Don't Tread On My Bathroom!!! Americans Resist Toilet Paper

Ya, it took us a while to wipe well. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of humans. Sometimes when I think about the past,
I'm like, I ain't nothing like these people, you know,
the American presidents, the founding fathers and mothers, the kings

(00:28):
and queens of England and Europe, the native people of
the Americas, and even further back, the people who hunted
and gathered pre agrarian those people who had tracked down
wooly mammoths and kill him and eat him. How am

(00:50):
I like those people? Do we have anything in common? Well,
in fact, we do have a lot in common with
the people of the past, because no matter what, no
matter what's been going on in our history, in our physiology,
our sociology, our metaphysicality, etc. This whole time, we've all

(01:14):
been excreting our waste. Yes, what do you have in
common with cave people? They're shitting in the pissing. Of course,
that's what it is. This is American filth. I'm gonna
say something crass and gross, and because of that, we
have always faced a problem. After we dump, after we

(01:37):
hose out our urine, how do we get that stuff
off of us? Sometimes it sticks? Sorry to say it,
I'm just saying, what happens. You need a wipe you
need something to help you get the stuff off of
your bum.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
But while those people of the past.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Were hunting wooly mammoths, they did not have a pocket
full of wet wipes.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Well, I guess back then they be ice wipes. Ow
do they do it?

Speaker 1 (02:12):
I did a quick Google search. That's how I do
this podcast. I do some searches on Google. The search
was how did people in the ice age wipe their asses?
And what the Internet suggested to me was that they
use stones, moss, leaves. Maybe they go into a stream
or a crick you know. That was the analog bidet.

(02:38):
And you, dear American filth listener, I imagine you used toilet paper.
I'm not trying to make assumptions about you or judge
or anything, but toilet papers pray ubiquitous at this point.
It's been around for a while. But if you can
believe it, Americans were actually behind the curve when it
came to ask wiping technology. And that makes sense because

(03:02):
historically colonizers, white people are some of the worst groomers.
Remember when the Pilgrims came over on the Mayflower, the
Natives were like, peeu, you guys smell like shit. And
the white people were like, what are you talking about?
I bathed twice a year, and the natives were like,
you know, you could do it like every day. That's

(03:26):
why I think we white people don't season our food
very well. It's because we all smell so bad. We're
already overcome with flavor, the flavor of our musk. Other
cultures and civilizations have been using toilet paper for a
long time, like in China, there were mentions of toilet
paper as early as the second century BC, and they

(03:50):
had widely available toilet paper since the fourteenth century. But
as for these United States of America, we didn't get
around to toilet paper until the eighteen fifties, and even
then Americans were skeptical and a little unwilling to change
their habits to wipe their ass better.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Cue the theme song.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
This is American Filth and I'm Gabby Watts. Every week
I tell you the filthy story from American history. This
week's episode, don't tread on my bathroom. Americans resist toilet paper.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Dona get it.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
Get it, peet. I'm gonna stop recording real quick because
I gotta use the bathroom, but I'll be back. You
would think that people would want a convenient and.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Easy way to wipe their butts.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
But you know, change is hard, don't I know it?
And we can't blame the Americans.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
I guess paper wasn't widely.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
Available, you know, in general, like what pulp started being
used to make paper, not until the eighteen forties. And
so you might be wondering, in the meantime, when we
didn't have toilet paper, how were Americans wiping their bouhonkases?
Much like the cavemen of your much like those people
in the ice age, people would use leaves, grass, rocks,

(05:34):
wood shavings. They'd even wipe their butt with mud or clay.
Can you imagine that getting some clay forming it into
something that you could wipe your butt with.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
I just don't like thinking about that.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
And indeed, people did use paper, but it was not
specifically toilet paper. They would use stuff from notebooks, the newspaper.
The Sears catalog was a huge one. Often outhouses would
have Sears catalogs just hanging aback out. Another big one
was the Farmer's Almanac. People use this as toilet paper

(06:12):
so often that the Almanac, starting in nineteen nineteen, poked a.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
Hole in the side of it.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
You bought it with the hole so you could hang
it easily in your outhouse. Obviously, none of this paper
was designed for your nether regions, so it was pretty
uncomfortable to use. But it was free, it was available,
it's there, and don't we love convenience. Oh sorry, guys,

