Norwich Bulletin Newspaper, January 10, 1911, Page 6

- Enquired if we were “hiring” a Of course every time a spot light is turned on from any source it offers a splendid chance to talk about the merits of the Ed_:c__u, but ’pon hosor now, we are not hiring that “Weekly.” The general reader seldom “scraps.” A few may have read lately cares much for the details of some articles attacking us and may be interested in the following: Some time ago a disagreement arose with a “Weekly.” They endorsed our foods by letter, but wanted to change the form of advertising, to which we The “Weekly” discontinued while they were negotiating for objected. ; inserting our advertisements some changes they wanted in the wording and shape of the advertisements, and during this correspondence our manager gav e instructions to our Advertis- ing Department to quit advertising altogether in that “Weekly.” Quite a time after the advertising had been left out, an edi- torial attack came. We replied was on. Then came libel suits from words. in newspapers and the scrap both sides, and some harsh Generally tiresome to the public. “That “Weekly” has attacked many prominent men and reputable manufacturers. Our Company seems prominrent enough for a sensational writer to go after, hunt for some little spot to criticise, then dis- tort, twist and present it to the public under scare heads. Distortion No. 1 cutcq that we have been accustomed to advertise Grape-Nuts and Postum as “cure-alls for everything.” It has never been the policy of this y to advertise Grape-Nuts or Postum to cure anything. ‘We say that in cases where coffee and is causjng sickness its dismissal will remove the cause of the trouble, and we suggest the use of Postum for the reason that it furnishes a hot palatable morning beverage, and contains natural elements from the grain which can be used by nature to aseist In rebuilding nerve centres that coffes may have broken down. Likewise Grape-Nuts food does not cure anything, but it does assist nature endously in rebuilding, provided the und’mnfle food that has heen used is discontinued and Grape-Nuts taken in its place. Charge No. 2 .iates that the passage of the National Food & Drugs | Act compelled us to drop from the yackages eomse assertions regarding the nutritive value of Grape-Nuts. We have never been “compelled” to make any change. Since the beginning it has been a un- iversal rule to print clearly on every | package exactly what the conten:s are s counerits are made of. —_ Before the passage of the Pure Food Law the packages stated that Grape- Nuts food was made of wheat and bar- e s ac e by. We did not esteem the small amount of salt and yeast as of value enough to speak of but after the new Law came in we became as technical as the offi- clals at Washington and added the words “veast” and “salt,” although we Bave no recollection of being asked to. We believed that our statement that pe-Nuts will supply elements to mnourish the brain and nerve contres is true and bring authorities to support that fact. Some state chemists believed this @ gross exaggeration and inasmuch a the. Food Dept. at Washington coul easily harass grocers, pending a tria’ on the disputed question, we conclude that much the better way would be tc eliminate from our pickages such claims, however certain wé may be that the claims are true. 4 Another statement objected to read as follows: y “The system will absorb a greater oy 2 8TSOTD amount of nou ment from one pound of Grape-Nuts than from ten pounds of meat, wheat, oats, or bread.” Some Department chemists deceive themselves us well as the public. ‘““Calorie” is the word which defines a | unit of heat determined by the amount necessary to raise one kilogram of ‘water one degree centigrade. On this basis a table of calories is prepared showing the percentage of different kinds of food. Butter . shows 8.60; Grape-Nuts 3.96; milk 0.70. Remember the statement on the package spoke of the nourishment the system would ab 391D, but. did not speak of the calor SF heat contained in it, for the heat i nof nourishment, and the nourishment cannot be judged by the number of heat units, notwithstanding the fact th e chemists would have the public believe so. As an illustration: Attempts to feed a man sixty days on butter alone, with its 8.60 calories. The man would die ::t,q:. the experiment had run sixty Then, take Grape-Nuts with 3.96 and milk with 0.70,—the two combined equal 4.66,—about one-half the number of calories contained in butter. The man fed for sixty days on this food would be well nourished, and could live not only sixty deys, but six months on that food alone, and we do not hesi- tate to say from our long knowle ge of the sustaining power of the fooa that a man at the end of sixty days