Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show for those who can never know enough about history.
I'm Gabe Lucier, and in this episode, we're talking about
a revolutionary product that extended the shelf life of milk
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without the aid of preservatives. The day was September sixth,
eighteen ninety nine. Carnation evaporated milk was produced for the
first time in Kent, Washington. If you're unfamiliar with the product,
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it's essentially the same as regular fresh milk, but with
about sixty percent less water. Most of the milk's water
content is removed through heating, then what's left behind is homogenized, canned,
and sterilized. This process makes evaporated milk shelf stable for months,
if not years, and without affecting its nutritional content. And
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best of all, when it's mixed with water, it returns
to the same taste and consistency as fresh milk. More
or less. The product's versatility and longevity made it a
popular alternative to fresh milk, especially in the early decades
of the twentieth century, before home refrigeration became the norm. Today,
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Evaporated milk is mostly used as a cooking ingredient, popping
up in both savory dishes and desserts, but in places
and situations where refrigeration isn't an option, it still makes
a great stand in for its more perishable cousin. The
commercial process of evaporating milk was still relatively new in
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the late eighteen hundreds, and because sterilization methods were not
yet well known, the best way to preserve the milk
for distribution was by adding sugar. The resulting product was
called condensed milk, and it was only available sweetened as
a matter of necessity. That began to change in the
eighteen eighties when Swiss dairyman Johann Meyenberg discovered a way
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to sterilize milk with high heat, eliminating the need to
sweeten it. Meyenberg worked at a condensed milk plant in Switzerland,
but his employer wasn't interested in his idea, so he
immigrated to the United States and patented the process himself.
Meyenberg eventually made his way to the dairy rich region
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of Washington State, where he teamed up with a pair
of Seattle grocers named Elbridge Amos Stewart and Tom Yerksa.
The pair had recently formed the Pacific Coast Condensed Milk
Company with the goal of creating a safer milk product.
The only problem was Stuart and Yerksa had no idea
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how to evaporate milk. For that crucial part of the business,
they relied on the expertise of Johann Meyenberg, or, as
he came to be nicknamed Cheese John. Before production was
up and running, the trio ran the business out of
an abandoned hotel in the city of Kent, but they
were quickly able to upgrade after learning about another milk operation,
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the Washington Condensed Milk Company, that was about to go bankrupt.
E A. Stewart later gave an account of those early
days of the company, writing, quote, we located at a
small plant at Kent, Washington, which had been established for
the processing of sweetened condensed milk. The company had failed
and the machinery and equipment were bought at sheriff's sale
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by the First National Bank of Helena, Montana. We purchased
the equipment for the sum of five thousand dollars and
rented the realty. We had to reassemble the machinery and
make certain additions so as to adapt it to the
processing of evaporated milk. While we were preparing the plant
for operation, we employed a high class Swiss dairyman nicknamed
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cheese John, who worked with the local dairymen, educating them
as to the method of producing a high quality fresh
milk so that we could produce a high quality evaporated milk.
On the sixth of September eighteen ninety nine, we received
about fifty eight hundred pounds of fluid milk, which we
processed into fifty five cases of evaporated milk. Sales were
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slow at first. Local customers didn't see the need to
buy canned milk when fresh milk was available in abundance,
even if it did have a higher risk of contamination. Still,
Stuart and cheese John believed in their product, which at
the time they were calling sterilized cream. Tom Yerkza wasn't
as convinced and soon sold his half of the business
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to Stewart. Over the next few years, Stuart and Maienberg
perfected the evapora ration process and improve their canning methods greatly,
reducing spoilage. Little by little, people began to notice the
advantages of canned milk. It was easier to transport and
could be stored long term without refrigeration. The product was
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particularly popular with the hordes of prospectors who had flocked
to the area during the Klondike Gold Rush. A safe,
reliable source of milk was a luxury they never expected
to have in the Yukon wilderness, and they snapped up
cans of it so fast that Stuart had a hard
time keeping up with the demand. Pretty soon, the company
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was producing ten thousand pounds of condensed milk every day,
and by nineteen oh two production was up to forty
thousand pounds per day. Sales of Pacific Coast sterilized cream
continued to rise, but Stuart thought the product might do
even better with a catchier name. He eventually hit on
an idea for one. While walking along First Avenue in
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downtown on Seattle. Glancing into the window of a tobacco shop,
he noticed a display for Carnation brand cigars. Stuart thought
it was strange to name a cigar after a flour
commonly associated with motherhood, but he thought it was a
perfect fit for a milk product that was being built
as safe and nutritious. Shortly after this epiphany, Stuart renamed
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his business the Carnation Evaporated Milk Company and began putting
an illustration of the flour on all of the product labels.
In the early years, the company had sourced all of
its milk from local farmers. Mayanberg shared his best practices
with them and routinely checked in to make sure everything
was up to the company's strict standards. He recognized that
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high quality evaporated milk could only be made from high
quality fresh milk, and he believed the key to that
quality was to keep the cows as happy and comfortable
as possible. Ea Stuart took that lesson to heart, and
one a nineteen oh six marketing meeting, he described the
humane treatment of carnation cows as one of the hallmarks
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of the company. A woman from the marketing firm reportedly
responded to that comment saying, quote, they must be very
contented cows. Stuart fell in love with that phrase, and
the following year, the company introduced its first slogan, Carnation
Condensed Milk, the milk from contented cows. In nineteen oh eight,
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Stewart doubled down on the happy Cow concept by buying
three hundred and sixty acres of farmland in the snow
Qualmie Valley and establishing his own breeding farm. He stocked
it with prize winning Holstein cows and established a high
standard of care for the herd. The goal of Carnation
Farms was to increase the company's milk production, and Stuart
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firmly believed that cows who lived in a stress free
environment would be able to produce more milk. To that end,
he forbade rough treatment of the cows and even barred
as employees from swearing in their presence. He also hung
a sign in the main barn that laid out the
basic guidelines for how the cows were to be treated.
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It remains there to this day, and it reads as follows.
The rule to be observed in this stable at all
times toward the cattle young and old is that of
patience and kindness. Remember that this is the home of mothers.
Treat each cow as a mother should be treated. Carnation
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cows were esteemed by breeders worldwide for their sweet temperaments
and high milk yields, and many cows today are descended
from the Carnation heard. As time went on, the company
branched into other commercial products, including ice cream, baby formula,
and a sweetened version of its condensed milk. The company
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also dabbled in animal feed, giving rise to several popular
pet foods, including the Frihei's brand. The Stewart family continued
to own and operate Carnation until nineteen eighty five, when
they sold the brand to Nesley for roughly three billion dollars.
As for Carnation Farms, the property has changed hands a
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few times over the years, but since twenty ten, the
farm and the contented cows who lived there are back
under the ownership of EA Stewart's descendants. I'm Gay Blues Gay,
and hopefully you now know a little more about history
today than you did yesterday. If you'd like to keep
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up with the show, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at TDI HC Show, and if you have
any comments or suggestions, feel free to send them my
way by writing to this Day at iHeartMedia dot com.
Thanks to Kasby Bias for producing the show, and thanks
to you for listening. I'll see you back here again
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tomorrow for another Day in History Class.