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Philadelphia® Comes to New York: The Marketing of Cream Cheese in New York State, 1880–1900

2015; Volume: 96; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/nyh.2015.0002

2328-8132

Jeffrey A. Marx,

Culinary Culture and Tourism

New York History Spring 2015© 2015 by The New York State Historical Association 182 Philadelphia® Comes to New York: The Marketing of Cream Cheese in New York State, 1880–1900 Jeffrey A. Marx, Independent Scholar By the last two decades of the nineteenth century the mechanization of production had wrought enormous changes in New York State manufacturing life, including the dairy industry. Fueled by coal and petroleum , inventions such as the small steam engine, cream separator, gang press—capable of squeezing out excess liquid (whey) from a large number of cheeses at the same time—and the self-heating cheese vat, led from small-scale production of cheese by farm families to large-scale cheese and butter manufacturing plants in rural towns. Railroads and commercial ice production now permitted cheese manufacturers in upstate New York to ship their products with decreased spoilage to New York City and other urban centers.1 My thanks to the following individuals for their research help: Dianne Ermilio, Mid-Atlantic Region, National Archives and Records Administration, Philadelphia; Sally Nakanishi, HUC-JIR Library, Los Angeles; the records staff at the Otsego Court House, Cooperstown, NY; Clifton Patrick, Chester, NY Town Historian; Cindy Stark, N.Y. State Library, Albany; Becky Tousey, Chief Archivist, Global Corporate Affairs, Kraft Foods Inc.; and Alvah L. Reynolds’ great-grandsons, Douglas and Donald Crane. Finally, my thanks to my wife, Susan, for her loving support and patience, as I disappeared for long periods of time into nineteenth century America. 1. Richard O. Cummings, The American and His Food (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1941), 53–54, 60–64, 84; Rebecca Edwards, New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age, 1865–1905 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 38–43; S. Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948), 31, 40, 50, 95; Eric E. Lampard, The Rise of the Dairy Industry in Wisconsin: A Study in Agricultural Change 1820–1920 (Madison: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1963), 126–7, 197–204, 220–1; Harvey A. Levenstein, Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 29, 37, 42, 43; Elaine N. McIntosh, American Food Habits in Historical Perspective (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1995), 92; E. H. Mott, “An Idea Worth Millions,” New York Sun, November 21, 1897; Sue Shephard, Pickled, Potted and Canned: The Story of Food Preserving (London: Headline Book Publishing, 2000), 296– 297; W. Taylor, “The Influence of Refrigeration on the Fruit Industry,” in Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture, 1900 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1901), 564–567, 574–575; Mark W. Wilde, “Industrialization of Food Processing in the United States 1860–1960” (PhD diss., University of Delaware, 1988), 92–3. For an overview of the changes that occurred in the second half of the nineteenth century, see Cummings, The American and His Food and Ralph Selitzer, The Dairy Industry in America (New York: Marx Philadelphia Comes to New York 183 Increased production, however, created the concomitant challenge of what to do with the ever-growing quantities of dairy goods being produced . The answer, one that was not unique to the dairy industry but was found in all spheres of manufacturing during this time, lay in expanding markets and increasing the quantity of customers. Just as the late nineteenth century saw the beginning of advertising for medicinal cures, home cleansing products, cigarettes, ready-made clothing and canned goods, so it would also witness the start of dairy products advertising that came to play an indispensable role in increasing the amount and variety of dairy foods served on New York tables.2 Also, during this period, distribution came to play an important function , with agent middlemen taking on an ever-increasing role between manufacturers of household commodities and retail merchants. So, too, in the dairy industry, cheese factors (brokers), who had served since the early 1800s as convenient middlemen between New York dairy farmers and New York City retail merchants, grew in importance, eventually becoming powerful wholesalers.3 While the establishment of the Erie Canal in 1825, followed by New York rail lines in the 1840s, had opened new, lucrative markets...