May 9, 2024 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, why were Coke bottles green? How do Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola relate? How did a syrup that was originally sold as medicine end up as the South's greatest export? Larry Jorgensen, author of The Coca-Cola Trail, tells the story of this sugary soft drink - first brought to market this day in 1886.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
and we love hearing your stories. Send them to our
American Stories dot Com. Up next, a story about a
drink that we all know but might not know the
backstory of. And we're telling you this story because on
(00:30):
this day in history in eighteen eighty six, John Pemberton,
the inventor of the drink, bottled his first in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Here's our own Monty Montgomery with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Coca Cola is arguably the South's most successful export. They
sell around three billion cases of product around the world annually,
but they started out small. Here's Larry Jorgensen, author of
the Coca Cola, with more.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
In that.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
Well.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Coca cola actually started out as the syrup that is
now the main ingredient in coca cola, and the syrup
was invented by John Pemberton, who was a pharmacist in Columbus, Georgia,
and had started working on the formula. And then his
time of working on the formula was interrupted by the
(01:26):
Civil War, and he actually fought in the Civil War.
When he got out of the war, he had a
war injury. You know, stories get twisted through the years.
I heard it was a saber type injury to his stomach,
but whatever, it was definitely from the war, and he
was looking against.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Some relief, relief in the form of a morphine free
painkiller as he was addicted to the substance at the time.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
He had studied and he had learned that the cola
nut would create a pretty good flavor, and the coca
leaf was known for giving some relief to pain. So
he developed his formula with those two items of mind,
the coca leaf and the colon nut.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Now, the coca.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Leaf as it was used in producing the coca cola
syrup was not processed.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
And I get this all the time.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
It was not processed in a way that would produce cocaine.
There was no cocaine in coca cola. There was the
coca leaf, which I guess if you broke it down
far enough, you'd find common natural ingredients to cocaine.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Such as econaine, a relative or rather a precursor of cocaine.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
But it was not cocaine.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
It was simply the processed coca leaf that eliminated.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
The pain to some degree.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
And helped create the flavor along with the colon nut
of what became coca cola. He moved to Atlanta, Georgia,
where he perfected his recipe. And actually it was on
March twenty ninth in his backyard in a big three
(03:16):
legged kettle that he made the first batch of coca
cola syrup. And it was, as they say, for medicinal purposes.
He took it to the local drug store and they
served and you come in, you have a pain, a
headache or whatever. They'd put a little coca cola syrup
in a glass and put in some carbonated water. It worked.
(03:38):
But not only did it work, it tasted good. People
started requesting the drink as something that they enjoyed, not
to necessarily solve a headache or something. So it really
took off from there. But the irony of the thing
is that the man who invented it only owned Coca
(03:58):
Cola Syrup for about three years. He sold the rights
and the formula, et cetera to Asa Candler. Well Ace's
thing in life was he wanted to sell syrup, and
that's all that he wanted to do. And he would
sell it to other drug stores and so forth, and
(04:20):
it was for that purpose, of that purpose only. He
thought that bottling coca cola was and I will quote
a dumb idea. Well, what happened there was a gentleman
in Vicksburg who owned a candy business and a solo
fhontain and very ambitious man by the name of Bidenharn.
(04:42):
And mister Bidenharn was obviously selling the coca cola syrup
in his drug store. Well, he also would do things
like he would cater parties in that It so happened
that on one July fourth he was to cater a party,
a picnic, a big July fourth picnic, and to bring
(05:05):
beverages and everything. And what he would do then is
there was a small bottler in Vicksburg who bottled, you know,
lemon and sasparilla and orange and all those things. So
he would go to that bottler and buy at wholesale
some of these bottles of soda that he would take
(05:27):
along to the event he was catering. Well, it so
happened on this July fourth there was such a demand
for product that his order was not available, but yet
he had the customer. So mister Bidenarn went to the
picnic and made lemonade for everybody. And after that picnic,
(05:48):
he said, this will never happen again, and he went
to Saint Louis and he bought some second hand bodleing equipment.
Now we're talking about bodily equipment. That is, you know,
one bottle at a time and you push a foot lever,
you know, to make it happen. And he brought that
back to Vicksburg and started bottling Coca cola. He thought,
(06:12):
you know, people really like this drink. I'm in a
bottlet and people in the country, you know, I can
take it to them. They don't have to come to
town to get a Coca cola. So he set off
to bottle. The story is the first two cases of
coca cola that he bottled, he sent them to Atlanta
(06:33):
to mister Candler to let him know what he was doing.
And of course Candler was more interested in selling old
Joe Bidenarn some syrup. And Candler, you know, wrote back
to me, yeah, it's okay, but you know it wasn't impressed.
