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Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929
The story of a pantry shelf, an outline history of grocery specialties: a machine-readable transcription.
118 Years of Prestige
and Progress
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118 Years of Prestige and Progress
The Name and Reputation of Colgate
& Co. Are Among the Best and Most Favorably
Known of American Enterprises.
Here Is the Story from Its Beginning.
The Name and Reputation of Colgate & Co. Are Among the Best and Most Favorably Known of American Enterprises. Here Is the Story from Its Beginning.
An American Institution Selling Soap in Every Civilized Country of the World--1925.
When a smiling grocer fills his customer's order for Octagon Soap or Fab his cash register tingles merrily and the grocer methodically goes on about his business. But behind each sale of Colgate soap there is a story--a story that dates back to the days before the Revolutionary War--a story of hardships, struggles and difficulties which were finally overcome by perseverance, honesty and skill.
On January 25, 1783, a fine baby boy entered the home of Robert Colgate. This baby was christened William, and
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in due time was to leave his mark on the Tablet of Time as the founder of the house of Colgate & Company.
In 1798 this same William, at the age of 15, was compelled to jump into the breach to help support his family, which in that year received a crushing blow in the loss by faulty title of their Hartford County, Maryland, farm. This farm represented the family's life savings and the blow came as a bolt of lighting out of the blue sky.
To help his family recover, William secured employment with a Baltimore soapmaker. For two years he stuck to this Baltimore job, learning how to make soap, and we are told was industrious, faithful and highly efficient. Baltimore then, as it still is, was a delightful city in which to live and work, but William Colgate got a notion that New York would offer him a larger opportunity for advancement. So, at the age of 18, he boarded a stage coach for New York. On the morning following his arrival, he presented himself at the offices of John Slidell & Co., 50 Broadway, the largest tallow chandlers of the city, applied for a job, secured one and demonstrated that he was master of his trade.
Young men who are masters of every end of their business are merchants in embryo, and William was no exception. He would build a name, too, with which to conjure and so, in 1806, being then aged 23, struck out for himself. At No. 6 Dutch Street he rented a two-story brick building, in which he installed the necessary manufacturing equipment. Here he modestly began laying the foundation of a business, which for 118 years, from the small beginning there and then made, has been growing apace with the nation and with the fame, prestige and reputation of American industry.
On this first morning of his business career in the summer of 1806 he opened his modest little shop at seven in the morning. He waited anxiously all day for the first customer to arrive. Finally, toward what normally would have been closing time, an elderly gentleman entered, looked curiously around, examined the meagre display of soaps critically and bought a two-pound bar. Thus the beginning of Colgate & Co. and Colgate service.
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In 1806, of course, the soap business bore slight resemblance to the great industry today. For more than three-fourths of the soap used in those days was made at home.
Mr. William ColgateWilliam Colgate faced the problem of competing with the prejudice of the ages and the skill of each housewife as a soapmaker. To do this tactfully without hurting the pride of the ladies in their own talent required discretion, imagination and a keen understanding of human nature.
Mr. Colgate faced his task with a will and started making soap by improved methods. He standardized its shape and began making toilet articles that every woman with refined taste and appreciation of merit would instantly sense as superior to the home-made varieties. And so the business grew.
To meet the continually expanding demand he had to enlarge his equipment substantially and soon built the world's biggest kettle, in which he could boil a 45,000-pound batch of soap. Today the Colgate factories have 25 giant kettles, ten with a capacity of 700,000 pounds each and one of them almost 1,000,000 pounds, for making their various soaps.
In 1910 the entire Colgate organization was moved from the original Dutch Street address to Jersey City, only show and sales rooms being retained in New York for the benefit of the trade. Today this Jersey City plant occupies several acres and branch plants have been established in Canada, France, and Jeffersonville, Ind.
Perfumes, toilet articles and soaps made by Colgate & Co. are sold in every civilized country of the world, and the name and reputation of Colgate & Co. today is all that William Colgate would have had it, a true reflection of the high ideals and ideas of its early founder.
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