A number of customers were, however, faithful to the Comstock Company for very many years. Schieffelin & Co. and McKesson & Robbins were both important customers way back in the 1840s, and their favor had been an object of dispute in the split between Lucius and the other brothers in 1851. Schieffelin still appeared frequently in the order books up to the 1920s; during the final years McKesson & Robbins was by far the largest single domestic customer. A number of other firms—John L. Thompson Sons & Co. of Troy, N.Y.; T. Sisson & Co. of Hartford, Conn.; and Gilman Brothers of Boston, Mass.—appear both in the 1896 and the 1950 order books, although unfortunately the quantities taken had fallen from one or two gross at a shot in the earlier year to a mere quarter gross or a few dozen boxes by 1950.

Toward the end, in the late 1950s, employment in the factory dropped to only three persons—J.M. Barney (foreman), Charles Pitcher, and Florence Cree—and they were only doing maintenance work and filling such few orders, mostly in quantities of a few dozen boxes only, that came to the factory unsolicited. Gone were the days of travelers scouring the back country, visiting country druggists, and pushing the pills, while simultaneously disparaging rival or "counterfeit" concoctions; gone were the days when the almanacs and other advertising circulars poured out of Morristown in the millions of copies; long since vanished were the sweeping claims of marvelous cures for every conceivable ailment. In these final days the Indian Root Pills, now packaged in a flat metal box with a sliding lid, were described modestly as the Handy Vegetable Laxative. And the ingredients were now printed on the box; nothing more was heard of Dr. Morse's remarkable discovery gleaned during his long sojourn with the Indians of the western plains.

FIGURE 27.—The pill-mixing building, about 1928 (building torn down in 1971).

Although the records disclose nothing to this effect, it is a fair premise that the Comstock family often must have considered closing the Morristown plant after World War II and, more particularly, in the decade of the 1950s. Such inclinations may, however, have been countered by a willingness to let the plant run as long as a trickle of business continued and it did not fall too far short of covering expenses. The last few surviving employees were very elderly, and their jobs may have been regarded as a partial substitute for pensions. This view is evidenced by an injury report for George Clute, who suffered a fit of coughing while mixing pills in January 1941; he was then 77 years old and had been working in the factory for 34 years. The final paybooks show deductions for Social Security and unemployment insurance—specimens of vexatious red tape that the factory had avoided for most of its existence.

The decision to close the Morristown factory was finally forced upon the family, on May 15, 1959, by the death of William Henry Comstock II—"Young Bill"—who had been president of the company since 1921. Like his father, "Young Bill" Comstock had been a prominent citizen of Brockville for many years, served a term as mayor—although he was defeated in a contest for a parliamentary seat—was also active in civic and social organizations, and achieved recognition as a sportsman and speedboat operator.

FIGURE 28.—The packaging and office building at left, depot in center, and Comstock Hotel at right. Canadian shore and city of Brockville (location of another Comstock factory) in background.

The actual end of the business came in the spring of 1960. The frequency and size of orders had dropped sharply, although the names of many of the old customers still appeared, as well as individuals who would send one dollar for three boxes of the pills. These small shipments were usually mailed, rather than going by express or freight, as formerly. The very last two shipments, appropriately, were to old customers: One package of one-dozen boxes of pills on March 31, 1960, to Gilman Brothers of Boston, and two-dozen boxes to McKesson & Robbins at Mobile, Alabama, on April 11. And with this final consignment the factory closed its doors, concluding ninety-three years of continuous operation in the riverside village of Morristown.

Very little of this story remains to be told. Mrs. Comstock became president of the company during its liquidation—and thus was a successor to her

father-in-law

, who had first entered the business as a clerk,