And Joe Bidenarn said, you know, he never sent my
(06:54):
bottles back. You know, that was the big thing.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
And you're listening to the story of coca cola, the
South's most successful export. It had been right up until
the eighteen sixties, seventies, and eighties cotton, and thank goodness
that changed for both the South and for coke lovers
across the globe, including myself, a certified coke addict, if
ever there was one. When we come back more of
(07:19):
this remarkable story, Coca Cola's rise here on our American stories. Folks,
if you love the stories we tell about this great country,
and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that
all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation,
(07:40):
culture and faith, are brought to us by the great
folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all
the things that are beautiful in life and all the
things that are good in life. And if you can't
get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their
free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu
to learn more. And we returned to our American stories
(08:12):
and the story of how coca cola got into a bottle.
When we last left off, a man in Vicksburg, Mississippi,
named Joe Bidenhearn had decided to, much to the Sugarn
of Coca Cola Corporate in Atlanta, use their syrup to
bottle coca cola himself. Let's continue with the story.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
So for five years, Joe Bidenharn is bottling Coca cola. Now,
the only other place that was bottling Coca cola. About
two years after Bidenhard started in Vicksburg, there was a
bottler in Valdosta, Georgia. So within five years of Coca
(08:56):
cola being invented, there were only two places that were
bottling it. Well, from there, this is how coca cola
takes off. We have a young man from Chattanooga who
is in the Spanish American War in Cuba.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
His name was Ben Thomas.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
While he's in Cuba, he enjoys a beverage over there
called Frea Pina cold pineapple and it's bottled.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
Well.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
He's from Chattanooga and he remembers that when he was
in Chattanooga he used to get coca cola at the
counter and it was really good. He thought, that's it.
I'm going when I get out of here, I'm going
back to Chattanooga and we're going to bottle Coca cola.
So he goes back to Chattanooga.
Speaker 5 (09:47):
And he speaks with his friend Joseph Whitehead.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
They were both attorneys and they shared rooms in a
boarding house there, and he presented his idea to him.
He said, we could be partners and do this. So
they chase off to Atlanta, Georgia. They get down there
and meet with mister Candler and say, we want the
rights to bottle Coca Cola throughout the United States. We
(10:14):
want the exclusive rights. Well Candler thought, no, he said this,
I don't want to do that. He said, I'm worried
that Coca Cola will not have the same flavor in
the bottle. He said, I'm worried about the quality. He said,
to be honest about it, it's a dumb idea, and
I think bobbling is a backstreet business. So, you know,
(10:38):
he chased them away and they persisted, and finally he said,
all right, I'll tell you what. You go back to
your hotel tonight and you draw up what you think
would be a contract, and you bring it to me
and I'll look at it. So, while they're lawyers, you know,
they go back and they draw up a contract that
gives them the exclusive rights to bottle coca cola in
(11:01):
the United States. The next day they go back and
they meet with mister Candler and he looks at it
and he said, well, he said, you can't have all
of the United States because Joe's already doing it in Mississippi,
so I can't give you Mississippi. But he sold them
the rights to bottle coca cola exclusively throughout the United
(11:24):
States for one dollar, and it was said that he
never collected the dollar. He just wanted to get rid
of him. And he told them when they left, I
still think it's a dumb idea, and if it doesn't work,
I don't want you to come crying back to me
about it. So here they go. They go back to Chattanooga, right,
(11:46):
the two of them. They now have the rights to
bottle coca cola throughout the United States. Nobody else can
do it. Well, between the two of them, they've got
fifteen hundred dollars and they have this product called bottle
Coca Cola for everybody. So they start a little bottling
plant and they thought, no, this isn't gonna work. You know,
(12:10):
first of all, they weren't real good at it, and
you know, the workers were wearing protective mesh over their
face because the bottles kept exploding and they thought, this
is not going to work. Then the light goes on
and they said, wait a minute, we've got the rights,
and they said, why don't we start selling territories. That's
(12:31):
what we'll do. So you know, if you wanted to
bottle Coca cola and Paduca, Kentucky, they would sell you
a fifty mile territory in Paduca, Kentucky, and that would
be your territory and you could set up your little
bottling plant and sell Coca cola. And today I think,
you know, we'd call that franchising. The interesting thing. You
(12:54):
may have paid fifteen hundred dollars or whatever for that territory,
but you all so were required to use the Coca
cola syrup obviously, so you had to order syrup from
Atlanta to make your Coca cola. Well, every time you
ordered a gallon of syrup from Atlanta, the two attorneys
(13:17):
that sold you your territory got a commission on you
purchasing that syrup. So you know, they were gone but
not forgotten.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
So to speak.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
And they ultimately both of them got very rich because
of being able to sell the territory and you keep
the commission on the syrup that was being used in
each territory. And that is how coca cola took off
all of a sudden. You've got young, ambitious business people,
(13:47):
entrepreneurs around the country that have scraped together enough money
to buy a territory to bottle coca cola. So they're
out working bodies, selling it, promoting it, doing whatever they
can to promote your product.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
And that's what.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Really made coca cola grow rapidly in the United States. Well,
that certainly is growing a business from the consumer demand
and not the desire of the owner of the business.
