October 24, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, long before Heinz Ketchup became a fixture in American kitchens, Henry John Heinz was a young entrepreneur selling bottled horseradish from his mother’s garden in Pittsburgh. He believed that honesty and quality could build a brand, and he lived by the motto, “To do a common thing uncommonly well brings success.” As his brand grew, his glass bottles set a new standard for purity while the Heinz 57 varieties became a household phrase. Guided by his belief that good business begins with good character, H.J. Heinz turned an everyday product into a legacy that still endures more than a century later. Our own Greg Hengler shares the story of this American original.
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between, including your story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. There's some of our favorites.
And we love to tell stories about business, and we
love to tell stories about entrepreneurs and how they change
(00:35):
the world, change the nation, and in the end, drive
our economy. Hein's food products have been a part of
American culture for more than a century. Though Heines Catchup
is one of the most recognized corporate symbols in the world,
few people know anything at all about its creator, h J. Hines.
(00:56):
His hard work, innovation, and obsessive kindness proved one of
his favorite sayings quote, to do a common thing uncommonly, well,
bring success. Here's Greg Hangler with the story of h. J. Hines.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Your kitchens coming on a lot more than ours. That's
not good manners. Well, you notice our Hins here tasted.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
The base.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
The bay.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
That's keke like every day.
Speaker 5 (01:35):
Let's bring it on a little bit, the rich Hines
keen taste. That's worth the wait.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
The Heinz family saga begins with the determination of immigrants
to make a better life for themselves. Beginning in the
sixteen eighties, many German immigrants took the long voyage across
the Atlantic Ocean to Pencil. In eighteen forty three, John
and Anna Hines, both recent arrivals from Germany, settle outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
(02:10):
John becomes a brickmaker. The next year they have their
first child, a boy they name Henry John or h J.
The Hines family will grow to include nine children, four
boys and five girls. One of their daughters, however, dies
when she is only a baby. Like many German immigrants,
(02:35):
mister and missus Hines believe the importance of hard work.
Every day, HJ will pick up vegetables in the family
garden before walking over a mile each way to his
Lutheran school and back a school run by his church.
Upon his arrival back, he will continue working in the
plot until sunset. Henry's love of gardening is evident in
(02:57):
the very first photo, where his knuckles are visibly swollen
from the hard work. Here's the president of the Heinz
History Center, Andy Mask and Heines biographer Quentin Scrabeck.
Speaker 5 (03:11):
Like many of the other German immigrant boys here in Pittsburgh.
He spoke with a German accent, though he went to
American schools, and he felt very much American.
Speaker 6 (03:24):
It was typical for German families to work as an
economic union. The children would do work like that, but
most of them didn't take it up as a career
long term. He was re creative and saw, gee, I
can make money here. I can make a living here.
I can make a business out.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
Of this four radish.
Speaker 5 (03:42):
Henry Hines was just fifteen years old when he started
his business in downtown Pittsburgh.
Speaker 7 (03:47):
I'll take one jard, yes, sir.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
He started by canning horse radish that his mother grew
in her garden and sold it on the streets of Pittsburgh,
pushing a hand cart a wheelbarrow around and people loved
the product, and he thought, well, let's try some other things.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Two years later, his little business has grown so much
that he now needs a horse to pull his cart.
Speaker 5 (04:11):
Hello, hello mom. He was very influenced by his mother.
She knew how to play on his feelings and to
encourage him when he was down, and he learned some
of those people's skills from his mother.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Anna Hines is a disciplined and devout Christian mother, training
and instructing her children with Bible lessons, stressing the importance
of serving others and counting them as more significant than themselves.
Speaker 5 (04:39):
His mother was very religious. She converted to Lutheranism, and
she sent young Henry to the Lutheran seminary nearby, thinking
that maybe one day he would be a minister.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
She thinks this until she sees his love of the
family garden. Here's former advertising executive at Hines Edwin Luhou.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
She made the children work from sunrise to sunset in
this garden, and HJ is the only one who favored it.
In fact, he stayed out there long after the hours
were over.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Hj's talent and passion are playing to see, so when
he turns twelve, his mother proudly presents her first born
with three acres of land for his birthday. The young
entrepreneur quickly develops and markets a growing line of produce
and homemade condiments, and shortly after his little farm triples
(05:33):
in size. At fifteen, HJ quits school in order to
focus entirely on his business, waking at three am so
he can take his vegetables to stores in Pittsburgh, only
to return home and work for his father making bricks.
Here's Harvard Business School professor Nancy Cohen and as.
Speaker 8 (05:53):
A very successful junior entrepreneur selling cabbage and cucumberers and
zucchini and tomato off his wagon to neighbors and has
a growing list of customers. And from the very beginning,
from his earliest days of peddling horseradish door to door
or from a wagon with his own horse, he wanted
to make sure his customers got only pure food.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
HJ is obsessed with purity. As a Christian, he associates
purity with goodness. Fresh food is healthy food. This is
in an age when Americans are suspicious of factory made food,
and with good reason. It is often packaged in filthy
conditions and contains a stomach turning, a array of cheap
fillers like leaves or wood pulp, and chemical preservatives. While
(06:42):
his competitors use golden brown bottles to hide add ins
and imperfections, HJ makes a point of selling his mother's
horse radish recipe in clear glass jars. HJ wants his
customers to believe that the food he delivers is worth
every penny they spend on it. Thanks to his mother's
recipes and beliefs. People grow to trust the Hindz name.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
And what a story this is. And we will continue
with the story of HJ. Hines, And my goodness, it
sounds like so many of the other entrepreneurial stories we did.
No matter what the ethnicity the story, well, it sounds
the same service to customers. More on the HJ. Hines
story here on our American Stories, Leehabib Here, as we
(07:31):
approach our nation's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, I'd like
to remind you that all the history stories you hear
on this show brought to you by the great folks
at Hillsdale College, and Hillsdale isn't just a great school
for your kids or grandkids to attend, but for you
as well. Go to Hillsdale dot edu to find out
about their terrific free online courses. Their series on Communism
(07:51):
is one of the finest I've ever seen. Again, go
to Hillsdale dot edu and sign up for their free
and terrific online courses. And we continue with our American
(08:11):
stories in this story of H. J.
Speaker 5 (08:14):
Hines.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
And he started as a boy canning his mom's horse,
Radish and again dropping out of school and just getting
to work. We continue now with the story of HJ. Hines.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Thanks to his mother's recipes and beliefs, people grow to
trust the Hinz name. Here again is the president of
the Heinz History Center, Andy Mason.
