Pierre weekly free press. (Pierre, S.D.) 1889-19??, 1914-06-18
Growth Of Canning Industry.
From the Kansas City Star.

L
It's a tough problem to feed the mod
ern city as it is. New York always is
on the ragged edge Of famine. A heavy
snow or a flood. and the city may go
hungry. Without the tin can the white
lights of Broadway would be q pale
pink. The New Yorker would be out
on the land scratching for a living, but
hls tomatoes. corn and peas would cost
him 10 times what he pay today. And
New York spends $780, zoe 900 year on
n goods. Meat is the only other
item that exceeds this.
Here is a tremendous industry that
has blossomed forth in recent years
without even a kind word. The encyclo-
pedia says the hermetical sealing Of
food was invented by Nicholas Appert
at h time of h French revolution,
and that Napoleon later awarded. the
inventor IL, 900 francs bounty.
Be hat as it may, canned food was
not on the American menu when I was
born. The first vegetables were canned
and then as a matter of necessity.
Canned food was n Of the h%ardships
of polar exploration, but sensible folks
who did not go gallivanting around in
the Arctics stuck their home grown
fruits n vegetables in the cellar and
went without when that supply was
exhausted.
We had no fussy modern grocers with
then limitless array Of bottles, tins and
packages. Crackers, sugar, coffee,
pickles, tobacco, ~raisins, salt fish and
everything else i recall stood around
in open barrels, and a few ounces of
dust, more or less, disturbed no ones
equanimity.
We now eat $4,000, 900 cans of to-
matoes every year. Yet your grand
mother will tell you that the tomato
was called the love apple, and was sup
posed to be poisonous and a blood rela-
tive of skunk-cabbage and p%uffballs. A
young man named William Underwood
put UP a pack Of love apples in bottles.
before the canister appeared. Folk
came out plainly and told him that, as
Americans, they v would eat their
dinners out Of q bottle. That went for
cans, too. Bottled love apples ?-great
Caesars ghost! So Underwood took
his alleged o to foreign markets and
the firm still is doing business in Bos-
ton.
The California gold rush in 40 gave
the industry It's first great impetus, and
the civil war put 1t on it's feet. Canned
food was a necessity in both cases.
People ate 1t and survived and gave
others courage to tackle 1t.
But up to 1872 the industry had not
produced even a can-opener. Chisels,
pocket knives or some improvtsed in
strument did the work. And not until
1896 did the canner run to earth the
mites that were sending many Of them
to the bankruptcy courts.
Not a canner knew a chemical symbol
from a cheese knife. II a pack spoiled
they looked wise and blamed 1t on the
devil. It hadn't been SO very long since
women's tongues We're cut out because
they were witches. Less thar a life
time had elapsed since manufacturing
In every line groveled in ignorance and
superstitution. Finally when all the
pea pack in Wisconsin spoiled In 1895
chemists came to the rescue and ex-
posed an appalling army of destroying
bacteria. The Gamer learned that
sealing the food from the air was not
enough, and science told them what to
do.
But the public continued to say and
think evil things OF canned goods. II
q maj died OF anything resembling
ptornaine poisoning the tin can was In
dicted promptly. r. s. Woodward, a
young groceryman, died at Chickasha,
Okla, two years ago.. Canned sardines
were blamed in the death certificate.
The National Gamers association
called In the Pinkerton people. Within
putting arsenic in the sardines. She
now is serving q life sentence at Nc
Alester.
An enterprising statistician an
nounces that we are now consuming
100000, 900 ans Of food q year. Look
Ing at the grocery store shelves I am
ready to believe we are consuming
100000. 900 varieties OF canned food.
too. Certainly the well. advertised '.57's'
Is too modest an estimate. Small won
dor y stomachs are parnpered.