And the interesting thing on all of that is that
(14:30):
the coca cola bottle as we know it didn't really
happen until about nineteen fifteen. You know, these bottlers, Okay,
now they've got syrup and they're going to make coca cola,
But what are you going to put it in? You know?
So what happened is there were any bottle they could
get their hands on, and in the early days, you know,
(14:52):
why do we hear it called pop because in the
early days, one of the bottles they would get would
have this rubber stopper the top and when you opened
it it would go pop. Well. Because there was no
standard bottle and bottles were whatever you could get your
hands on, there also became a lot of knockoff products.
(15:15):
People saw what was happening with Coca Cola. So the
next thing you've got, you know, Coca Cola has filled
with two k's. You've got, chiro Cola, You've got. There
were probably sixty seventy different people that at one time
were making a cola beverage. So consequently, the consumer that
(15:37):
would see a bottle and would say something about cola
on it, they would presume it's Coca Cola and they
would buy it. So finally the Coca Cola company said,
wait a minute, we have got to do something about this.
And legally they did go after a couple of companies
that were using the term cola, but they decided the
(15:58):
best plan was in marketing and to have their own
bottle that was the only bottle that would represent Coca
Cola and could not be used by anybody else. It
was a patented design. What they did is they challenged
the bottle manufacturers to a competition, and they said, all right,
(16:19):
bottle manufacturers you produced the bottle, We'll select one of
them and that will be the bottle. It'll be patented,
and you will be allowed to produce that bottle for
every Coca Cola bottler in the United States. Well, the
challenge was met by five bottle manufacturers, and in nineteen fifteen,
(16:43):
the five manufacturers each took what they thought should be
the bottle to a Coca Cola bottler's convention in Atlanta
and presented the bottles.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
And you've been listening to Larry each Organson tell the
story of Coca Cola's rise, and by the way, to
read his two books on the subject, The Coca Cola
Trail and the Return to the Coca Cola Trail, go
to your local bookstore or to Amazon or the usual
suspects wherever you get your books. And what a story
about business, about competition, about franchising, about ingenuity and licensing,
(17:23):
all of these business concepts that help propel ideas into
the common culture and to common use, as Coca Cola
has managed to do in this great country. When we
come back more of this remarkable business story, this culture story,
here on our American story, and we returned to our
(18:12):
American stories when we last left off. Larry Jorgensen was
telling us about how Coca Cola Corporate decided to have
a contest amongst bottle makers to have a standardized bottle.
This was because so many ripoff bottles existed.
Speaker 5 (18:28):
Let's return to the story.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Well, the challenge was met by five bottle manufacturers, and
in nineteen fifteen, the five manufacturers each took what they
thought should be the bottle to a Coca Cola bottler's
convention in Atlanta and presented the bottles. Well, one was selected.
(18:56):
It was the bottle manufactured by the Root Glass Company
of Terahoe, Indiana, and it was in fact the design
that we all recognized now as Coca Cola. The interesting
thing on the Coca Cola bottle, if you look at
the original bottle, it has and did have for many
many years, a very light green tint to it. And
(19:20):
that in fact was the result of a sand that
the Root Glass Company was getting its sand from a
quarry about fifty miles away from Terra Haute, Indiana. Well,
that sand had, amongst other things, that it had copper
and some other minerals in it. So when the glass
(19:40):
was blown using that sand, it would get a light
green tint because of the minerals that were in the sand.
Coca Cola was so pleased with that that.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
They named it.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
First, they called it or German green, and that was
going to be the color used in the bottle. Well,
they thought twice about that and decided they would call
it Georgia green. So as time goes on and other
bottle companies are given the rights to make the Coca
Cola bottle, Coca Cola says to them, if the sand
(20:18):
you use in developing the bottle does not contain the
minerals to create the green.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
You must add them.
Speaker 5 (20:26):
So it was.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Something that happened by accident and something that became a
part of the Coca Cola bottle for decades. Now, yes,
you could go in the store and you could buy
that little six and a half ounce bottle and it's white,
but for many, many decades, it was light green, and
that's the way Coca Cola wanted it. And I guess
(20:51):
there's another side story we need to tell too about
It's not Coca Cola, it's Delta Airlines. And everybody says,
well that, how does that relate. Well, I'll tell you
what Coca Cola money created Delta Airlines. What happened was
(21:11):
it Beidenharn.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
The family that were the first to ever bottle Coca
Cola in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
They were doing well and there were five brothers that
were ambitious. They find a bottler in.