Speaker 5 (08:38):
Henry was always a meticulous man. He was a hard worker,
and he kept detailed notes. He kept journals and record books,
and so he was not only mathematical, but he had
a human side to him. He was kind of left
and right brained, both so he could figure out the
(08:59):
forms for things and keep good records. But he was
also a people person.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
In eighteen sixty one, seventeen year old Henry sells twenty
four hundred dollars worth of produce about sixty eight thousand
dollars in today's money. And by eighteen sixty six, Henry
becomes a partner in his father's brick company and quickly
makes changes. At the time most brickyards shut down for
the winter, Henry decides to heat the small factory so
(09:28):
it can stay open through the cold months. That way,
the company will have a supply of bricks ready when
the demand for bricks rises in the spring. In eighteen
sixty nine, at twenty five years of age, HJ meets
Sarah Young at his church, a daughter of Irish immigrants,
who will bring his new household what his mother has
(09:49):
to the old religious devotion and a stable emotional foundation.
On a train to New York, they meet another couple
planning to marry. HJ, spotting an opportunity to save money,
suggests that both couples share a minister and marry the
same day. Eighteen sixty nine was also the year HJ
(10:10):
and his neighborhood friend Clarence Noble start a company designed
to sell horseradish, pickles, and sauerkraut across the Eastern Seaboard.
As Hj's company grows, so does his family. A daughter
named Irene in eighteen seventy one, and two years later
a boy named Clarence. HJ and Sarah will have five children.
Speaker 5 (10:33):
One of the things he learned early on was that
people weren't sure about canned products or things in jars.
Sometimes people got sick eating the products of other people.
So Henry found that he didn't put his labels on
the jar at first, he put somebody else's label on
the jar. And if nobody got sick, and if people
(10:54):
liked it, then he put his label on the next batch.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
The Hinds and Noble company is profitable until eighteen seventy five,
when mistakes by Noble in the Panic of eighteen seventy
three suddenly threatened its existence. Hd turns to his father
and a friendly banker who loaned money. Even his wife
pitches in, but by the year's end the company is bankrupt.
(11:20):
Here's Heines's biographer Eleanor Dinstagg and Nancy Cohen.
Speaker 7 (11:25):
The diaries read like a Dickensian novel. They're heartrending. He
has boils, his wife takes to bed. He's too depressed
to go to church, which was unthinkable for him. His
brother started to take to drink. The whole family with collapsing.
Speaker 8 (11:44):
Several creditors accuse him of basically falsifying his records and
demand that he'd be arrested. He is arrested, held in
jail for a day, and comes back the next day
to face what is an ever mounting load of debts
and unpaid bills.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
It's Christmas, the hines can't even afford to buy a
single present for their children. Here again is heines biographer,
Quentin Scrabeck.
Speaker 6 (12:15):
He probably went through one phase of real depression. I
mean was there was several months where he was pretty
much immobilized.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
In bet HJ believes his friends are shunning him. He
writes mournfully, I have no money, so I have no friends.
His parents mortgage their house to raise funds, only to
see it repossessed. Creditors come and sell off his mother's furniture.
A wash in shame, HJ can only watch helplessly as
(12:44):
the crisis consumes his aging father. Here's Heinz Family archivist
Frank Kurtik Henry J.
Speaker 6 (12:52):
Hines's father had raised a family, estopped a home in
America as an immigrant, and he sees.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Much of his life wiped out before his eyes. The
elder Hinds will never recover, spending his final years in
and out of sanitariums. A broken man. Through this and
other dark moments in his life, HJ is anchored by
his twin beliefs, belief in God and God's unshakable plan
(13:20):
for his life. Just two months after the bankruptcy, on
New Year's Day eighteen seventy six, HJ picks himself up
and asks the only people to have stayed by his
side his family to help him start a new business.
Together they form the Hinds Food Company. The whole family
(13:42):
pitches in and his mother and sisters begin bottling horseradish
in the basement of their home. Starting a brand new
company on a slim budget, HJ has to travel by
foot to the vegetable fields to have a horse again.
He buys himself a bargain, a blind horse.
Speaker 6 (14:02):
He owed a lot of people in Pittsburgh money, a
lot of grocers and so forth. He made a pledge
that he would pay them back, even illegally didn't have to,
and that was one of the key things in his
life as well. He spent four or five years repaying
back grocers, farmers, and suppliers.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Through his leadership, HJ guides to Heinz Food Company to
immediate success, taking special pleasure in culinary innovations.
Speaker 8 (14:32):
He's experimenting like a woman in the kitchen, making it
up as he goes along, and his notebooks are chok
a block full of fascinating recipes, everything from peanut butter,
which he does not pursue, to baked beans, which he
does very successfully, to Chutney's.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
In eighteen seventy six, He creates the condiment that future
generations will associate with his name. Here again is Edwin Luhu.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
When he was in England that they had a product
called cats yup which was made of fish and different
ingredients and different spices. It was a very spicy condiment
and he liked it, and he thought, I wonder if
we substituted tomatoes for the fish, what that would taste like.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
This is how we get the word ketchup. It comes
from the Chinese word cats yup, which is a kind
of fish sauce. Here again is Animes.
Speaker 5 (15:29):
Yes, it is good. Ketchup was probably invented in China
one thousand years ago, but HJ. Hines brought it to
a new level.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
There are several types of ketchup in the nineteenth century,
but none of them sell particularly well. Apart from Hines,
no one sees potential in the red vegetable sauce. Pittsburgh
is home of the steel industry, but it's also center
for glass making. Unlike his competitors, Heines believes that his
customer should be able to see the bright red ketchup. This, however,
(16:03):
has a drawback.
Speaker 5 (16:05):
You know, when you look in a ketchup bottle. Sometimes
it gets kind of dark and rubbery, kind of oxidized
near the top. Well, he knew that people would be
put off by seeing that, so he put a paper
label near the neck of the bottle so the product
looked red and beautiful.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Hines builds a new factory, which still stands today as
an industrial monument in Pittsburgh. The factory is one of
the first in the country run on electricity, and Hines
will be the first to put up an electric billboard
in New York City. The Pittsburgh headquarters site offers easy
access to the Allegheny River and railroad lines. The whole
(16:46):
neighborhood smells of vinegar, then as now the main preservative.
As indispensable as HJ is to the company, he's just
as valuable to his church. He is especially dedicated to
teaching the children about the Bible and their Christian faith
at Sunday School. In fact, HJ will travel all over
(17:07):
the world in order to promote the idea of Sunday School.
HJ is also known for his generosity. He will build
a barning home for homeless children. The poor will count
on him for a meal, and he will often loan
money to his customers so they can stay in business.
