C. W. Post.
The name of C. W. Post is identified with an industry that has only come into existence within the past few years, but which, nevertheless, has assumed tremendous proportions, and is remarkable in many ways, not the least of which is that it puts cereals to uses which were absolutely unknown a generation ago. Postum cereal coffee, for example, has only been before the public since 1895. Yet recently Mr. Post and his associates declined an offer of ten millions of dollars for the factories which made the coffee and its associated products of the wheat field. Mr. Post’s life story is that of a boy with a light purse, boundless ambition and a determination to reach the goal of large successes. He was born October 26, 1854, in Springfield, Illinois. After a common school education he entered the University of Illinois when thirteen years of age, took a military course, and remained there until he was fifteen, when the spirit of independence which has been a characteristic of his career throughout asserted itself. To use his own words, “I became weary of depending on my father’s money.” Leaving the university, he obtained a position with a manufacturer of farm machinery, which he sold and put in operation for the purchasers. After a couple of years of this work, he began business for himself in conjunction with a partner in the appropriately named town of Independence, Kansas. The firm dealt in hardware and farm machinery. But too little capital hampered his efforts, so he sold out and again took up drumming. Later he became manager of a wholesale machinery house in Kansas City. Returning to Illinois, he organized a company for the manufacturing of plows and cultivators, was quite successful, but his health breaking down, chaos resulted, and he lost all his savings. After dabbling in real estate in California, he ranched in Texas, fell ill again, recovered, and then bought twenty-seven acres of ground at Battle Creek, Michigan. Here it was that he began to make the famous coffee, to which allusion has been made. Here, too, he experimented with prepared, and finally placed upon the market those cooked and semi-cooked cereal foods with which we are familiar at the breakfast-table. The first year that the Post products were before the public, there was a profit of $175,000, the second year showed a loss of over $40,000—this being due to profits being sunk in advertising—and the third year there was a clear gain of $384,000. From that time on the business has been most profitable. It is stated that the concern is now preparing to spend one million dollars a year for advertising. Two years ago Mr. Post retired from the active conduct of the concern. He now divides his time between the offices in this country and abroad, and the chain of factories in the west. He is president of the association of American advertisers, and maintains at his own expense the Post check currency bureau at Washington.