Elbert Hubbard received fleeting mention in the Winsor McCay film, "Sinking of the Lusitania," as one of the passengers on that ill-fated ship. His background of philosopher was all the film gave; for full credit, he was among the most published men of his time, with volumes of essays and discussions under his belt before his death at 58, even if he had to create a publishing company of his own to do so - Roycroft Press in western New York. What follows is an essay of his, analyzing two of the biggest names in the Surreal City at the turn of the 20th century.
IN BATTLE CREEK, the home of the Breakfast Foods, live two live men. There may be more than two live men in Battle Creek.--I really can not say—but there are only two that are so thoroughly alive that they will live long after they are dead.
Some one has said--out in Utah, I believe—that no house is big enough for two families. Also, we might say that no town is big enough for two big men.
Dr. J. H. Kellogg and Charles W. Post are men of initiative--powerful, restless, nervous, ambitious, opinionated, prejudiced, with ego plus and the Builder's Itch.
This type of man is the only kind that builds institutions and they all have the defect of their qualities.
This article is no paid ad, for sad to relate it will displease both Post and Kellogg, neither of whom will allow the other's name to be mentioned in his presence, unless you sneeze.
Kellogg has impressed himself on the world profoundly. He is hated and loved, scorned and praised, vilified and worshiped. He is a theological-psycho-medico-talkissimus who will write an editorial for a Seventh Day Advent journal, lecture for two hours, diagnose the status of forty patients as fast as a sunrise judge passes judgment on the socially derelict; and then will operate for ten hours without rest.
Through the Kellogg sanitarium pass say, ten thousand patients a year. Some die. A vast majority get well. And some get mad—and these that get mad get well, having received an impetus that stopped introspection and put a kibosh on the messianic instinct, which is simply a search for help outside of yourself.
Life is disillusion. The great man is a sore disappointment, when inspected at close range.
Carlyle said of Jesus Christ, "A great mon, a great mon—but he had his limitations! "
So has Kellogg—and so has Post. Dr. Kellogg can bring up more scientific mishmash and silly, sectarian pishmince in a lecture than any man I ever heard. He regards certain denominational abstractions as verities, and symptoms, diseases. He decides quickly—and is sometimes right. Having no children of his own, he has legally adopted forty-six babies and brought them up in the way they should go.
Kellogg is the Archbishop of Crankdom. He is a radical conservative, an altruistic individualist, and is as cock-sure as John Calvin. He has been too busy all of his life to live all of his theories. He is submerged in a sea of dialectics and dietetics, and being so occupied, it is quite likely he has made a few mistakes, for which, being a doctor, he is not responsible. On the whole, let it be truthfully stated that in his kicking, he has certainly kicked the ball toward the goal.
His vegetarian diet, his sand baths, his plea for work, are all excellent, beneficent and altogether lovely.
If he thinks that heaven is a vast sanitarium, and Gabriel an operating surgeon, this is only because, like the dyer's hand, he has been subdued by the medium in which he works. Great is Dr. Kellogg, and long may he live to replace the hypodermic needle with the hot pedaluvium, and hot air.
Dr. Kellogg is an individual. There are only a very few in this world—most folks are merely persona. Individuals lead and direct people. You can't argue with an individual—you have to obey him, kill him, or move on.
When an individual meets another individual there is apt to be an explosion.
Charles W. Post went to Battle Creek about twenty years ago, a broken-down, nervous wreck. Dr. Kellogg was the magnet that attracted him. As Nietzsche went to worship at the feet of Richard Wagner, so went Post to Kellogg, with a like result Post soon discovered the fact that all wise men know, which is this, that the feet of all idols are made of mud.
Post thought that Kellogg's treatment did him no good. The absolute fact is, that Dr. Kellogg worked the cure of the used-up Post, and Kellogg is grandfather to Postum. Kellogg did the miracle by making Post think for himself—by stinging him into a self-reliant attitude, by arousing in him a fighting quality of mind. Post got well. He got well by the exercise of his sky-piece, which was evidently in sore danger of atrophy through disease, until he came in contact with the Battle Creek Dynamo.
Kellogg probably does not know that bee stings and irritates many of his patients into health—but he does.
Twenty years ago C. W. Post was a failure, financially, physically, mentally. Like that man who went to Muldoon's on a shutter, and in six weeks eloped with the Muldoon maid-of-all-work, so did Post go to Kelloggdom, got back his bosom, and started a business that makes Kellogg divide honors. The joke is on Kellogg.
Post is one of America's great Captains of Industry, a multimillionaire, a man in splendid health—lean, lithe, sinewy and strong—and as an economist and sociologic intellectual factor, he cannot be overlooked. Three centuries ago in France, they would have made him a cardinal.
To compare Poet and Kellogg would be unfair to both. In some ways they are very much alike. In others, vastly different. Kellogg is swamped in the shallows of detail. Post is one of those very rare men who know how to get others to do their work. He saves himself for the task which no one else can do.
Kellogg's lectures on right living set the mind of Post perambulating. Whether Grape-Nuts and Postum are superior to the products produced by Kellogg, it would be indelicate to ask. To make the world believe they are, has been the task of Post. That he has succeeded is undeniable, even by Kellogg.