(06:40):
I forgot one thing that people used to commonly use
in America.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
For toilet paper. They would use a corn cob YEP.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
I was telling my mom this and she was like, oh,
did they reuse It was like a communal cob. I'm like,
I hope it wasn't. I hope it was a one
in done scenario. Get all the corn off that cob
and then just go to town. One very inconvenient thing

(07:10):
that happened for toilet users was that the Sears catalog
started coming out with a gloss on it, and Yeah,
how are you supposed to wipe your ass with a glossy,
slippery page. No, you need the normal rough ones. So
in eighteen fifty seven, this inventor named Joseph Gaiety put

(07:30):
out a new product on the market that he called
medicated paper for the water closet. And here's how he
promoted his product in the newspaper The greatest necessity of
the Age, Gaiety's medicated paper for the water closet. Many

(07:52):
people have wooed their own destruction, physical and mental, by
neglecting to pay attention to ordinary matters. Printed paper, everybody knows,
is a rank poison to the tender portions of the body.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Individuals would not.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
Put printer's ink in their mouth, yet they have no
hesitation in allowing themselves to apply that ink to the
tenderest part of the body. How much cheaper and eerie
respect is it to use a paper made of the
purest materials and medicated with the greatest care. Such is

(08:29):
Gaiety's medicated paper. So this was Gaietty's pitch for people
to buy his medicated paper.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
He was like, you take those Sears.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
Catalogs, you take Farmer's almanac. You want to eat that paper.
It's covered in ink. Also, that paper has toxic chemicals
in it as well, and then you just put that
stuff all over your bottom and even your plus plus.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Think about how bad that is for you.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
These are important parts of the even if you refuse
to acknowledge them. You need to have my medicated paper
to make sure nothing bad happens to your outhouse orifices.
The paper itself was an unbleached pearl colored pure Manila
hemp product, and you could buy three hundred sheets for

(09:26):
about fifty cents. Each one was an individual piece of paper,
and Gaiety proudly printed his name on each one, so
you knew exactly what you were using on your bottom.
And you might be thinking, Wow, this is so great
and smart of him to innovate toilet paper.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
In the United.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
States, it seems like there's a real need for that,
especially because people are using a corn on the cob
to do unspeakable things.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
You would think you'd be so successful, But as.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
I say that, change is hard, especially for Americans who
love independence. They're like, I should be allowed to ruin
my ass as much as I want to. Don't tell
me what to do. Also, when this toilet paper came out,
propriety was everything. Very polite society. There's a lot of
repressed feelings, lack of acknowledgment of bodily functions and sex.

(10:30):
Some people were so easily offended that they would cover
their piano legs. Yeah, sometimes they thought piano legs were
looking a bit too sexy. So when this product came out,
some people were scandalized. They're like, who does this guy
think he is advertising a product that touches the unholy

(10:51):
parts of your body. Also, some doctors called Gaiety a quack.
There's nothing medically beneficial to this paper. But Gaiety was like, yeah,
it is a medical product. I put alo on it,
and I think about Gaiety, he himself is a bit

(11:11):
of a mystery. It's not clear when he was born
where he was born. Maybe he was in Massachusetts, maybe
it was in Pennsylvania, maybe eighteen seventeen, maybe eighteen twenty seven.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
We don't know.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
What we do know is that in eighteen fifty he
was living in New York City, married to a woman
and they had two children. At that time he wasn't
a big shot inventor. He was working at a pub,
but then by eighteen fifty seven he.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
Was pretty successful.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
At that point, he had five kids, he had his
medicated bum paper out. They even had a servant and
an a state. So even though people weren't socially happy
about the whole concept of toilet paper, they were buying it,
allowing Gaiety to leave his life as a bartender behind

(12:05):
After this, a lot more people got into the toilet
paper making business, still always calling it dedicated paper. Let's
not associate it with toilets, but gay. He seemed to
put himself in a bit of a tricky situation because
in the eighteen nineties, toilet paper dealers under the name
BT Hoagland sued the company. At this point, Joseph Gaiety

