Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Tin Can Industry in California

1953; University of Hawaii Press; Volume: 15; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/pcg.1953.0006

1551-3211

Glenn R. Cunningham,

Forest Management and Policy

THE TIN CAN INDUSTRY IN CALIFORNIA Glenn Cunningham American Can Company California is the leading food canning state in the Union. Canning, until World War II the state's largest industry, is familiar io all students of California economy. Less familiar is the important auxiliary industry, the manufacture of metal containers, familiarly known as tin cans. This industry itself is of considerable size, and employs nearly 10,000 persons at peak season. 1 It creates an annual product valued at more than $200,000,000, and meets the state's requirements of more than six billion metal containers per year. 2 Canning Industry Background The association between can manufacture and canning is obvious. The latter determines the size, the fortunes, the location, and the very existence of the former. However, the two are separate and distinct industries . Let it be clear that this paper treats only the manufacture of cans, and not any phase of canning or food packing. At one time the association was even closer than it is today. In the early history of food packing, cans were manufactured in each individual cannery by slow and laborious hand methods. This was true of the earliest canneries in California , the salmon canneries on the Sacramento River and the fruit canneries in San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland. Later the industry moved away from the canning activity and into specialized can manufacturing plants. In 1901, the era of big mergers in American business, the tin can industry followed the national trend and this period saw the emergence of American Can and Continental Can, the two companies that still lead the national industry . Locally this was accomplished by the merging of existing small companies in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Jose. Today most of the cans in use are made by those and other specialized can companies. Exceptions are found in some of the larger soup and condensed milk companies which manufacture their own cans. Tin can manufacturing began in California in 1862 when the first tin plate was imported from Great Britain by way of Boston and Cape Horn. 3 Probably less than 100,000 cans were made that year, all ofthem by hand. By 1870 the annual production had increased to 3,000,000; by 1900 it was slightly under 100,000,000, and by 1930 had surpassed one billion cans per year. The current annual output is over six billion, or about five times the entire output of the 19th Century. The market for this huge output, is of course, the canning plants, of which several hundred exist in the state. Most important of the products canned are the perishable, seasonal foods. California packs more than onefourth of the nation's vegetables, more than half of the fruit, and more than half of the fish of continental United States. ^ Thus California is not only the largest food canning state, but also the nation's largest producer of food cans. The annual tuna pack alone needs 400, 000, 000 cans. Peaches fill 425,000,000 cans, and tomato products in the state require 1, 100,000,000 can· each year. Also important are the scores of non-seasonal and specialty food products, baked beans, spaghetti, and Chinese and Spanish foods. Although not subject to the canning process in the technical sense of the word, some 200 other foodstuffs are packaged in cans, the list embracing items from honey and chocolate syrup to candy and salted nuts. 12Yearbook of the AssociationVol. 15 A second large market is the enormous quantity of industrial products , edible and otherwise, that are increasingly packaged in tin cans. The brewing centers canning beer, the meat packing centers with their meat products and by-product lard and pet food, the port cities where coffee and spices are received and packaged, the motor-oil refining centers and the paint manufacturing center s --all become consumers of tin cans. Over one billion cans per year are required by these and the hundreds of other products outside of the perishable food class. Hundreds of types and sizes of containers are manufactured for this endless variety of product. These range ii size from the tiny spice and meat-spread...