Success in life turns on salesmanship. Sheldon is right. Post is a very great salesman—he is a hypnotic advertiser.
A thing may be ever so good, but if it is not rightly presented, the enterprise is nil. Battle Creek is a monument to Breakfast Food feuds. Factories there, by the dozen, stand idle, save for the spiders, rats and bats, and the bats in the belfries of the erstwhile owners.
Post has succeeded beyond the dreams of avarice. His success looked so easy that capital came a-running, and internee and invalids invented names, ordered cartons, and saw themselves pressing buttons and riding in limousines.
Meantime, Post plugged along, and most of the others with something just as good went to the wall. Kellogg, of course, is a fixture, for back of him is the sanitarium and a great religious denomination, preaching a doctrine of fear and making invalids faster than Kellogg can cure them, Orthodoxy supplies the raw stock—Kellogg does the rest.
Meanwhile, Post has a mortgage on the town. Also does he spend fifty thousand dollars a month in advertising—and builds hundreds of homes for folks who would otherwise be homeless--and gives goose-flesh to organized labor.
That the Post products have much merit, there is no doubt, even if they are made of nothing but wheat and New Orleans molasses. They hold the trade.
Post feeds the people, and the people pay for his advertisements. All are satisfied.
Post is a business man. As an organizer, manufacturer, advertiser, builder, he has written his name large on the tablet of the times. Not only did he have to invent his product, and name it, but he had to construct appliances to produce it. And then be had to convince a nation that it needed it.
The business that begins big, busts. The business that lasts is the one that begins small, and the man grows with it. If the business grows faster than the man, it is nearing the rocks, and just beyond can be heard the siren song of the surf. Perhaps, in the larger sense all business is for the production of men.
One-man power is the only kind that counts. The man who has to explain and get another's O. K. before he can act, sees his enthusiasm ooze and the idea escape.
Post is finer than anything he produces. Grape-Nuts and Postum have made Post. And just bear in mind that twenty years ago, Post was an invalid, sleepless, imitable, confused with a digestive apparatus on a continual strike.
Now you behold a man not quite fifty, tall, erect, rapid—who can think on his feet and write as he travels.
Post's plant at Battle Creek is a model of decency, order and system. The product is produced without being touched by human hands. Every improvement in the way of sanitary appliance is found. There are bathrooms, rest rooms, pictures, books and work for the people under sunny, happy conditions. Every improvement which Factory Inspection exacts has been seen and gone one better. All the demands of organized labor have been met and more—save the one that the owner shall turn his business over to a Committee named by the Amalgamated Moulders.
Post believes that the man who has built up a business and who can not run away from it—who, if it goes down in bankruptcy and disgrace, has to go down with it—should he allowed to run it. This seems reasonable and right. Post has met Unionism and fought it to a finish, as far as his own shop is concerned. Now he is devoting thousands of dollars to fighting it, on principle, and for the good of mankind.
As the implacable foe of union labor he is the foremost man in America. And indeed, with say one exception, he is the only big manufacturer who stands out in the open and says his say on labor problems. The rest of them hesitate, lisp, go slow and reach for the safety-clutch. And yet without Unionism, the Post plant would never have taken on its present degree of excellence, any more than it would have been started without Kellogg. Post hates two things--Kelloggism and Unionism—the two things that have made him: " And each man kills the thing he loves," etc.
Factory betterments are the result of a fight. At first they are opposed by the manufacturer; then he takes them up, becomes fired with the idea, and goes beyond what the unions ask. In this case, he in turn is then opposed by Unionism, for his efforts at betterment have become patronage, and this, American labor will not tolerate. Post received ingratitude, exactly as the National Cash Register Company has. Both did too much. Freedom implies a great deal of play to your pulleys to get power you must not screw things up too tight.
Whether Post knows how much the Walking Delegate has done for the world by jacking up the maker of Grape-Nuts to do and dare, is a problem. But true it is, that all things work together for good whether you love the Lord or not. Invalidism, Dr. Kellogg, and Unionism have been essential factors in the evolution of Charles W. Post, inventor, creator, builder, business man, controversialist and reformer.
(Now for my note - C. W. Post took his own life in 1914, at age 59, while Dr. Kellogg made it to 1943 at age 91. Both are buried at Oak Lawn Cemetery in Battle Creek. Post's mausoleum is a post-mortem testimonial to self promotion; Kellogg's site is a large stone. Kellogg's younger brother, Will Keith, the one associated with the Kellogg cereal empire, is near the good doctor, with a somewhat more elaborate setting including a sundial and the interesting inscription, "The early bird gets the worm." It is surrounded by a small fence, but it is no mausoleum. Since the passing of these three titans of the Battle Creek cereal industries, Post cereals opted to leave in the 1960s, merged into companies, was divested from companies, and remains a modest presence in Battle Creek today...the Corporate Kellogg effectively drew the oxygen out of the room, cajoled the population to merge governments under the threat of leaving town, obtained tax relief under the threat of leaving town, paid consultants to redesign the downtown into a "water/wave" theme removing any cereal references, and has moved half of its headquarters' staff to Grand Rapids. They no longer have to threaten to leave town. They are doing it. Not much political opposition to their action these days either - Battle Creek and Grand Rapids have been gerrymandered into the same district. Sigh.)