Heinz places his factory in the midst of Andrew Carnegie's
(17:28):
steel factory and rival steel makers. But Heinz's revenues will
one day surpass those of his larger neighbors.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
HJ. Hines was an intuitive marketer. He had a sense
of how to sell things. And although he didn't invent Ketchup,
he marketed it better than anyone in the world.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
And when we come back more of this great American story,
this great Pittsburgh story. Here on our American stories, and
we continue here with our American stories in the life
(18:12):
of HJ. Hines, Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Ketchup quickly becomes the lynchpin of Hj's growing business. By
the mid eighteen eighties, with the expansion of the railroad,
the Heinz Company is selling dozens of products in all
corners of the United States. On every railroad cars company uses,
the Hines name is proudly displayed on its side. In Pittsburgh,
(18:40):
people see teams of horses pulling wagons carrying Hines products,
and the company name is always printed on each wagon.
Grocery stores boast in their ads that they carry the
popular Heinz Brand.
Speaker 8 (18:53):
H J.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
Hines believe that if people tasted as product, they would
certainly buy it, and he had an elaborate system them
for his sales staff to take out to stores and
grocery stores little packages of samples. He had cardboard spoons
that people could taste and then throw away. He had
(19:14):
chafing dishes and different pots that people could sample things
in the store, and when they tried it, they liked
it and they bought it.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
But with success comes competition. Heines's competitors copy his ideas
and methods. Hines has to fight to survive, and not
always by the fairest means.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
When he wanted to run other people out of business,
he bought up all the glass bottles in town and
used all that he could, and those that he couldn't use,
he put on a barge and sank the barge in
the Allegheny River so nobody else could use them.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Heines's dealings with the staff at the factory are colored
by a completely different climate. Here again is Nancy Cohen.
Speaker 8 (20:06):
Henry Hins looks at the railroad strikes of eighteen seventy two,
when over one thousand railroad cars were destroyed in a
mob rioting and the National Guard was called in and
twenty nine people were killed, and decides this is not
going to be my future. This reinforces his determination to
create a different kind of organization, where his labor is content,
where his labor is motivated, where his labor is industrious.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
In an age when horses are often treated better than
the workers, Henry Hines embraces his employees as family. In
the Hinz factory, there's a restaurant and rooftop gardens, free
carriage rides, an indoor swimming pool, and gymnasium, free doctors
and dentists. At a time when many people did not
have indoor plumbing, employees can shower and bathe in the factory.
(20:57):
HJ promotes women managers to supervise his predominantly female workforce,
and he creates some of the best incentive pay for
women in the nation. HJ takes poor immigrant wives and daughters,
teaches them English and homemaking skills, and prepares them for
their citizenship tests. These women receive freshly laundered aprons and
(21:19):
bonds daily, and there's even a daily manicure for food handlers.
HJ believes that the hands that work with the food
should be as germ free as possible at the end
of the day. This all adds to the products quality
and shelf life. HJ knows that happy, well cared for
employees will stay on the job, work hard, and not
(21:42):
be interested in causing trouble, and he delights insane. Heart
power is stronger than horsepower. Here again is Edwin Luhou.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
People that came to work and they were down and trod,
and he went over to them, put his hand around
them and said, well, better days are ahead. This is
what you should do. This is how you can cope
with your problem. Let me help you out. And he
did this with the employees of the company and they
idolized him. He became a father to practically every employee
in the company.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
HJ will travel throughout the country meeting with customers and
giving pep talks to his sales force. His enthusiasm and
confidence is contagious. The passion he has for selling vegetables
as a young boy never leaves him. Hj's policies create
a productive workforce and anchor his company's unique public image.
(22:32):
Here's Henry Ford Museum curator Judith Endelman.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
He was really one of the founders of what today
we call public relations through his use of branding and
a clear identity for his company, corporate giveaways, and keeping
his company in the public eye in so many different ways.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Henry is the first to initiate the factory tour, inviting
the general public to view the immaculate conditions under which
hih Yane's products are packaged. By nineteen hundred, twenty thousand
guests a year are passing through his factory gates. In
eighteen eighty six, forty year old Henry Hines takes his
(23:12):
family on a vacation to Europe to visit his parents'
homeland of Germany. The first stop is England, where he
immediately visits the graves of his Christian heroes John Bunyan,
Isaac Watts, and John Wesley. Heinz writes, I felt I
was upon holy ground. For his trip, hj has brought
(23:34):
samples of some of his best products, like his ketchup
and horseradish. With a suitcase of Heinz products, he journeys
to London and calls on fortnaman mason purveyor of fine
food to the Royal family. Here again is Edwin Luhou
and Eleanor Dinsdag.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
He stroked his whiskers, put on his top hat, and
he burst it right into the front door.
Speaker 7 (24:00):
An awesome salesman. He went in and showed his products
and talked about them and had him sample the products.
They said, I believe we will take them all. Everybody
was shocked, including h JE him.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
At this time, nobody in Europe buys food from America.
It's Hj's first step towards running a global company. Heines
has always been part of the progressive wing of the
Republican Party, which supports the expansion of American business into Asia.
The American administration saw China and Japan as the key
(24:34):
to the Orient. Heines saw things differently. They were the
key to the Orient in both business and the acceptance
of Sunday school Because of Heines's missionary passion, planning and
financial backing, Sunday Schools prosper all over Asia. Heines has
taken the small business he started with his family eleven
(24:58):
years earlier and turned it into a food producing giant.
Here again is Andy Mask.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
Hines believed in pure foods. He built his brand on
the fact that his product was better than anyone else's.
He always said, the secret to success is to do
a common thing uncommonly.
Speaker 6 (25:20):
Well.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
HJ discovers ideas and unlikely places, and a chance encounter
in eighteen ninety two inspires a world famous advertising slogan.
Speaker 5 (25:31):
You've seen that fifty seven on his products. Well, the
story behind that is he was going to New York
City on a business trip and he was on an
elevated train and as he looked out the window, he
saw a billboard that said twenty three styles of shoes.
And he thought, twenty three styles of shoes. That's pretty impressive.
I wonder how many products I have, And he started
(25:53):
counting them up in his head. They were fifty four,
fifty five, fifty six, fifty seven, fifty seven. That's an
interesting looking number. He liked the look of it. When
he got home, he found out he really had many
more products in fifty seven. But he liked the number
so much that he decided to put it on all
of his labels. He put it in whitewashed stone, on hillsides,
(26:17):
on billboards every place he branded his company with. Heinz
fifty seven.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Fifty seven is one of the greatest marketing ideas of
all time. It promises diversity while remaining manageable. And so
Heines fifty seven has entered the American lexicon.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Yeah, and when we come back more of the life
of HJ. Hines, And my goodness, you're learning so much
about not just the product, not just about the man,
but about his faith and how it intertwines with And
it's an inescapable part of every part of this great business.
I mean, the idea of making the best product, the
(26:58):
purest product, come straight from who he is. And yet
this same guy can sort of make up the number
fifty seven because he just likes the look of it
and just drives it home. And nobody knew branding better
than HJ. Hines. When we come back, the rest of
his life story here on our American Stories, and we
(27:39):
continue with the life story of HJ. Hines here on
our American Stories, and now the very last part of
this terrific story.