Speaker 5 (21:25):
Monroe, Monroe, Louisiana, that is.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
And they buy that bottler and that becomes Coca Cola
bottling plant number two for the beden Hearns. Well, that evolves.
They continue to buy plants, they continue to grow, and
every time they grow, another brother becomes a bottler. He
goes to whatever the next plant is. And at one
time they were one of the top five independent bottlers
(21:50):
in the United States. And Joe Beidenharn's son, Bernie Beidenharn,
became sort of the leader of the pack, so to speak.
He was the youngest son, and he got interested. There
was a crop dusting company in Monroe, Louisiana, which is
where they were located, and the crop duster needed some help,
(22:14):
wanted to buy some more planes. So mister Bernie Beidenharn
loaned him some money and in return he got some stock.
And this goes on and on, needs some more planes
and all of a sudden, they decide, we're going to
start hauling passengers. Besides spraying crops. We'll start hauling passengers
(22:35):
from Dallas, Texas, to Shreveport to Monroe to Georgia. And
so they started hauling passengers. Well. It was then became
the Delta Airline company based out of Monroe, Louisiana, And
once again mister Beidenharn was right there to help fightansom
(22:57):
and to help them buy planes and to make it
all happen. And it was, in fact, for a long
time Monroe, Louisiana was the corporate headquarters for Delta Airlines.
An interesting story is that at one point, when Delta
had gotten pretty big, they were still located in Monroe
(23:18):
as a corporate headquarters, and they were having their annual
meeting of the board and the investors in Delta Airlines.
They were having it in Monroe. But at that point
one of the investors from a big city, maybe Chicago,
who knows where stood up and said, you know, I'm
whoever I am, I'm Joe Smith, that I'm from Chicago,
(23:41):
and our airline has gotten so big, we should not
be meeting in places like Monroe, Louisiana. Need to be
meeting in bigger towns. You know, I have five thousand
shares of Delta Airlines, and I think, as an investor,
we need to move on. And at that point, mister
Bernie Beidenharn, who was obviously an investor in attending the meetings,
(24:04):
stood up and said, I'm Bernie Beidenharn, and I have
ninety some thousand shares of Delta Airlines and we'll see
you next year in Monroe. So it was it was
an interesting story how for a long time Coca Cola
money played a big role in what is now the
giant Delta Airlines.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
The beeten Hearns would also get involved in baseball, with
Ali Beidenharn building the Beidenhart Stadium in Shreveport, Louisiana in
the nineteen twenties. He was there that Alli would pineer,
something that we take for granted today.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
The baseball park was in fact the first park to
have night lights because he realized that it gets pretty
warm in the summertime in Shreveport, but nighttime is a
good time for baseball. It's cooler. So they lit the
ballpark and they did amazing things in promoting people to
come to the ball margan to have a Coca Cola.
(25:02):
One of the most amazing things was Old Babe Ruth
came to town and Coca Cola Shreeport promoted him coming
to town with his baseball team to play the Shreeport team,
and it was a tremendous sellout and Old Babe got
up there and slammed a couple home runs. In fact,
(25:22):
one of them he hit so hard it went out
of the park and landed up through the window of
a street car that was going by. It was just
typical of what they would do. And today, if you
go to Shreveport, Louisiana, you're gonna find buildings, You're gonna
find public hospitals, things that are named Beidenhard because of
(25:42):
what was done then at that time for the community
and obviously to promote the product. You know, let's realize
that we're getting the word out about the product and
Coca Cola as well as helping the community. Randy Mayo,
who is a great grandson of Ali Beedenharn, basically, he says,
(26:05):
he said, was getting a Coca Cola franchise was like
getting the key to a gold mine. I think Coca
Cola will always be here. You know, one hundred years
from now, it won't be the Coca Cola we know now,
but it'll be Coca Cola owned and Coca Cola promoted,
and it'll be equally as important part of what a
(26:28):
person enjoys as it is now. You know, I wish
I could stick around for the next couple of generations
to see where they go whatever. And the bottlers that
we write about can be thankful that they are Coca
Cola bottlers.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
And a terrific job on the production by Monty Montgomery,
and a special thanks again to Larry Jorgens in his
two books, The Coca Cola Trail and The Return to
the Coca Cola Trail, are available at the Usual Suspects
online or at your local bookstories. A story so much
but ingenuity being the key, and enterprise and enterprising entrepreneurs.