would be of practically the same weight | as when he started,—if he be a man of | normal weight. ‘We will suppose that from his work he lost a pound a day and made up a pound each day from food. If that premise proved to be true the man in | sixty days’ time would make sixty ! pounds of tissuc to replace what had been lost, and this would be done on Grgpe-Nuts and mi with half the number of calories of butter, upon which no one can sustain life. Therefore, w ason to believe that our conte right that con- d like Grape-Nuts, which nourishment sorb than m and we will further say that in cases of digestive troubles where meat, whi cannot be digested, that | and milk contain more ent that the system will ab- sorb than many pounds of these other foods. Distortion No. 3 charges that our testimonials were practically all paid for and re-written in Battle Creek. | | These testimonials were demanded by the opposing lawyers. Naturally | this demand was refused, for they are | leld in vaults and kept safe to prove the truth, and are not to be delivered up on demand of enemies. estimony at the trial brought out | act that we never printed a single ! testimonial that we did not have the genuine letter back of. Many of these | TS came spontaneously. A record | kept of twelve hundred and four | 04) letters received in one month from people who wrote that they had ! either entirely recovered their health or been benefited by following our sug- gestions on food and bevera, ! On three or four occasions in the past ten or twelve vears we printed dcast in papers offers of prizes to s of Postum and Grape-Nu hundred $1.00 prizes, one hundr '2.00, twenty of $5.00 and five of $10.00 :ach,—statire that each must be an “onest let:e: and address. | with name —_— " ThT 2rCTeTs Ve agreed not to publish names, but o furnish’ them to enquirers by letter. These letter writers very gencrally inswered these who wrote to them, ind verified the truth of the etate- ments. Under this agreement not to publish names literally scores of letters came | from doc We kept our word and neither printed their names or surren- dered the letters, Right here notice an “imitation spasm.” The got th for them. use of the announced ets tion). ‘We used nearly all of the pavers and magazines in New York and the rest of | | America, put th sational writer | gives the impressi to his readers | that the only magazine we used was | one “whose editor is now in the Fed- eral Penitentiary,” etc., something that we know nothing of the truth of now and never did. Space was bought in the magazine spoken of on a business | basis for the reason that it went to a 20od class of readers. The incident seems to have furnished an opportuni- ty for a designing writer to deceive his readers. We look upon honest human testi- mony from men and women as to the means by which they recovered health | as of tremendous value to those in search of it. Our business has been wonducted from the very first day (310.00) for writing ! but | turned over {'a doctor | be | Postum Ce; or dirt in the factories. certain After tireless spying about he sum- moned twenty-five of our workmen and took their testimony. Every single one testified that tiie foods are made of exactly the grain and ingredients printed on ‘the packages; the wheat, barley and corn being the choicest obtainable—all thoroughly cleaned—the water of the purest, and every part of the factories and machinery kept scrupulously clean. That all proved disappointing to the “Weekly.” There are very few factories, hospitals, private—or hotel and restaurant kitchens that could stand the close spying at unexpected times and by an enemy paid-to find dirt or impurities of some kind. In any ordinary kitchen or factory he would find something to magnify and make a noise about. But he failed utterly with the Postum Works and products. e e Twenty to thirty thousand people go through the factories an- nually and we never enquire whether they are there to spy or not. It makes no difference to us. He next turned to discover something about our advertising that could be criticised. An analysis of the methods and distorted statements of the “Weekly” may interest some readers, so we take up the items one by one and open them out for inspection. We will “chain up” the harsh words and make no reference in this article to the birth, growth and methods of the “Weekly” but try to confine the discussion to the questions now at issue. upon lines of strict integrity and we never yet have published a false testi- 1 of human experience. Many of e letters covered numerous sheets; some, if printed, would spread over hailf a page of newspaper. If we would attempt to print one such letter in every one of the thausands of papers and magazines we use, the cost for printing