Speaker 5 (27:49):
He developed kind of a distinctive style of his own.
He had very distinctive whiskers, white whiskers, and kind of
his hair brushed back. He was kind of a character.
He had a sense of himself.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
But above all, Heines is clever.
Speaker 5 (28:08):
In eighteen ninety three, HJ. Hines went to the Columbian Exposition,
that's the World's Fair in Chicago, and they gave him
a booth or a place to show his wares on
the third floor of the exhibit hall. Well, nobody at
the World's Fair was climbing three sets of stairs to
go up to the third floor. So Hines came up
(28:29):
with an idea. On the spur of the moment. He
printed little gold luggage tags. They had kind of a
gold foil on it, and he printed on the back
of the tag, bring to the Hines booth on the
third floor for a free prize. And people would be
strolling along arm in arm, and they would catch the
glint of gold out of the corner of their eyes
and they'd pick it up and they say, oh, look,
(28:50):
we could bring it to the for a free prize.
And so they trooped up the steps by the hundreds,
by the thousands, by the hundreds of thousands. People were
going up to the third floor and they found the
Hines booth and they saw his pyramids of ketchup and pickles,
and it was the hit of the fair.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
After twenty years in business, the HJ. Hines Company is
the largest food processing company in the United States, with
a workforce of twenty three thousand people. His mansion occupies
one corner of a Grand Street in the east end
of Pittsburgh. His immediate neighbors are named Westinghouse, Carnegie, and Melon.
(29:32):
In eighteen ninety four, Sarah Hines dies of typhoid on
Thanksgiving Day at the age of seventy four. Henry writes,
the darkest day we ever knew. Hines will never marry again.
Typhoid is the number one killer in the Pittsburgh area
due to the dirty water. HJ will promote finance and
(29:55):
lead a commission on smoke abatement, sewage control, and waterf
filtration plants that will eliminate the one hundred year plague
of typhoid fever. By nineteen oh four, HJ is selling
his products on all six inhabited continents. Decades before Coca
Cola or McDonald's become symbols of the international economy, Heinz
(30:18):
products are found in all corners of the world. The
American son of German immigrants, has made himself world famous.
He has changed eating habits, convincing customers that eating food
made in an unknown factory thousands of miles distant, can
be as good, if not better, than homemade. Here again
(30:40):
is Quentin Scrabak.
Speaker 6 (30:42):
His main competition for most of his life was not
other competitors as much as the housewise and preserve foods.
He was competing against the home preserving growth.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
In nineteen oh six, the sixty two year old Henry
Hines will willingly risk everything he has achieved to defend
a point of principle. Suddenly, the entire food business comes
under attack when Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle exposes horrendous
conditions in Chicago meatpacking plants. An outraged public demand's federal regulation,
(31:24):
but all of the food processing companies oppose the controls,
all except one. When Hine supports the Pure Food and
Drug Act of nineteen oh six, he's branded a trader.
Competitors boycott his products and threaten his life. HJ is
courageous and stands firm, as he's fond of saying, quality
(31:47):
is to a product what character is to a man.
His competitors realize that if they are forced to meet
the standards he has always lived by, they will go
out of business.
Speaker 6 (32:00):
While a great deal of American food processing industry like
ketchup manufacturers are opposing this legislation. Here's Hines supporting this legislation. Well,
you can imagine. He quickly got the support of magazines
like Good Housekeeping and so forth, and consumers. Here's an
(32:24):
industrialist you out there supporting legislation like this. So it
was good commercial advertising and marketing form.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Hja arouses further wrath when he personally lobbies President Theodore Roosevelt.
Heines even convinces Roosevelt that without food quality over sight,
even his beloved Scotch might not be pure. With Roosevelt support,
the landmark Pure Food and Drug Acts became the law
that protects consumers from toxic additives and fraud. Roosevelt declares, a.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Man should be able to drink a whiskey in the
evening without jeopardizing his health.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
To the very end of his days, HJ lives a
very vigorous lifestyle. He considers himself a simple workingman and
never loses his common touch, still rolling up his sleeves
and joining the workers in the fields. Hines is a
colorful character. On his seventy first birthday, he has asked
(33:31):
how he feels and he doesn't say anything. He just
jumps over a chair. In nineteen eighteen, following the end
of World War One, HJ is seventy four years old
and still goes to the factory every day and on
Sundays involves himself in his church. In May nineteen nineteen,
(33:52):
HJ has what appears to be a simple cold, but
is soon apparent that it's pneumonia. The founder of the
Henry John Hines Food Company dies peacefully in his home
at the age of seventy four. Tributes pour in from
all around the world, but none would have meant more
to him than the grief of his corporate family. Here
(34:16):
again is Edwin Leeho and.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
They all became so close to him. When he passed away.
There were in tears, They rang bells in the company,
and it was a day of mourning.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
The Hines employees feel as though they've lost a father,
and they pull their resources to commission a sculpture of
the beloved founder. In his will, Henry writes, I desire
to set forth at the very beginning of this will,
as the most important item in it, a confession of
my faith in Jesus Christ as my savior. He then
(34:51):
requests that a church be built in memory of his mother.
It now stands on the University campus in Pittsburgh. Over
the u years, the Heinz Company will continue to innovate.
In nineteen sixty eight, it is the first company to
offer Ketchup in small to go packets. In nineteen eighty three,
(35:11):
Heines introduces the first squeezeable plastic bottle for Ketchup. Ketchup
is in ninety percent of all American homes, and Hines
has double the Ketchup market share of its nearest competitor. Today,
the company employs more than thirty three thousand people and
sells more than six hundred and fifty million bottles of
(35:32):
Ketchup every year. In Pittsburgh, the company's legacy is present everywhere.
Heinz Field is home of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Heines Hall
is dedicated to the performing arts, and the Heinz and
Dowman's Foundation is the city's most important sponsor. Here again
is Andy Mask and Hj's great great grandson, Andre Hines.
Speaker 5 (35:57):
He was one of the first people to really understand
and global marketing. He was also someone who understood branding,
how important a name was and how important consumer confidence
was in building a business.
Speaker 9 (36:13):
And of course the Heinz Company as it was during
his lifetime, I think was a manifestation of his worldview,
which is you again, you do write by other people,
and that there's no room for being sloppy or for
selling out.
Speaker 8 (36:30):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
I'm Greg Hengler and this is our American Stories.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
And what a story. Indeed, one man builds a global brand.
But in the end, what he really did was impact
his neighborhood, the city of Pittsburgh. Drive around it, walk
around at Hinesfield, Heines Hall, Heines Endowment. Still to this day,
this man's work, this man's faith, still being felt in
(36:57):
the great city of Pittsburgh. Henry Hines's story. Here are
in our American Stories. Folks, if you love the great
(37:40):
American stories we tell and love America like we do,
we're asking you to become a part of the Our
American Stories family. If you agree that America is a
good and great country, please make a donation. A monthly
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becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to our American
Stories dot com now and go to the donate button
(38:01):
and help us keep the great American stories coming. That's
our American Stories dot com.