(27:06):
The story of Coca Cola bottled for the first time
on this day in history in eighteen eighty six here
on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
and we love hearing your stories. Send them to our
American Stories dot Com. Up next, a story about a
drink that we all know but might not know the
backstory of. And we're telling you this story because on
(00:30):
this day in history in eighteen eighty six, John Pemberton,
the inventor of the drink, bottled his first in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Here's our own Monty Montgomery with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Coca Cola is arguably the South's most successful export. They
sell around three billion cases of product around the world annually,
but they started out small. Here's Larry Jorgensen, author of
the Coca Cola, with more.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
In that.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
Well.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Coca cola actually started out as the syrup that is
now the main ingredient in coca cola, and the syrup
was invented by John Pemberton, who was a pharmacist in Columbus, Georgia,
and had started working on the formula. And then his
time of working on the formula was interrupted by the
(01:26):
Civil War, and he actually fought in the Civil War.
When he got out of the war, he had a
war injury. You know, stories get twisted through the years.
I heard it was a saber type injury to his stomach,
but whatever, it was definitely from the war, and he
was looking against.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Some relief, relief in the form of a morphine free
painkiller as he was addicted to the substance at the time.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
He had studied and he had learned that the cola
nut would create a pretty good flavor, and the coca
leaf was known for giving some relief to pain. So
he developed his formula with those two items of mind,
the coca leaf and the colon nut.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Now, the coca.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Leaf as it was used in producing the coca cola
syrup was not processed.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
And I get this all the time.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
It was not processed in a way that would produce cocaine.
There was no cocaine in coca cola. There was the
coca leaf, which I guess if you broke it down
far enough, you'd find common natural ingredients to cocaine.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Such as econaine, a relative or rather a precursor of cocaine.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
But it was not cocaine.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
It was simply the processed coca leaf that eliminated.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
The pain to some degree.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
And helped create the flavor along with the colon nut
of what became coca cola. He moved to Atlanta, Georgia,
where he perfected his recipe. And actually it was on
March twenty ninth in his backyard in a big three
(03:16):
legged kettle that he made the first batch of coca
cola syrup. And it was, as they say, for medicinal purposes.
He took it to the local drug store and they
served and you come in, you have a pain, a
headache or whatever. They'd put a little coca cola syrup
in a glass and put in some carbonated water. It worked.
(03:38):
But not only did it work, it tasted good. People
started requesting the drink as something that they enjoyed, not
to necessarily solve a headache or something. So it really
took off from there. But the irony of the thing
is that the man who invented it only owned Coca
(03:58):
Cola Syrup for about three years. He sold the rights
and the formula, et cetera to Asa Candler. Well Ace's
thing in life was he wanted to sell syrup, and
that's all that he wanted to do. And he would
sell it to other drug stores and so forth, and
(04:20):
it was for that purpose, of that purpose only. He
thought that bottling coca cola was and I will quote
a dumb idea. Well, what happened there was a gentleman
in Vicksburg who owned a candy business and a solo
fhontain and very ambitious man by the name of Bidenharn.
(04:42):
And mister Bidenharn was obviously selling the coca cola syrup
in his drug store. Well, he also would do things
like he would cater parties in that It so happened
that on one July fourth he was to cater a party,
a picnic, a big July fourth picnic, and to bring
(05:05):
beverages and everything. And what he would do then is
there was a small bottler in Vicksburg who bottled, you know,
lemon and sasparilla and orange and all those things. So
he would go to that bottler and buy at wholesale
some of these bottles of soda that he would take
(05:27):
along to the event he was catering. Well, it so
happened on this July fourth there was such a demand
for product that his order was not available, but yet
he had the customer. So mister Bidenarn went to the
picnic and made lemonade for everybody. And after that picnic,
(05:48):
he said, this will never happen again, and he went
to Saint Louis and he bought some second hand bodleing equipment.
Now we're talking about bodily equipment. That is, you know,
one bottle at a time and you push a foot lever,
you know, to make it happen. And he brought that
back to Vicksburg and started bottling Coca cola. He thought,
(06:12):
you know, people really like this drink. I'm in a
bottlet and people in the country, you know, I can
take it to them. They don't have to come to
town to get a Coca cola. So he set off
to bottle. The story is the first two cases of
coca cola that he bottled, he sent them to Atlanta
(06:33):
to mister Candler to let him know what he was doing.
And of course Candler was more interested in selling old
Joe Bidenarn some syrup. And Candler, you know, wrote back
to me, yeah, it's okay, but you know it wasn't impressed.