that one letter would run into many thousanas ot uoilars, We boil down these letters exactly as a newspaper writer boils his news, —Sticking sacredly to the important and eliminating details about the family and other unimportant matters. This work of boiling down, or editing, is done honestly, and with a full knowl- edge of our responsibility, but notice the art of the “twister” in the way he presents to his readers this maiter of testimonials. Distortion N a bad one. It reads as follow only famous physician whose name was signed to a testimonial was produced in Court by Colliers and turned out to be a poor old brokendown homeopath, who is now working in a printing es- tablishment. He received ten dollars testimonial.” ‘We will wager ten thousand dollars ($10,000.00) with any investigator that we have, subject to inspection of any fair committee, upwards of three hun- dred (300) communications from physi- cians, many of them expressing the highest commendation of our products, these will not now or ever be to the publisher for his use. Notice the statement in this charge: “The only mous physician whose name was signed to Postum testi- monial, ete. The truth is, this Dr. Underwood was one of a great many physicians who have not only tten commendatory words about the value of our foods, but every mow d then some physician rites an article on coffee or on food, nd sends it to us with a suggestion of compensation for time and med- ical knowledge. ious to the time when we empvloy ns in our own business, we 1y employed write an 4 e on coffee, always insisting that the article be an honest expression of his opinion and research. The “Week cian, and becau and as it say brou * hunted up this physi- he seemed to be poor, obkendown,” had him ght to Court to be exposed before v as the * an that had but much ever to the chagrin or the “Weekly,” when our attorneys asked him if the article he wrote about coff was true, he re- plied, “yes” - Statement No. 5 ... “The health officers Mich Penn., New Hamp., and other their official bulletins have for n_denouncing as fraudulent - the claim: 1 Compan made I * We do not n except from Mich., S. Dakota. recall ¢ Penn., M y c aine and The average reader might think that the opinicns expressed hy the State Officials are always correct, conclusion is not borne cut by facts. Al an illustration: " About thirteen years ago the Dairy and Food Commis- sior. of Michigan for some personal reason printed a severe criticism on us for making Postum of Barfev (accord- ing to his official chemist) at market price and selling tdo high. He was shown there was mnever a grain of barley used in Postum. His report was false and misleading. The govefnor dismissed him. We believe that most of the state ofti_fale are honest, and on the other hand we are firmly convinced that some o’ their conclusions cannot be sub- stentiated by facts in scientific re- search. It may be remembered that we were first attacked and have since de- iended ourselves by placing facts before that great jury—The Public./ A good “‘scrap” is more or less comforting now and then, if you know you are right, I fhe case lately tried, an appeal has been taken to the higher courts. We lllvo unbo,lmded faith in the ultimate decision of our American Tribunals. . Our suits against the ‘‘weekly” have not yet been tried. They are for but that They never criticize the purity of our foods, for so much we are thankful. If our conclusions in regard to its be- ing a brain food differ from their’s, and we are both honest, they have rather -the advantage, because under the law they can order us to eliminate from the package any statement if it disagrees with their opinion. Other- wise they would harass grocers. Spasm No. 6 says: .rq. most dangerous thing in the world for one ‘threatened with appendicitis is to eaZ any food whatever. Notwithstand- he knew that danger, C. W. Post advertised Grape-Nuts at fifteen cents a package for those so threatened.” This is intended to muddle the reader intq believing that we put out Grape- Nuts as a cure for appendicitis. Mr. Post, himself, has had probably as wide experience as any other man in America in the study and observa- tion of food as related to the digestive , ' and we proved in Court by cians and surgeons on the wit- stand that the predominating cause of appendicitis is undigested food, and that it is necessary to quit eating food, and when the body re- quires food again, use a pre-digestad food, or at least one easy of digestion. Dr. Ochsner .in his work on appen- dicitis refers directly to the use of the well-known pre-digested foods that can Pe obtained on the market. He also brought out the interesting fact that in “after treatment” it is advantageous to take on a pre-digested food. The price of the package (referred to by the weekly) is not known by us to have any relation to the question. Our advice to stop using indigestible food in _bowel troubles and to use Grape-Nuts food has been a great blessing to tens of thousands of peo- ple, and we hope will continue to bless 2 good marny more in the succeeding years. 