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between, including your story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. There's some of our favorites.
And we love to tell stories about business, and we
love to tell stories about entrepreneurs and how they change
(00:35):
the world, change the nation, and in the end, drive
our economy. Hein's food products have been a part of
American culture for more than a century. Though Heines Catchup
is one of the most recognized corporate symbols in the world,
few people know anything at all about its creator, h J. Hines.
(00:56):
His hard work, innovation, and obsessive kindness proved one of
his favorite sayings quote, to do a common thing uncommonly, well,
bring success. Here's Greg Hangler with the story of h. J. Hines.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Your kitchens coming on a lot more than ours. That's
not good manners. Well, you notice our Hins here tasted.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
The base.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
The bay.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
That's keke like every day.
Speaker 5 (01:35):
Let's bring it on a little bit, the rich Hines
keen taste. That's worth the wait.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
The Heinz family saga begins with the determination of immigrants
to make a better life for themselves. Beginning in the
sixteen eighties, many German immigrants took the long voyage across
the Atlantic Ocean to Pencil. In eighteen forty three, John
and Anna Hines, both recent arrivals from Germany, settle outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
(02:10):
John becomes a brickmaker. The next year they have their
first child, a boy they name Henry John or h J.
The Hines family will grow to include nine children, four
boys and five girls. One of their daughters, however, dies
when she is only a baby. Like many German immigrants,
(02:35):
mister and missus Hines believe the importance of hard work.
Every day, HJ will pick up vegetables in the family
garden before walking over a mile each way to his
Lutheran school and back a school run by his church.
Upon his arrival back, he will continue working in the
plot until sunset. Henry's love of gardening is evident in
(02:57):
the very first photo, where his knuckles are visibly swollen
from the hard work. Here's the president of the Heinz
History Center, Andy Mask and Heines biographer Quentin Scrabeck.
Speaker 5 (03:11):
Like many of the other German immigrant boys here in Pittsburgh.
He spoke with a German accent, though he went to
American schools, and he felt very much American.
Speaker 6 (03:24):
It was typical for German families to work as an
economic union. The children would do work like that, but
most of them didn't take it up as a career
long term. He was re creative and saw, gee, I
can make money here. I can make a living here.
I can make a business out.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
Of this four radish.
Speaker 5 (03:42):
Henry Hines was just fifteen years old when he started
his business in downtown Pittsburgh.
Speaker 7 (03:47):
I'll take one jard, yes, sir.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
He started by canning horse radish that his mother grew
in her garden and sold it on the streets of Pittsburgh,
pushing a hand cart a wheelbarrow around and people loved
the product, and he thought, well, let's try some other things.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Two years later, his little business has grown so much
that he now needs a horse to pull his cart.
Speaker 5 (04:11):
Hello, hello mom. He was very influenced by his mother.
She knew how to play on his feelings and to
encourage him when he was down, and he learned some
of those people's skills from his mother.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Anna Hines is a disciplined and devout Christian mother, training
and instructing her children with Bible lessons, stressing the importance
of serving others and counting them as more significant than themselves.
Speaker 5 (04:39):
His mother was very religious. She converted to Lutheranism, and
she sent young Henry to the Lutheran seminary nearby, thinking
that maybe one day he would be a minister.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
She thinks this until she sees his love of the
family garden. Here's former advertising executive at Hines Edwin Luhou.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
She made the children work from sunrise to sunset in
this garden, and HJ is the only one who favored it.
In fact, he stayed out there long after the hours
were over.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Hj's talent and passion are playing to see, so when
he turns twelve, his mother proudly presents her first born
with three acres of land for his birthday. The young
entrepreneur quickly develops and markets a growing line of produce
and homemade condiments, and shortly after his little farm triples
(05:33):
in size. At fifteen, HJ quits school in order to
focus entirely on his business, waking at three am so
he can take his vegetables to stores in Pittsburgh, only
to return home and work for his father making bricks.
Here's Harvard Business School professor Nancy Cohen and as.
Speaker 8 (05:53):
A very successful junior entrepreneur selling cabbage and cucumberers and
zucchini and tomato off his wagon to neighbors and has
a growing list of customers. And from the very beginning,
from his earliest days of peddling horseradish door to door
or from a wagon with his own horse, he wanted
to make sure his customers got only pure food.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
HJ is obsessed with purity. As a Christian, he associates
purity with goodness. Fresh food is healthy food. This is
in an age when Americans are suspicious of factory made food,
and with good reason. It is often packaged in filthy
conditions and contains a stomach turning, a array of cheap
fillers like leaves or wood pulp, and chemical preservatives. While
(06:42):
his competitors use golden brown bottles to hide add ins
and imperfections, HJ makes a point of selling his mother's
horse radish recipe in clear glass jars. HJ wants his
customers to believe that the food he delivers is worth
every penny they spend on it. Thanks to his mother's
recipes and beliefs. People grow to trust the Hindz name.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
And what a story this is. And we will continue
with the story of HJ. Hines, And my goodness, it
sounds like so many of the other entrepreneurial stories we did.
No matter what the ethnicity the story, well, it sounds
the same service to customers. More on the HJ. Hines
story here on our American Stories, Leehabib Here, as we
(07:31):
approach our nation's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, I'd like
to remind you that all the history stories you hear
on this show brought to you by the great folks
at Hillsdale College, and Hillsdale isn't just a great school
for your kids or grandkids to attend, but for you
as well. Go to Hillsdale dot edu to find out
about their terrific free online courses. Their series on Communism
(07:51):
is one of the finest I've ever seen. Again, go
to Hillsdale dot edu and sign up for their free
and terrific online courses. And we continue with our American
(08:11):
stories in this story of H. J.
Speaker 5 (08:14):
Hines.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
And he started as a boy canning his mom's horse,
Radish and again dropping out of school and just getting
to work. We continue now with the story of HJ. Hines.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Thanks to his mother's recipes and beliefs, people grow to
trust the Hinz name. Here again is the president of
the Heinz History Center, Andy Mason.
Speaker 5 (08:38):
Henry was always a meticulous man. He was a hard worker,
and he kept detailed notes. He kept journals and record books,
and so he was not only mathematical, but he had
a human side to him. He was kind of left
and right brained, both so he could figure out the
(08:59):
forms for things and keep good records. But he was
also a people person.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
In eighteen sixty one, seventeen year old Henry sells twenty
four hundred dollars worth of produce about sixty eight thousand
dollars in today's money. And by eighteen sixty six, Henry
becomes a partner in his father's brick company and quickly
makes changes. At the time most brickyards shut down for
the winter, Henry decides to heat the small factory so
(09:28):
it can stay open through the cold months. That way,
the company will have a supply of bricks ready when
the demand for bricks rises in the spring. In eighteen
sixty nine, at twenty five years of age, HJ meets
Sarah Young at his church, a daughter of Irish immigrants,
who will bring his new household what his mother has
(09:49):
to the old religious devotion and a stable emotional foundation.