And Joe Bidenarn said, you know, he never sent my
(06:54):
bottles back. You know, that was the big thing.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
And you're listening to the story of coca cola, the
South's most successful export. It had been right up until
the eighteen sixties, seventies, and eighties cotton, and thank goodness
that changed for both the South and for coke lovers
across the globe, including myself, a certified coke addict, if
ever there was one. When we come back more of
(07:19):
this remarkable story, Coca Cola's rise here on our American stories. Folks,
if you love the stories we tell about this great country,
and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that
all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation,
(07:40):
culture and faith, are brought to us by the great
folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all
the things that are beautiful in life and all the
things that are good in life. And if you can't
get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their
free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu
to learn more. And we returned to our American stories
(08:12):
and the story of how coca cola got into a bottle.
When we last left off, a man in Vicksburg, Mississippi,
named Joe Bidenhearn had decided to, much to the Sugarn
of Coca Cola Corporate in Atlanta, use their syrup to
bottle coca cola himself. Let's continue with the story.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
So for five years, Joe Bidenharn is bottling Coca cola. Now,
the only other place that was bottling Coca cola. About
two years after Bidenhard started in Vicksburg, there was a
bottler in Valdosta, Georgia. So within five years of Coca
(08:56):
cola being invented, there were only two places that were
bottling it. Well, from there, this is how coca cola
takes off. We have a young man from Chattanooga who
is in the Spanish American War in Cuba.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
His name was Ben Thomas.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
While he's in Cuba, he enjoys a beverage over there
called Frea Pina cold pineapple and it's bottled.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
Well.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
He's from Chattanooga and he remembers that when he was
in Chattanooga he used to get coca cola at the
counter and it was really good. He thought, that's it.
I'm going when I get out of here, I'm going
back to Chattanooga and we're going to bottle Coca cola.
So he goes back to Chattanooga.
Speaker 5 (09:47):
And he speaks with his friend Joseph Whitehead.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
They were both attorneys and they shared rooms in a
boarding house there, and he presented his idea to him.
He said, we could be partners and do this. So
they chase off to Atlanta, Georgia. They get down there
and meet with mister Candler and say, we want the
rights to bottle Coca Cola throughout the United States. We
(10:14):
want the exclusive rights. Well Candler thought, no, he said this,
I don't want to do that. He said, I'm worried
that Coca Cola will not have the same flavor in
the bottle. He said, I'm worried about the quality. He said,
to be honest about it, it's a dumb idea, and
I think bobbling is a backstreet business. So, you know,
(10:38):
he chased them away and they persisted, and finally he said,
all right, I'll tell you what. You go back to
your hotel tonight and you draw up what you think
would be a contract, and you bring it to me
and I'll look at it. So, while they're lawyers, you know,
they go back and they draw up a contract that
gives them the exclusive rights to bottle coca cola in
(11:01):
the United States. The next day they go back and
they meet with mister Candler and he looks at it
and he said, well, he said, you can't have all
of the United States because Joe's already doing it in Mississippi,
so I can't give you Mississippi. But he sold them
the rights to bottle coca cola exclusively throughout the United
(11:24):
States for one dollar, and it was said that he
never collected the dollar. He just wanted to get rid
of him. And he told them when they left, I
still think it's a dumb idea, and if it doesn't work,
I don't want you to come crying back to me
about it. So here they go. They go back to Chattanooga, right,
(11:46):
the two of them. They now have the rights to
bottle coca cola throughout the United States. Nobody else can
do it. Well, between the two of them, they've got
fifteen hundred dollars and they have this product called bottle
Coca Cola for everybody. So they start a little bottling
plant and they thought, no, this isn't gonna work. You know,
(12:10):
first of all, they weren't real good at it, and
you know, the workers were wearing protective mesh over their
face because the bottles kept exploding and they thought, this
is not going to work. Then the light goes on
and they said, wait a minute, we've got the rights,
and they said, why don't we start selling territories. That's
(12:31):
what we'll do. So you know, if you wanted to
bottle Coca cola and Paduca, Kentucky, they would sell you
a fifty mile territory in Paduca, Kentucky, and that would
be your territory and you could set up your little
bottling plant and sell Coca cola. And today I think,
you know, we'd call that franchising. The interesting thing. You
(12:54):
may have paid fifteen hundred dollars or whatever for that territory,
but you all so were required to use the Coca
cola syrup obviously, so you had to order syrup from
Atlanta to make your Coca cola. Well, every time you
ordered a gallon of syrup from Atlanta, the two attorneys
(13:17):
that sold you your territory got a commission on you
purchasing that syrup. So you know, they were gone but
not forgotten.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
So to speak.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
And they ultimately both of them got very rich because
of being able to sell the territory and you keep
the commission on the syrup that was being used in
each territory. And that is how coca cola took off
all of a sudden. You've got young, ambitious business people,
(13:47):
entrepreneurs around the country that have scraped together enough money
to buy a territory to bottle coca cola. So they're
out working bodies, selling it, promoting it, doing whatever they
can to promote your product.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
And that's what.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Really made coca cola grow rapidly in the United States. Well,
that certainly is growing a business from the consumer demand
and not the desire of the owner of the business.
