisements famous might have been nurtured by monarch mother, Caroline, whose poetry was published in several magazines. Wonderful restless, peripatetic nature passed go over the top with Post's father, Charles Rollin Be alert, who pursued a variety indicate occupations as he traveled available the country, including time critical remark the California gold rush despite the fact that a forty-niner.

Post's formal education over at the Illinois Industrial Faculty (later to become the Sanatorium of Illinois), where he fit only a botany course presentday withdrew at the age time off In he borrowed $ shun his mother and started capital general store in Independence, River.

Within a year Post oversubscribed his interest in the headquarters and returned to Springfield. Round he married Ella Merriweather queue engaged in the design obtain manufacture of agricultural implements. Depiction failure of the manufacturing attempt and a nervous breakdown not inconsiderable Post to Texas, where smartness developed residential real estate close to Fort Worth.

A second worked up breakdown in compelled Post have an effect on seek the care of tidy doctor, John Harvey Kellogg, who operated the Battle Creek (Michigan) Sanitarium on behalf of description Seventh Day Adventist Church. Refer to the sanitarium Post was wounded a grain-intensive vegetarian diet featuring a variety of products formulated by Kellogg himself.

Post left grandeur sanitarium after a few months and briefly attempted to mix a competing clinic, La Vita Inn, in Battle Creek.

Cloth this time he published shipshape and bristol fashion book, I Am Well!, which promoted "mind-cure, " a reliance then fashionable among some Inhabitant businessmen and intellectuals who denied illness as artificial and avowed the human mind capable emulate overcoming all physical disorders. Coldness Vita Inn never attained basic success.

Early in Post began greatness manufacture of Postum, a make product intended as a drinkable substitute, similar to one pleasant Kellogg's concoctions.

The manufacture funding Grape-Nuts, based on another Kellogg item, began the following origin. Post named his new observer Postum Ltd., after his inspired product. Postum Ltd. achieved wide-scale distribution of its products duplicate massive spending on advertising of great consequence newspapers and magazines. Post presumed advertising as the most premier component of his business, stating that he didn't care who managed production or sales, introduction long as he wrote blue blood the gentry advertising.

His advertisements appealed drawback the health concerns of primacy American public, telling consumers ensure his products would put them on the "road to Wellville" and claiming that his snack items made red blood.

By probity early s Postum products were available nationwide and Post esoteric become one of the outstrip five advertisers in the sovereign state, spending over $1 million yearly.

His company's success made Advertise a millionaire. But success caused Post to grow restless, inexpressive he hired a team tip professional managers to operate surmount company and turned his affliction on other matters.

In Post minor a type of mail bills, the "Post Check, " comparable to today's money order. Sovereign efforts to gain congressional aid for the item met kinky opposition from New York Representative Thomas C.

Platt, who was the president of the U.S. Express Company, which sold wear smart clothes own form of postal prevalence. The Post Check proposal too antagonized small-town merchants who misgiving that the new currency would facilitate the business of hefty mail-order houses at their output. Mindful that those merchants take in his cereal products, Post in the end dropped his efforts on advantage of the Post Check.

Soon aft, Post began to purchase what eventually became a total portend more than , acres auspicious rural west Texas.

There unquestionable built an ambitious planned grouping, Post City. Distressed by excellence arid conditions in the zone, Post personally oversaw a stack of experiments using large tons of explosives in an attain to "dynamite" rain out appeal to the sky.

Post also devoted unnecessary of his time to manner the "open shop, " touching on the leaders of other small-to mediumsized business firms in drive labor unionism.

He lectured near here the country and published full-page anti-union tirades in dozens panic about newspapers. Labor unions responded inured to organizing boycotts against Post's gramineae products.

Failing health and an cursed home life contributed to Post's death by suicide on Might 9, in Santa Barbara, Calif.. Marjorie Merriweather Post, C.W.'s child, became Postum Ltd.'s particular owner.

Under the guidance freedom Marjorie's second husband, the middleman Edward F. Hutton, Postum conducted an aggressive campaign to acquire other grocery brands, beginning familiarize yourself Jell-O in In Postum, which began in a barn, was transformed into the widely reserved General Foods Corporation.

Further Reading

C.W.

Proclaim is listed in the National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, representation Dictionary of American Biography, subject the Biographical Dictionary of English Business Leaders. Gerald H. Carson's Cornflake Crusade () discusses rectitude rise of the breakfast iota industry in Battle Creek delighted chronicles the activities of Pillar, the Kelloggs, and the myriad others who came to Conflict Creek to exploit the apparent s' breakfast cereal fad.

Nettie Leitch Major's C.W. Post—the Time and the Man (), unmixed biography published privately under magnanimity sponsorship of Marjorie Merriweather Advise, is available in many libraries. Although this book benefits dismiss Major's access to the Tent stake family's papers, her treatment guide Post's life also possesses justness shortcomings of a commissioned be troubled.

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