On a train to New York, they meet another couple
planning to marry. HJ, spotting an opportunity to save money,
suggests that both couples share a minister and marry the
same day. Eighteen sixty nine was also the year HJ
(10:10):
and his neighborhood friend Clarence Noble start a company designed
to sell horseradish, pickles, and sauerkraut across the Eastern Seaboard.
As Hj's company grows, so does his family. A daughter
named Irene in eighteen seventy one, and two years later
a boy named Clarence. HJ and Sarah will have five children.
Speaker 5 (10:33):
One of the things he learned early on was that
people weren't sure about canned products or things in jars.
Sometimes people got sick eating the products of other people.
So Henry found that he didn't put his labels on
the jar at first, he put somebody else's label on
the jar. And if nobody got sick, and if people
(10:54):
liked it, then he put his label on the next batch.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
The Hinds and Noble company is profitable until eighteen seventy five,
when mistakes by Noble in the Panic of eighteen seventy
three suddenly threatened its existence. Hd turns to his father
and a friendly banker who loaned money. Even his wife
pitches in, but by the year's end the company is bankrupt.
(11:20):
Here's Heines's biographer Eleanor Dinstagg and Nancy Cohen.
Speaker 7 (11:25):
The diaries read like a Dickensian novel. They're heartrending. He
has boils, his wife takes to bed. He's too depressed
to go to church, which was unthinkable for him. His
brother started to take to drink. The whole family with collapsing.
Speaker 8 (11:44):
Several creditors accuse him of basically falsifying his records and
demand that he'd be arrested. He is arrested, held in
jail for a day, and comes back the next day
to face what is an ever mounting load of debts
and unpaid bills.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
It's Christmas, the hines can't even afford to buy a
single present for their children. Here again is heines biographer,
Quentin Scrabeck.
Speaker 6 (12:15):
He probably went through one phase of real depression. I
mean was there was several months where he was pretty
much immobilized.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
In bet HJ believes his friends are shunning him. He
writes mournfully, I have no money, so I have no friends.
His parents mortgage their house to raise funds, only to
see it repossessed. Creditors come and sell off his mother's furniture.
A wash in shame, HJ can only watch helplessly as
(12:44):
the crisis consumes his aging father. Here's Heinz Family archivist
Frank Kurtik Henry J.
Speaker 6 (12:52):
Hines's father had raised a family, estopped a home in
America as an immigrant, and he sees.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Much of his life wiped out before his eyes. The
elder Hinds will never recover, spending his final years in
and out of sanitariums. A broken man. Through this and
other dark moments in his life, HJ is anchored by
his twin beliefs, belief in God and God's unshakable plan
(13:20):
for his life. Just two months after the bankruptcy, on
New Year's Day eighteen seventy six, HJ picks himself up
and asks the only people to have stayed by his
side his family to help him start a new business.
Together they form the Hinds Food Company. The whole family
(13:42):
pitches in and his mother and sisters begin bottling horseradish
in the basement of their home. Starting a brand new
company on a slim budget, HJ has to travel by
foot to the vegetable fields to have a horse again.
He buys himself a bargain, a blind horse.
Speaker 6 (14:02):
He owed a lot of people in Pittsburgh money, a
lot of grocers and so forth. He made a pledge
that he would pay them back, even illegally didn't have to,
and that was one of the key things in his
life as well. He spent four or five years repaying
back grocers, farmers, and suppliers.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Through his leadership, HJ guides to Heinz Food Company to
immediate success, taking special pleasure in culinary innovations.
Speaker 8 (14:32):
He's experimenting like a woman in the kitchen, making it
up as he goes along, and his notebooks are chok
a block full of fascinating recipes, everything from peanut butter,
which he does not pursue, to baked beans, which he
does very successfully, to Chutney's.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
In eighteen seventy six, He creates the condiment that future
generations will associate with his name. Here again is Edwin Luhu.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
When he was in England that they had a product
called cats yup which was made of fish and different
ingredients and different spices. It was a very spicy condiment
and he liked it, and he thought, I wonder if
we substituted tomatoes for the fish, what that would taste like.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
This is how we get the word ketchup. It comes
from the Chinese word cats yup, which is a kind
of fish sauce. Here again is Animes.
Speaker 5 (15:29):
Yes, it is good. Ketchup was probably invented in China
one thousand years ago, but HJ. Hines brought it to
a new level.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
There are several types of ketchup in the nineteenth century,
but none of them sell particularly well. Apart from Hines,
no one sees potential in the red vegetable sauce. Pittsburgh
is home of the steel industry, but it's also center
for glass making. Unlike his competitors, Heines believes that his
customer should be able to see the bright red ketchup. This, however,
(16:03):
has a drawback.
Speaker 5 (16:05):
You know, when you look in a ketchup bottle. Sometimes
it gets kind of dark and rubbery, kind of oxidized
near the top. Well, he knew that people would be
put off by seeing that, so he put a paper
label near the neck of the bottle so the product
looked red and beautiful.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Hines builds a new factory, which still stands today as
an industrial monument in Pittsburgh. The factory is one of
the first in the country run on electricity, and Hines
will be the first to put up an electric billboard
in New York City. The Pittsburgh headquarters site offers easy
access to the Allegheny River and railroad lines. The whole
(16:46):
neighborhood smells of vinegar, then as now the main preservative.
As indispensable as HJ is to the company, he's just
as valuable to his church. He is especially dedicated to
teaching the children about the Bible and their Christian faith
at Sunday School. In fact, HJ will travel all over
(17:07):
the world in order to promote the idea of Sunday School.
HJ is also known for his generosity. He will build
a barning home for homeless children. The poor will count
on him for a meal, and he will often loan
money to his customers so they can stay in business.
Heinz places his factory in the midst of Andrew Carnegie's
(17:28):
steel factory and rival steel makers. But Heinz's revenues will
one day surpass those of his larger neighbors.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
HJ. Hines was an intuitive marketer. He had a sense
of how to sell things. And although he didn't invent Ketchup,
he marketed it better than anyone in the world.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
And when we come back more of this great American story,
this great Pittsburgh story. Here on our American stories, and
we continue here with our American stories in the life
(18:12):
of HJ. Hines, Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Ketchup quickly becomes the lynchpin of Hj's growing business. By
the mid eighteen eighties, with the expansion of the railroad,
the Heinz Company is selling dozens of products in all
corners of the United States. On every railroad cars company uses,
the Hines name is proudly displayed on its side. In Pittsburgh,
(18:40):
people see teams of horses pulling wagons carrying Hines products,
and the company name is always printed on each wagon.