(12:29):
was dead, but one of his sons took over the company.
When they sued, the Hogelands claimed that they had the
exclusive right to use the name Gaiety in their products,
and they were suing because several other companies were using
that name. They claimed that in eighteen sixty six, Joseph
Gaiety had given up his copyright to a man named

(12:52):
James Liet. The reason why he did this well, Gaiety
owed Liet twenty five dollars and then for one dollar
the Hoaglands had bought the copyright from Leet. In court,
the Gaiety company was like, well, first of all, he
had already sold the copyright to somebody else earlier in

(13:13):
eighteen sixty six, so when he sold it to that
guy Leete, it wasn't even his to sell anymore. Also,
Joseph Gaiety never finished finalizing the copyright paperwork, so ha,
there's not even a copyright that you can claim. Wow,
a real gotcha moment. But the Hoagelands, they wouldn't be stopped.

(13:37):
They wanted that Gayety name so that they could sound authentic.
So they appealed and eventually won, and every other company
had to.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
Stop using the Gaiety name.

Speaker 1 (13:48):
But obviously the Hogelands weren't very successful because nobody has
heard of Gaiety toilet paper. God, it's hard to be
in business when it comes to toilets. But here's the thing.
Even though Gaiety brought this toilet paper, this medicaid paper

(14:08):
to the public for the first time in the United States,
it'd be many decades before people were fully on board
with toilet paper. Know what it would take for toilet
paper to be splinter free because before that wasn't always
a guarantee. Be back after these soothing advertisements. Just kidding, guys,

(14:32):
no advertisement today, hah, trick to you. After Gaety came
out with his toilet paper, more and more people got
into the business. However, it was really hard to market
toilet paper. It was the Victorian era. You need to

(14:53):
be discreet. People aren't trying to talk about their business
like that. They aren't trying to be caught outside with
a bag of toilet paper. Also, again they're like, we
got our catalogs, our newspapers, we got our farmer's almanac
hanging up in the outhouse.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
Why would I need to.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
Buy specific toilet paper. Another issue in the toilet paper
biz was marketing because very few people were willing to
advertise it in a newspaper. They're like, that would be
so embarrassing to be associated with something that you use to.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
Wipe your butt with.

Speaker 1 (15:30):
So people had to be sneaky in their advertising, like
the Scott Brothers.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
You guys know Scott. You guys have probably used that
stuff before they started their.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
Business in the late nineteenth century, and instead of putting
their name on the product, what they did is they
appealed to individual businesses, being like, hey, we'll put your
name on the toilet paper, you'll just buy it through us.
They did this with hotels with stores, gave them individualized

(16:02):
toilet paper because they're too pussy to be associated with it.
By nineteen oh three, they had two thousand clients. Another
huge thing that happened in toilet paper tech at this
time was this guy Seth Wheeler invented perforated paper on

(16:22):
a roll. Wow, isn't that grand. He created a compact
role and then you could pull off as many sheets
as you needed. Not only that, he also innovated this
thing called the toilet paper holder. It was just a

(16:43):
piece of cast iron that you could PLoP that little
roll up toilet paper on. And so Wheeler's inventions this
was huge. This made toilet paper more convenient, more convenient
than a Sears catalog, more convenient than the Farmer's almanac,
more convenient than a corn cob because now you could

(17:05):
take as much paper as you need it easily tear
it off. And it wasn't a role that was easily
accessible on a little holder with a catalog in almanac.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
That's so annoying. You got to rip out your own paper,
but this it was pre ripped.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
I love that Wheeler has a successful toilet paper business,
and he was already proving to the public that toilet
paper makes using the bathroom more convenient. He also did
what our old friend Gaiety did because he said that

(17:45):
toilet paper was a medical necessity. This is an ad
he ran for his business in eighteen seventy seven. It
said this paper will be found invaluable as a preventative
and cure for hemorrhoids, and is the only really medicated
toilet paper ever produced. I'm sorry, Gayety had already made

(18:07):
medicated paper.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
It had aloe on it.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
That's a great thing about advertising. You can just say
whatever you want. But I do not doubt the medical
necessity of toilet paper. I'm sure using it did improve
people's hygiene, because remember they used to use corn cobs.
I don't know if I can emphasize this enough corn cobs.