7 is a live wire. It refers to C. W. P and his studies and experi- ence in “Suggestive Therapeutics,” or “Mental Healing” which further lead to a most careful and systematic study of the effect of the mind on the di- gestive and other organs of the body. He attended clinics in Europe and fitted himself for a future career in which he has become known as one of the food experts of the world, fitted to judge Dboth from the material as well as the mental side of the question. For about eight years previous to 1891 he was an invalid. In that year, after being under the care of se 1l well-known physicians he was quickly healed, by what to him was a curious nd not well-understood method. Suf- ficient to say he became a well man, ghing atout 185 pounds. experience challenged his ation into cau: of disease and their amelioration. Those studies and experiences developed a very vrofound verence for a Supreme Power wiich in- drectly operates upon the human be- ia, and this reverence for the Infinite ame to him a form of religion cluced homesty of purpose tow.rdis fellow-man. A statement +which ! be indorsed by everyone who knows him closely, He will mnake a public announcement {1 detail of these facts, and the Pos- tum Company will cause that statement to be published in newspapers and iagazines in due time. We suggest ‘he reader look for it. Prevarication No 8. .p,q spends nearly a million a year in ad- vertising and relies on that to keep out of the newspapers the dangerous nature of the fraud he is perpetrating on the public.” “weekly’’ paper to So an attorney from New York spent more or less time for months in Battle Creek hoping to, find impurities in our foods, ’ abuse us. Some Facts. Battle Creek, Michigan, December 3o, 1910. We the undersigned certify that never to our knowledge has a testimonial letter been printed by the Postum Cereal Co., Ltd., which did not have behind it a genuine letter signed, and be- lieved to be an honest statement. To the best of our knowledge and belief the Company has received upwards of fifty thousand, (50,000) genuine testimonial letters. This Company has never knowingly made nor permitted am untruthful statement regarding its products or its methods. M. K. HOWE, Treasurer. ( With Company about 14 years) L.-J. LAMSON, Inspector of Advts. (With Company about 9 years.) F. C. GRANDIN, Advertising Manager. (With Cempany about 13 years.) R. M. STERRETT, M. D, Dep’t. years.) CHARLES W. GREEN, Advt. Writer, 5 years.) HARRY E. BURT, General years.) H. C. HAWK, Assistant to Chairman, 7 years.) C. W. POST, Chairman. beginning.) The Postum Company does pay out upwards of a million a year for trade announcements. Newspaper men be- lieve our statements truthful or they would not print them. Large numbers of newspaper men use our products. They are canable of telline the nuhlic whether or not we “bribe” them. It may have escaved notice that we did_not “bribe” that particular weeldy. No. 9 stateg that the amount of the verdict will “be devoted by the ‘weekly’ to exposing fraud.” This is almost real humor. We have two suits pending against the “weekly,” total, $500,000.00. ‘We haven’t “devoted” the any particular purpose yet. sum ‘to P Item 10 ;. . “giscovery” matl wheat bran is a'part of Postum. But the criticism negilected to men- tion that for years every Postum pack- | age announced in plain type that the | outer covering of wheat (bran), made part of‘the beverage. They ignorantly fell into a trap here, not knowing enough of food value to know that aka Diastase” the article used by physicians the world over for “starch indigestion” made - from “wheat bran.” is So we use that part of the wheat berry because it contains the element needed to develop the valuable diastase in manufacture. Good Postum is im- possible without this part, These self-appointed critics do make some laughable blunders through ig- norance, but—be patient. Item 11 ;. squirming and tw n illustration of the ting of the sensa- ) tional writer delivering distorted mat- ter to his readers, ‘While on the witness testified to his studies in Anatomy, Physiology, Dietetics and sychology, —all relating to the preparation and digestion of food. Asked to name au- thorities studied he mentioned six or eight from memory, and commented on some clinical experience covering sev- tand Mr. Post eral years in annual journeys to Europe. & Now _ motice the distortion. (Copy from the printed cri m.) “He (Post) pointed out a pile of booiks in possession of his attorneys as the very ones he had read.” (Notice,—“The very ones he had read,” leading the reader to believe that they were the only ones.) “Did you consuit the books from these editions?” was asked. JFrom those and various editions, answered Post. - The attorney * ed up book after book from the pile and showed the title pages to the jury.