Grocery stores boast in their ads that they carry the
popular Heinz Brand.
Speaker 8 (18:53):
H J.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
Hines believe that if people tasted as product, they would
certainly buy it, and he had an elaborate system them
for his sales staff to take out to stores and
grocery stores little packages of samples. He had cardboard spoons
that people could taste and then throw away. He had
(19:14):
chafing dishes and different pots that people could sample things
in the store, and when they tried it, they liked
it and they bought it.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
But with success comes competition. Heines's competitors copy his ideas
and methods. Hines has to fight to survive, and not
always by the fairest means.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
When he wanted to run other people out of business,
he bought up all the glass bottles in town and
used all that he could, and those that he couldn't use,
he put on a barge and sank the barge in
the Allegheny River so nobody else could use them.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Heines's dealings with the staff at the factory are colored
by a completely different climate. Here again is Nancy Cohen.
Speaker 8 (20:06):
Henry Hins looks at the railroad strikes of eighteen seventy two,
when over one thousand railroad cars were destroyed in a
mob rioting and the National Guard was called in and
twenty nine people were killed, and decides this is not
going to be my future. This reinforces his determination to
create a different kind of organization, where his labor is content,
where his labor is motivated, where his labor is industrious.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
In an age when horses are often treated better than
the workers, Henry Hines embraces his employees as family. In
the Hinz factory, there's a restaurant and rooftop gardens, free
carriage rides, an indoor swimming pool, and gymnasium, free doctors
and dentists. At a time when many people did not
have indoor plumbing, employees can shower and bathe in the factory.
(20:57):
HJ promotes women managers to supervise his predominantly female workforce,
and he creates some of the best incentive pay for
women in the nation. HJ takes poor immigrant wives and daughters,
teaches them English and homemaking skills, and prepares them for
their citizenship tests. These women receive freshly laundered aprons and
(21:19):
bonds daily, and there's even a daily manicure for food handlers.
HJ believes that the hands that work with the food
should be as germ free as possible at the end
of the day. This all adds to the products quality
and shelf life. HJ knows that happy, well cared for
employees will stay on the job, work hard, and not
(21:42):
be interested in causing trouble, and he delights insane. Heart
power is stronger than horsepower. Here again is Edwin Luhou.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
People that came to work and they were down and trod,
and he went over to them, put his hand around
them and said, well, better days are ahead. This is
what you should do. This is how you can cope
with your problem. Let me help you out. And he
did this with the employees of the company and they
idolized him. He became a father to practically every employee
in the company.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
HJ will travel throughout the country meeting with customers and
giving pep talks to his sales force. His enthusiasm and
confidence is contagious. The passion he has for selling vegetables
as a young boy never leaves him. Hj's policies create
a productive workforce and anchor his company's unique public image.
(22:32):
Here's Henry Ford Museum curator Judith Endelman.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
He was really one of the founders of what today
we call public relations through his use of branding and
a clear identity for his company, corporate giveaways, and keeping
his company in the public eye in so many different ways.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Henry is the first to initiate the factory tour, inviting
the general public to view the immaculate conditions under which
hih Yane's products are packaged. By nineteen hundred, twenty thousand
guests a year are passing through his factory gates. In
eighteen eighty six, forty year old Henry Hines takes his
(23:12):
family on a vacation to Europe to visit his parents'
homeland of Germany. The first stop is England, where he
immediately visits the graves of his Christian heroes John Bunyan,
Isaac Watts, and John Wesley. Heinz writes, I felt I
was upon holy ground. For his trip, hj has brought
(23:34):
samples of some of his best products, like his ketchup
and horseradish. With a suitcase of Heinz products, he journeys
to London and calls on fortnaman mason purveyor of fine
food to the Royal family. Here again is Edwin Luhou
and Eleanor Dinsdag.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
He stroked his whiskers, put on his top hat, and
he burst it right into the front door.
Speaker 7 (24:00):
An awesome salesman. He went in and showed his products
and talked about them and had him sample the products.
They said, I believe we will take them all. Everybody
was shocked, including h JE him.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
At this time, nobody in Europe buys food from America.
It's Hj's first step towards running a global company. Heines
has always been part of the progressive wing of the
Republican Party, which supports the expansion of American business into Asia.
The American administration saw China and Japan as the key
(24:34):
to the Orient. Heines saw things differently. They were the
key to the Orient in both business and the acceptance
of Sunday school Because of Heines's missionary passion, planning and
financial backing, Sunday Schools prosper all over Asia. Heines has
taken the small business he started with his family eleven
(24:58):
years earlier and turned it into a food producing giant.
Here again is Andy Mask.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
Hines believed in pure foods. He built his brand on
the fact that his product was better than anyone else's.
He always said, the secret to success is to do
a common thing uncommonly.
Speaker 6 (25:20):
Well.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
HJ discovers ideas and unlikely places, and a chance encounter
in eighteen ninety two inspires a world famous advertising slogan.
Speaker 5 (25:31):
You've seen that fifty seven on his products. Well, the
story behind that is he was going to New York
City on a business trip and he was on an
elevated train and as he looked out the window, he
saw a billboard that said twenty three styles of shoes.
And he thought, twenty three styles of shoes. That's pretty impressive.
I wonder how many products I have, And he started
(25:53):
counting them up in his head. They were fifty four,
fifty five, fifty six, fifty seven, fifty seven. That's an
interesting looking number. He liked the look of it. When
he got home, he found out he really had many
more products in fifty seven. But he liked the number
so much that he decided to put it on all
of his labels. He put it in whitewashed stone, on hillsides,
(26:17):
on billboards every place he branded his company with. Heinz
fifty seven.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Fifty seven is one of the greatest marketing ideas of
all time. It promises diversity while remaining manageable. And so
Heines fifty seven has entered the American lexicon.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Yeah, and when we come back more of the life
of HJ. Hines, And my goodness, you're learning so much
about not just the product, not just about the man,
but about his faith and how it intertwines with And
it's an inescapable part of every part of this great business.
I mean, the idea of making the best product, the
(26:58):
purest product, come straight from who he is. And yet
this same guy can sort of make up the number
fifty seven because he just likes the look of it
and just drives it home. And nobody knew branding better
than HJ. Hines. When we come back, the rest of
his life story here on our American Stories, and we
(27:39):
continue with the life story of HJ. Hines here on
our American Stories, and now the very last part of
this terrific story.
Speaker 5 (27:49):
He developed kind of a distinctive style of his own.
He had very distinctive whiskers, white whiskers, and kind of
his hair brushed back. He was kind of a character.
He had a sense of himself.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
But above all, Heines is clever.
