The worm pellets had been devised by Mrs. Hill, "an old English nurse of various and extended experience in the foundling hospitals of Great Britain."
Besides its chemicals and herbs, the Comstock factory was a heavy consumer of pillboxes and bottles. While the company advertised, in its latter years, that "our pills are packaged in metal containers—not in cheap wooden boxes," they were, in fact, packaged for many decades in small oval boxes made of a thin wooden veneer. These were manufactured by Ira L. Quay of East Berne, New York, at a price of 12¢ per gross. The pill factory often must have been a little slow in paying, for Quay was invariably prodding for prompt remittance, as in this letter of December 25, 1868:
Mr Wm h comstock
Dear sir we have sent you one tierce & 3 cases of pill boxes wich
we want you to send us a check for as soon as you git this for we
have to pay it the first of next month & must have the money if you
want eney moure boxes we will send them & wait for the money till
the first of april youres truly
Quay & Champion
Quay continued to supply the boxes for at least fifteen years, during which his need for prompt payment never diminished. Comstock also bought large quantities of bottles, corks, packing boxes, and wrappers. Throughout the company's long existence, however, more frequent payments were made to printers and stationers—for the heavy flow of almanacs, handbills, labels, trade cards, direction sheets, and billheads—than for all the drugs and packaging materials. In the success achieved by the Indian Root Pills, the printing press was just as important a contributor as the pill-mixing machine.
The Final Years
When William Henry Comstock, Sr., moved the Indian Root Pill business to Morristown, in 1867, he was—at age 37—at least approaching middle life. Yet he was still to remain alive, healthy, and in direct charge of the medicine business for more than half a century longer. And the golden era of the patent-medicine business may be said to have coincided very closely with Mr. Comstock's active career—from about 1848 to 1919.
| FIGURE 24.—In its
final years the Comstock factory discontinued most of its old
remedies and concentrated upon the three most successful:
Comstock's Dead Shot Worm Pellets, Comstock's N. & B.
Liniment, and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills. |
While no schedule of sales, net income, or financial results are available, the fragmentary records make it obvious that the business continued to flourish beyond World War I, and long after the passage of the first Food and Drug Act—in 1906. The almanacs were still printed as recently as 1938; while the labels and other advertising matter abandoned their ornate nineteenth-century style and assumed a distinctly modern aspect—to the extent of introducing comic-style picture stories, featuring the small boy who lacked energy to make the little league baseball team (he had worms), and the girl who lacked male admirers because of pimples on her face (she suffered from irregular elimination). Sales volume of the Morristown factory, however, apparently did reach a peak early in the present century—perhaps around 1910—and began a more rapid decline during the 1920s. During this same period the geographical character of the market shifted significantly; as domestic orders dropped off, a very substantial foreign business, particularly in Latin America, sprang up. While this did not compensate fully for the loss of domestic sales, it did provide a heavy volume that undoubtedly prolonged the life of the Indian Root Pill factory by several decades.
William Henry Comstock, Sr., who first came to Brockville in 1860, at a time when the struggle with White for the control of the pills was still in progress, married a Canadian girl, Josephine Elliot, in 1864; by this marriage he had one son, Edwin, who lived only to the age of 28. In 1893 Comstock married, for a second time, Miss Alice J. Gates, and it is a favorable testimony to the efficacy of some of his own virility medicines that at age 67 he sired another son, William Henry Comstock II (or "Young Bill") on July 4, 1897. In the meanwhile, the elder Comstock had become one of the most prominent citizens of Brockville, which he served three terms as mayor and once represented in the Canadian parliament. Besides his medicine factories on both sides of the river, he was active in other business and civic organizations, helped to promote the Brockville, Westport & Northwestern Railway, and was highly regarded as a philanthropist. Although he lived well into the automobile age, he always preferred his carriage, and acquired a reputation as a connoisseur and breeder of horses. As remarked earlier, his steam yacht was also a familiar sight in the upper reaches of the St. Lawrence River.
The medicine business in Morristown was operated as a sole proprietorship by Comstock from the establishment here in 1867 up until 1902, when it was succeeded by W.H. Comstock Co., Ltd., a Canadian corporation. St. Lawrence County deeds record the transfer of the property—still preserving the 36-foot strip for the railroad—from personal to corporate ownership at that time.