The Hood River glacier. (Hood River, Or.) 1889-1933, 1917-03-08
Money Talks
Fruit Growers
BY
Northwestern Fruit Exchange
No. 10
More About "SkOOkum"
in 1915
TO FRUIT GROWERS:

sent us a menu of the McFADDEN
PHYSICAL CULTURE TAU.
RANTS, of which there are seven ir
New York and one each in CLEVE.
LAND, TORONTO NEWARK, DE
TROIT, PHILADELPHIA, PITTS.
BURG, and CHICAGO. This menu i
dated Tuesday, March Ia, 1916, anC
contains this item:
BAKED 'SKOOKUM' APPLE Sc
with whipped cream 10c''.
Do you catch the significance OF
this? Not "baked apple" as formerly
but baked SKO0KUM apple. These
New York restaurant men realize that
the public knows this brand and will
understand it stands for CHARACTER
and QUALITY.
Not long ago, the INTERNAT1ON
AL COOKS AND PASTRY COOKS
ASSOCIATION, an organization whose
membership consists of nearly all the
chefs, cooks and stewards of the
hotels, cafes, restaurants, clubs and
wealthy families, awarded diploma
to SKOOKUM APPLES, and in theil
official magazine put SKOOKUM or
the roll of honor, which is headed with
this statement:
''The leading Hotel Stewards and
Chefs of the World USE and RECON-.
MEND these products"
Then follows the list, HEADED by
SKOOKUM APPLES and including
such nationally famous articles as ROY.
AL BAKING POWDER, HUYLER'S S
COCOA, WEIGHS GRAPE JUICE,
etc. Truly, SKOOKUM travels ir
first-class company:
In one of my previous talks, / men,
toned the need for the education of
retailers as to the seasonability of diff
ferent apple varieties and said that a
large per cent of the retail vendors are
foreigners. During the season of
1915, the EXCHANGE got out book
let, descriptive of the different varie-
ties and their seasons and uses, and
printed this booklet in Italian, Greek,
German, Hebrew, Russian and several
other languages and was eagerly read.
More work of this kind is needed, and
the EXCHANGE intends greatly to
enlarge the scope of this educational
campaign, as the output grow and a
larger working fund becomes avail
able.
A triumph scored by SKOOKUM,
and what seems to me to be one of the
most significant of any yet recorded,
was the appearance in the Woman S
Home Companion for May 1916, of a
full page in the art section, showing a
beautiful picture of apple trees in
blossom and at the bottom this state
ment:
THE OLD APPLE TREE
We ought to make a festival of
apple blossom time as they used to
do in rustic England, when all the
village danced in the orchards and
sang: Hail to thee, old apple
tree!" 1t might go little hard
with our National elfconscious-
ness at first, but that isn't fatal.
Why don't the Oregon orchardists
start the fashion? 1t would make
those Skookum apples little more
skookum than ever.
Now this is editorial writing, not
an advertisement. We had nothing
whatever to do with this and it was a
complete surprise to US. If you will
read this article carefully it will grow
more and more significant. In the
first instance the COMPANION cap
italizes the word Skockum, indicating
that they acknowledge that it is a
copyrighted brand name, but in the
second mention, the word is used as an
English ADJECTIVE, which is the
tacit admission that, as ROGERS
PEET expressed it, "the enterprising
apple growers of the Northwest" have
made IAN addition to our slang vocab
ulary." Remember, that while this
word Skookum is commonplace out in
the Northwest, it was brand new to
the Eastern ear when we started our
campaign four years ago.
Recently one of the employees of our
Seattle head Office brought in and laid
on my desk a big pound can of smok-
ing tobacco. This can was in the form
of lunch box and is put up by an old
tobacco house: J. J. BAGLEY & CO.
of Detroit, Mich. The label on both
sides of the can is
SIX OOK M
with picture of big red apple
Very plainly seen where theSe people
got their brand, isn't it? And ''im-
imitation is the sincerest form of
flattery." Of course SKOOKUM is a
copyrighted name but there is no OBJ
lection to these tobacco people using
it; in fact, it is a compliment and
helps our game rather than hurts it.
All these illustrations simply go to
show how SKOOKUM has made good
and gotten across" and how far its
fame has penetrated from New York,
where the advertising had been con-
centrated.
In my next, will tell you about the
1916 campaign.
Faithfully yours,
W II EWlN