Speaker 5 (28:08):
In eighteen ninety three, HJ. Hines went to the Columbian Exposition,
that's the World's Fair in Chicago, and they gave him
a booth or a place to show his wares on
the third floor of the exhibit hall. Well, nobody at
the World's Fair was climbing three sets of stairs to
go up to the third floor. So Hines came up
(28:29):
with an idea. On the spur of the moment. He
printed little gold luggage tags. They had kind of a
gold foil on it, and he printed on the back
of the tag, bring to the Hines booth on the
third floor for a free prize. And people would be
strolling along arm in arm, and they would catch the
glint of gold out of the corner of their eyes
and they'd pick it up and they say, oh, look,
(28:50):
we could bring it to the for a free prize.
And so they trooped up the steps by the hundreds,
by the thousands, by the hundreds of thousands. People were
going up to the third floor and they found the
Hines booth and they saw his pyramids of ketchup and pickles,
and it was the hit of the fair.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
After twenty years in business, the HJ. Hines Company is
the largest food processing company in the United States, with
a workforce of twenty three thousand people. His mansion occupies
one corner of a Grand Street in the east end
of Pittsburgh. His immediate neighbors are named Westinghouse, Carnegie, and Melon.
(29:32):
In eighteen ninety four, Sarah Hines dies of typhoid on
Thanksgiving Day at the age of seventy four. Henry writes,
the darkest day we ever knew. Hines will never marry again.
Typhoid is the number one killer in the Pittsburgh area
due to the dirty water. HJ will promote finance and
(29:55):
lead a commission on smoke abatement, sewage control, and waterf
filtration plants that will eliminate the one hundred year plague
of typhoid fever. By nineteen oh four, HJ is selling
his products on all six inhabited continents. Decades before Coca
Cola or McDonald's become symbols of the international economy, Heinz
(30:18):
products are found in all corners of the world. The
American son of German immigrants, has made himself world famous.
He has changed eating habits, convincing customers that eating food
made in an unknown factory thousands of miles distant, can
be as good, if not better, than homemade. Here again
(30:40):
is Quentin Scrabak.
Speaker 6 (30:42):
His main competition for most of his life was not
other competitors as much as the housewise and preserve foods.
He was competing against the home preserving growth.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
In nineteen oh six, the sixty two year old Henry
Hines will willingly risk everything he has achieved to defend
a point of principle. Suddenly, the entire food business comes
under attack when Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle exposes horrendous
conditions in Chicago meatpacking plants. An outraged public demand's federal regulation,
(31:24):
but all of the food processing companies oppose the controls,
all except one. When Hine supports the Pure Food and
Drug Act of nineteen oh six, he's branded a trader.
Competitors boycott his products and threaten his life. HJ is
courageous and stands firm, as he's fond of saying, quality
(31:47):
is to a product what character is to a man.
His competitors realize that if they are forced to meet
the standards he has always lived by, they will go
out of business.
Speaker 6 (32:00):
While a great deal of American food processing industry like
ketchup manufacturers are opposing this legislation. Here's Hines supporting this legislation. Well,
you can imagine. He quickly got the support of magazines
like Good Housekeeping and so forth, and consumers. Here's an
(32:24):
industrialist you out there supporting legislation like this. So it
was good commercial advertising and marketing form.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Hja arouses further wrath when he personally lobbies President Theodore Roosevelt.
Heines even convinces Roosevelt that without food quality over sight,
even his beloved Scotch might not be pure. With Roosevelt support,
the landmark Pure Food and Drug Acts became the law
that protects consumers from toxic additives and fraud. Roosevelt declares, a.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Man should be able to drink a whiskey in the
evening without jeopardizing his health.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
To the very end of his days, HJ lives a
very vigorous lifestyle. He considers himself a simple workingman and
never loses his common touch, still rolling up his sleeves
and joining the workers in the fields. Hines is a
colorful character. On his seventy first birthday, he has asked
(33:31):
how he feels and he doesn't say anything. He just
jumps over a chair. In nineteen eighteen, following the end
of World War One, HJ is seventy four years old
and still goes to the factory every day and on
Sundays involves himself in his church. In May nineteen nineteen,
(33:52):
HJ has what appears to be a simple cold, but
is soon apparent that it's pneumonia. The founder of the
Henry John Hines Food Company dies peacefully in his home
at the age of seventy four. Tributes pour in from
all around the world, but none would have meant more
to him than the grief of his corporate family. Here
(34:16):
again is Edwin Leeho and.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
They all became so close to him. When he passed away.
There were in tears, They rang bells in the company,
and it was a day of mourning.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
The Hines employees feel as though they've lost a father,
and they pull their resources to commission a sculpture of
the beloved founder. In his will, Henry writes, I desire
to set forth at the very beginning of this will,
as the most important item in it, a confession of
my faith in Jesus Christ as my savior. He then
(34:51):
requests that a church be built in memory of his mother.
It now stands on the University campus in Pittsburgh. Over
the u years, the Heinz Company will continue to innovate.
In nineteen sixty eight, it is the first company to
offer Ketchup in small to go packets. In nineteen eighty three,
(35:11):
Heines introduces the first squeezeable plastic bottle for Ketchup. Ketchup
is in ninety percent of all American homes, and Hines
has double the Ketchup market share of its nearest competitor. Today,
the company employs more than thirty three thousand people and
sells more than six hundred and fifty million bottles of
(35:32):
Ketchup every year. In Pittsburgh, the company's legacy is present everywhere.
Heinz Field is home of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Heines Hall
is dedicated to the performing arts, and the Heinz and
Dowman's Foundation is the city's most important sponsor. Here again
is Andy Mask and Hj's great great grandson, Andre Hines.
Speaker 5 (35:57):
He was one of the first people to really understand
and global marketing. He was also someone who understood branding,
how important a name was and how important consumer confidence
was in building a business.
Speaker 9 (36:13):
And of course the Heinz Company as it was during
his lifetime, I think was a manifestation of his worldview,
which is you again, you do write by other people,
and that there's no room for being sloppy or for
selling out.
Speaker 8 (36:30):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
I'm Greg Hengler and this is our American Stories.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
And what a story. Indeed, one man builds a global brand.
But in the end, what he really did was impact
his neighborhood, the city of Pittsburgh. Drive around it, walk
around at Hinesfield, Heines Hall, Heines Endowment. Still to this day,
this man's work, this man's faith, still being felt in
(36:57):
the great city of Pittsburgh. Henry Hines's story. Here are
in our American Stories. Folks, if you love the great
(37:40):
American stories we tell and love America like we do,
we're asking you to become a part of the Our
American Stories family. If you agree that America is a
good and great country, please make a donation. A monthly
gift of seventeen dollars and seventy six cents is fast
becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to our American
Stories dot com now and go to the donate button
(38:01):
and help us keep the great American stories coming. That's
our American Stories dot com.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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