And the interesting thing on all of that is that
(14:30):
the coca cola bottle as we know it didn't really
happen until about nineteen fifteen. You know, these bottlers, Okay,
now they've got syrup and they're going to make coca cola,
But what are you going to put it in? You know?
So what happened is there were any bottle they could
get their hands on, and in the early days, you know,
(14:52):
why do we hear it called pop because in the
early days, one of the bottles they would get would
have this rubber stopper the top and when you opened
it it would go pop. Well. Because there was no
standard bottle and bottles were whatever you could get your
hands on, there also became a lot of knockoff products.
(15:15):
People saw what was happening with Coca Cola. So the
next thing you've got, you know, Coca Cola has filled
with two k's. You've got, chiro Cola, You've got. There
were probably sixty seventy different people that at one time
were making a cola beverage. So consequently, the consumer that
(15:37):
would see a bottle and would say something about cola
on it, they would presume it's Coca Cola and they
would buy it. So finally the Coca Cola company said,
wait a minute, we have got to do something about this.
And legally they did go after a couple of companies
that were using the term cola, but they decided the
(15:58):
best plan was in marketing and to have their own
bottle that was the only bottle that would represent Coca
Cola and could not be used by anybody else. It
was a patented design. What they did is they challenged
the bottle manufacturers to a competition, and they said, all right,
(16:19):
bottle manufacturers you produced the bottle, We'll select one of
them and that will be the bottle. It'll be patented,
and you will be allowed to produce that bottle for
every Coca Cola bottler in the United States. Well, the
challenge was met by five bottle manufacturers, and in nineteen fifteen,
(16:43):
the five manufacturers each took what they thought should be
the bottle to a Coca Cola bottler's convention in Atlanta
and presented the bottles.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
And you've been listening to Larry each Organson tell the
story of Coca Cola's rise, and by the way, to
read his two books on the subject, The Coca Cola
Trail and the Return to the Coca Cola Trail, go
to your local bookstore or to Amazon or the usual
suspects wherever you get your books. And what a story
about business, about competition, about franchising, about ingenuity and licensing,
(17:23):
all of these business concepts that help propel ideas into
the common culture and to common use, as Coca Cola
has managed to do in this great country. When we
come back more of this remarkable business story, this culture story,
here on our American story, and we returned to our
(18:12):
American stories when we last left off. Larry Jorgensen was
telling us about how Coca Cola Corporate decided to have
a contest amongst bottle makers to have a standardized bottle.
This was because so many ripoff bottles existed.
Speaker 5 (18:28):
Let's return to the story.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Well, the challenge was met by five bottle manufacturers, and
in nineteen fifteen, the five manufacturers each took what they
thought should be the bottle to a Coca Cola bottler's
convention in Atlanta and presented the bottles. Well, one was selected.
(18:56):
It was the bottle manufactured by the Root Glass Company
of Terahoe, Indiana, and it was in fact the design
that we all recognized now as Coca Cola. The interesting
thing on the Coca Cola bottle, if you look at
the original bottle, it has and did have for many
many years, a very light green tint to it. And
(19:20):
that in fact was the result of a sand that
the Root Glass Company was getting its sand from a
quarry about fifty miles away from Terra Haute, Indiana. Well,
that sand had, amongst other things, that it had copper
and some other minerals in it. So when the glass
(19:40):
was blown using that sand, it would get a light
green tint because of the minerals that were in the sand.
Coca Cola was so pleased with that that.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
They named it.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
First, they called it or German green, and that was
going to be the color used in the bottle. Well,
they thought twice about that and decided they would call
it Georgia green. So as time goes on and other
bottle companies are given the rights to make the Coca
Cola bottle, Coca Cola says to them, if the sand
(20:18):
you use in developing the bottle does not contain the
minerals to create the green.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
You must add them.
Speaker 5 (20:26):
So it was.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Something that happened by accident and something that became a
part of the Coca Cola bottle for decades. Now, yes,
you could go in the store and you could buy
that little six and a half ounce bottle and it's white,
but for many, many decades, it was light green, and
that's the way Coca Cola wanted it. And I guess
(20:51):
there's another side story we need to tell too about
It's not Coca Cola, it's Delta Airlines. And everybody says,
well that, how does that relate. Well, I'll tell you
what Coca Cola money created Delta Airlines. What happened was
(21:11):
it Beidenharn.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
The family that were the first to ever bottle Coca
Cola in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
They were doing well and there were five brothers that
were ambitious. They find a bottler in.