—all except two had been published since 1905.” This is an example of distortion and false coloring to produce an unfav- orable impression. The facts are Mr. Post purposely in- troduced the latest editions that could be obtained of prominent authorities to prove by them the truth of his state- ments regarding appendicitis and the analysis of brain, also the latest con- clusions in regard to the action of the digestive organs. These works are: Human Physiology, by Raymond. Physiological Chemistry, by Simon. Digestive Glands, by Pawlow. Hand Book of Appendicitis, by Ochs- ner. Physician in charge of Scientific (With Company about 414 years.) CHESTON SYER, Advt. Writer, (With Company sbout 3 (With Cempany about Sup’t. (With Company about 53 (With Company about (With Company 16 years, from the | Physiolegical Cliemistry, by Ham- marsten, Blochemie System of Mediciua, by Carey, The “Weekly” carefully eliminates from its printed account, testimony re- garding the years of research and study by Mr. Post in fitting himsel! for his work, and would lead the reader of the distorted article to believe that | his education began since 1905, | Distortion No. 12 . ons | Mr. Post as a “dodging witness.” i His eye is not of the shifty kind ob- served in the head of one of his chief critics. On the witness stand Mr. Post looks quietly but very steadily straight into the eyes of the haggling, twisting lawyer, trying by all hig art to ask double-barrel questions end bull-doze and confuse & Witness. The "dodging” it seems consisted of replying, “I don’t know.” | Opposing counsel holds a books im his . hand while he queries,— “I want to know if there is a single thing in your whole book here that suggests any particular kind of food.” | Then followed some discussion between attorneys. When Mr. Post was allowed to reply, he said, “I don’t know until I read the | book vver to see.” | This book, it turns out, was written by Mr. Post seventeen years ago and probably hag not been read care y !by him in the last fifteen years.” It { would require & remarkable memory | to instantly say “yes” or “no” as to { what a book of 147 pages did or did not contain, without reading it over,— but such conservative and well bal- anced answers are construed by een- sation seekers to be “dodging.” The attorney sought by every art to impress the Jury with the fact that Mr, Post’'s belief In the power of Mind in relation to the body branded him as unreliable and worse, The following is quoted from one of the questions:— 5% The lawyer reading from the book.) { “The writer of these pages desires to say nothing of himself other than as a simple Instrument through which the Divine Principle chooses to manifest | itself by precept and example, | ' “Skill in menta] practice is gained in the same way as #kill in any ment of sclence—by observation, study, experience and the ability to evelve correct conclusions. “Read carefully, thoughtfully mwno more than twenty pages daily. After- ward seek an easy position where you will not be disturbed. -Relax every muscle. (Closg your eyes, and go into the silence where mind is plastic to the breathings of spirit and where God talks to the Son. The thoughts from Divine Universal Mind come as winged angels and endow you with a healing power. If you go into the silence humble and trusting, you will come out { enriched and greatly strengthened in by contact even for a ghort time the Father of ali 1life and al . You wiil feel refreshed in > v way and food taken will st readily as the stomaeh works v when under the irfiuence of a Higher Power.” ¥ “1 ask you if yow did not write that, and if you did not believe it wlen you wrote it.” For a moment the Court Room was in absolute silence, Mr. Post slowly leaned forward over the rail, pointed his finger at the Atty's face to emphasize his and with eyes that caused those of the At- torney to drop he said, “Yes, I am proud to say I did.” libel and $500,000.00 is asked as damages, and may the right man win. After all the smoke of legal battle blows away, the facts will stand out clearly and never be forgotten that Postum, Grape-Nuts, and Post Toasties are perfectly pure, have done good honest service to humanity for years, the testimonials are real and truthful and the business conducted on the highest plane of commercial integrity. ' “There’s a Reaso Postum Cereal Co,, Litd., Battle Creek, Mich. n”