(18:33):
People of the past must have been rank with UTIs,
Rank with UTIs. Yeah, let's just sit in that for
a second. What a fun way to describe something that's
actually gonna be the title of my upcoming American filth book,
Rank with UTIs colon what it was like to live

(18:54):
in the past. The Scott brothers started being less ashamed
of themselves and the work they did. They started being brave,
because sometimes notoriety and money making can overcome your sense

(19:15):
of embarrassment. So in the early twentieth century they started
putting out toilet paper under their own name. They also
are like, this is a medical necessity. This toilet paper
could help stop the spread of dysentery, typhoid, and cholera.

(19:36):
That's right, toilet paper. It's basically another vaccine. The Scott
Brothers became the most successful toilet paper in the business.
They even created their own mascot called Mister Thirsty Fiber.
Don't you hate that Mister Thirsty Fiber. He's thirsty for fibers.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
And toilet paper.

Speaker 1 (19:59):
Though I feel like you'd be more hungry Fiber, because
I feel like you would eat toilet paper, not drink it.
But that's neither his nor thither. But this mascot, he
looked like Abraham Lincoln, had a big, tall hat, and
he had his fist up ready to punch away all
the diseases that might enter through your butt that can
be prevented by toilet paper. So if any of you

(20:23):
out there get a disease, ask yourself, did I wipe
good enough? Because according to these guys, the toilet paper
should have prevented any illness. The Scots became so successful
that during the Great Depression they didn't lay off a
single person because at that point the demand for toilet

(20:47):
paper was enormous.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
Another huge thing.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
That led to the rise of toilet paper innovation.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
Was the innovation of toilets themselves.

Speaker 1 (20:59):
Back in the nineteenth century, people were using outhouses and
those were basically like litter boxes. You take a dump
and you cover it in sand and ash and wood
chips whatever. But in the early twentieth century, you know
what happened, indoor plumbing, more flushing toilets, so you could

(21:20):
just shit inside, flush that shit, it goes away in
the water.

Speaker 2 (21:25):
Crazy.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
So another thing the Scott's capitalized on was the fact
that their toilet paper was flushable. They're like, hey, you
can use that fancy indoor toilet of yours and it
won't get clogged, it won't get messed up.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
You got to use this type of paper. Their slogan should.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
Have been no cholera and no clogs. Toilet paper innovation
didn't stop there. In the nineteen thirties, the Northern Tissue
Company revolutionized everything again. This is how they advertised their product,

(22:03):
quilted Northern bathtickoe.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
It's the surefooted way to go soft.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
And one hundred percent splinter free. Yes, it took until
the nineteen thirties before we could guarantee that you wouldn't
get a splinter in your anus while using the bathroom.
I love thinking about that. Maybe corn cobs are actually
not so bad. And then a decade later, an englishman

(22:32):
boo he came up with two ply paper.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
And here we are today.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
In twenty twenty, the toilet paper business was a thirty
billion dollar industry. In order to make all this toilet paper,
we cut down tens of thousands of trees every day.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
So that's right.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
Americans went from don't you dare tell me to use
that toilet paper to using so much it's ruining the planet.
Thank goodness, every episode of American filth we learned a lesson.
I think the lesson we learned today is that we
should all get bidats.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
Like what are we doing?

Speaker 1 (23:20):
Yeah, get you a toilet hose to hose off that.
But like maybe if we made the days sound less,
French and foreign people would want to use them more. So, Yeah,
I think a butt hose, I think that's a good one.
Or a toilet hydrant or a bum firefighter, you know,

(23:42):
because it's shooting the water at you, and baby, your
butt is fire. And also, save those corn cobs after
the barbecue. You never know when you might need them
cue the crowd heads. American Field is production of School

(24:06):
of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. This episode was written, produced,
and hosted by me Gabby Watts. Our theme song is
by Jesse Niswanger. Our exact producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Crowley,
and Brandon Barr. You can follow along with the show
on Instagram at American filth Pod and make sure to
follow leave some stars. Send the show to a friend,
to an enemy, to a neutral acquaintance, whoever you think

(24:27):
might enjoy this, or someone who stinks a lot. Maybe
they need some insight into toilet paper usage. You never know,
and I'll talk to you guys next week with more
filthy tales of America.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
Bye huh. School of Humans.