Content area
Full text
Introduction
Before the Civil War, food was either homegrown or sold through central markets and general stores. The second half of the 1800s marked a transition to mass production for everything from food and consumer goods to the machines to make them. Handicraft was replaced by mass production and interchangeable parts ([38] Hounshell, 1984).
By the 1870s, food sold in glass bottles, paperboard cartons and metal cans was still relatively rare in the USA where most food was still distributed in wooden barrels ([107] Twede, 2005). Packaged food was becoming more common in Europe where paper, glass and tinplate technologies had been developed, largely by British and French engineers, beginning in the 1600s. The early cartons, bottles and cans were costly, scarce and manually produced.
Over three short decades, 1870-1900, American marketing was being transformed. The first Trademark Act in 1870 attracted 121 registrations in the first year alone ([103] Strasser, 1989). In the 1880s America entered an era of national brands and mass distribution, to take advantage of the railroad and telegraph infrastructure. By 1900 "profit through volume" became a breakthrough strategy for manufacturers and retailers. The beginning of advertising, packaging, vertical integration and managerial hierarchy gave to the "mass" manufacturers and retailers the power to shape the market ([18] Chandler, 1977; [104] Tedlow, 1996).
This paper explores the role of packaging in the transformation. It highlights the practically simultaneous development of mechanical processes to mass-produce paperboard cartons, tinplated cans and glass bottles between 1879 and 1903. In three sections it explores the context, background and business interests of key American inventor/entrepreneurs, Robert Gair, Edwin Norton and Michael Owens, who mechanized and capitalized on the processes. The final section shows how their inventions and companies gave the USA a head start in mass marketing of packaged food by the beginning of the twentieth century.
The research method involved reviewing and comparing biographies to contemporaneous and retrospective ("anniversary") trade publications for the paperboard, canning and glass industries. Multiple sources were compared so as to not bias the biographies in a "promotional" manner. Contemporaneous newspaper articles and advertisements also supplied evidence. Patents and census records were searched, and the census records, over time, for products packed in the three types of packages were tabulated and...