Speaker 5 (21:25):
Monroe, Monroe, Louisiana, that is.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
And they buy that bottler and that becomes Coca Cola
bottling plant number two for the beden Hearns. Well, that evolves.
They continue to buy plants, they continue to grow, and
every time they grow, another brother becomes a bottler. He
goes to whatever the next plant is. And at one
time they were one of the top five independent bottlers
(21:50):
in the United States. And Joe Beidenharn's son, Bernie Beidenharn,
became sort of the leader of the pack, so to speak.
He was the youngest son, and he got interested. There
was a crop dusting company in Monroe, Louisiana, which is
where they were located, and the crop duster needed some help,
(22:14):
wanted to buy some more planes. So mister Bernie Beidenharn
loaned him some money and in return he got some stock.
And this goes on and on, needs some more planes
and all of a sudden, they decide, we're going to
start hauling passengers. Besides spraying crops. We'll start hauling passengers
(22:35):
from Dallas, Texas, to Shreveport to Monroe to Georgia. And
so they started hauling passengers. Well. It was then became
the Delta Airline company based out of Monroe, Louisiana, And
once again mister Beidenharn was right there to help fightansom
(22:57):
and to help them buy planes and to make it
all happen. And it was, in fact, for a long
time Monroe, Louisiana was the corporate headquarters for Delta Airlines.
An interesting story is that at one point, when Delta
had gotten pretty big, they were still located in Monroe
(23:18):
as a corporate headquarters, and they were having their annual
meeting of the board and the investors in Delta Airlines.
They were having it in Monroe. But at that point
one of the investors from a big city, maybe Chicago,
who knows where stood up and said, you know, I'm
whoever I am, I'm Joe Smith, that I'm from Chicago,
(23:41):
and our airline has gotten so big, we should not
be meeting in places like Monroe, Louisiana. Need to be
meeting in bigger towns. You know, I have five thousand
shares of Delta Airlines, and I think, as an investor,
we need to move on. And at that point, mister
Bernie Beidenharn, who was obviously an investor in attending the meetings,
(24:04):
stood up and said, I'm Bernie Beidenharn, and I have
ninety some thousand shares of Delta Airlines and we'll see
you next year in Monroe. So it was it was
an interesting story how for a long time Coca Cola
money played a big role in what is now the
giant Delta Airlines.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
The beeten Hearns would also get involved in baseball, with
Ali Beidenharn building the Beidenhart Stadium in Shreveport, Louisiana in
the nineteen twenties. He was there that Alli would pineer,
something that we take for granted today.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
The baseball park was in fact the first park to
have night lights because he realized that it gets pretty
warm in the summertime in Shreveport, but nighttime is a
good time for baseball. It's cooler. So they lit the
ballpark and they did amazing things in promoting people to
come to the ball margan to have a Coca Cola.
(25:02):
One of the most amazing things was Old Babe Ruth
came to town and Coca Cola Shreeport promoted him coming
to town with his baseball team to play the Shreeport team,
and it was a tremendous sellout and Old Babe got
up there and slammed a couple home runs. In fact,
(25:22):
one of them he hit so hard it went out
of the park and landed up through the window of
a street car that was going by. It was just
typical of what they would do. And today, if you
go to Shreveport, Louisiana, you're gonna find buildings, You're gonna
find public hospitals, things that are named Beidenhard because of
(25:42):
what was done then at that time for the community
and obviously to promote the product. You know, let's realize
that we're getting the word out about the product and
Coca Cola as well as helping the community. Randy Mayo,
who is a great grandson of Ali Beedenharn, basically, he says,
(26:05):
he said, was getting a Coca Cola franchise was like
getting the key to a gold mine. I think Coca
Cola will always be here. You know, one hundred years
from now, it won't be the Coca Cola we know now,
but it'll be Coca Cola owned and Coca Cola promoted,
and it'll be equally as important part of what a
(26:28):
person enjoys as it is now. You know, I wish
I could stick around for the next couple of generations
to see where they go whatever. And the bottlers that
we write about can be thankful that they are Coca
Cola bottlers.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
And a terrific job on the production by Monty Montgomery,
and a special thanks again to Larry Jorgens in his
two books, The Coca Cola Trail and The Return to
the Coca Cola Trail, are available at the Usual Suspects
online or at your local bookstories. A story so much
but ingenuity being the key, and enterprise and enterprising entrepreneurs.
(27:06):
The story of Coca Cola bottled for the first time
on this day in history in eighteen eighty six here
on our American Stories
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