H j heinz biography of mahatma

Death and legacy [ edit ]. Notes [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Heinz : A Biography. Jefferson, N. ISBN Retrieved January 1, Heinz: A Biography. Henry J. Heinz: a biography. Retrieved March 23, The Reformation World. Summer Heinz: Relish success". Pittsburgh Quarterly. Archived from the original on April 2, Retrieved March 25, Heinz Company Encyclopedia.

Retrieved April 10, Archived from the original on March 24, Retrieved March 5, The New York Times. Retrieved June 9, The State Museum of Pennsylvania. June 30, Archived from the original on September 16, Retrieved April 21, Heinz gave of his time, talent, and treasure. He always combined Sunday school visits with his world travel, and in later years, he traveled the world to spread the application of Sunday school.

Heinz spread culture and Christianity as well as his products in Asia. This smoke-free day seemed strange for Pittsburghers, but augured economic conditions. In Pittsburgh was the glass, machinery, oil, and iron capital of the nation, if not the world. It was common in Pittsburgh for the gaslights to be left on until midday because of the thick smoke that settled in the river valleys of the area.

It had been almost twenty years since Pittsburgh had seen such clarity of its skies as on this day. This day, H. Heinz was coming from Sharpsburg up the Allegheny River to Pittsburgh to check with his bankers and lawyer about his failing company. The stock market hit new bottoms by November and had to be closed for over a week. The great 9 10 H.

The panic was starting to break out of New York by early A young Pittsburgher, Andrew Carnegie, now living in New York, rushed back to Pittsburgh in early to check the construction needs of his new steel mill being built at Braddock. By late , Carnegie had to put construction on hold for a few months as Pittsburgh money started to dry up.

H j heinz biography of mahatma

New York had already been devastated by the panic. The New York Times suggested that people buy dogs with good teeth to maneuver the streets. The panic peaked in , with unemployment reaching 40 percent nationally. Banker Thomas Mellon said he would never forget the soup kitchens and the homeless in the streets. The over 20, laid off workers formed long bread lines in downtown Pittsburgh.

Never before had Pittsburgh seen so many beggars in the street. The real estate market crashed; people just walked away from their houses and mortgages. It was the worst depression the nation had known. With millions out of work, wages were declining rapidly as well. But now in , things were changing rapidly. Grocers extended credit informally to customers, and wholesalers extended credit informally to the grocers.

The chain continued to the producer and his suppliers. Suppliers often extended infor- 1. Bright Skies, Dark Days 11 mal late payments credit to producers. As people lost jobs, credit was extended until the breaking point. Then the whole chain was short cash to pay. This killed demand. In the case of Heinz, the suppliers of cucumbers were pulling on Heinz to pay and did not extend informal credit.

The bank loans for Heinz were being called in, which created a cash crisis. Personal loans from family and friends were often the other source of cash, but as the economy dragged into its second year of depression in , these too dried up. The whole economy became cash short with no Federal Reserve to pump money back into the system.

A true panic ensued as all tried to get cash that was not available. By December of , the national economy had reached the breaking point. Bankruptcies and closings throughout the system only quickened the downward spiral. All had to wait for the market to work things out, which was measured in years. Typically such a recession or depression lasted six years or more, but without a Federal Reserve, it could last over a decade.

In late , Heinz had let a check of his partner, L. For a business in these times, a returned check meant the beginning of the end. It strained his business and his relationship with his best friend and partner and started a credit panic among his suppliers and banks. This Monday, Noble had come to see Heinz by train and they had gone to Pittsburgh to explore the magnitude of the problem.

Heinz had been in bed for days, having broken out with a rash probably psychosomatic. He had been complaining for months about the pressure of money raising and meeting payrolls. Louis, and a warehouse in Chicago. Most of these draft horses were the medieval breed of Percherons, a favorite of Heinz, and a breed well adapted to hard work and cobblestone streets.

Percherons, a cross between Arabian stallions and Flemish plow mares, had originally been bred to carry knights with pounds of armor. Heinz wanted all his wagons and horses to look the same and be recognizable in all cities. Early on he 12 H. Heinz had the wagons painted white with green trimmings, then moved to plum red colored bodies with green trim to make them stand out more.

Noble handled the St. Noble, while Heinz managed Pittsburgh operations and the banking needs. Noble had rushed to Pittsburgh to see what he could do and maybe rally his partner from his dark mood. It became clear that it was too late. Heinz had done all he could by moving the inventory and generating cash. The company had used warehousing as a competitive edge in the marketplace, but now it had become an anchor.

The grocers and retailers in various cities owned a large portion of the warehoused inventory and needed the product. Warehousing was a service to the customers. Heinz and Noble kept the goods and paid insurance on them until they were needed. Heinz, Noble, and Company now had nowhere to go. Heinz and the Noble brothers had used up their savings.

There was nothing left to mortgage or use as collateral, and he could not ask from family, realizing that the company odds for survival were poor. Realizing his need for money, most of his friends were avoiding him, and many already had loaned him large sums already. The Sharpsburg banks could help no further. Their Pittsburgh lawyer, B. Christy, recommended bankruptcy.

Heinz and Noble started home for Sharpsburg in late afternoon, having decided to call a family meeting to lay out the bad news. While Heinz and the Noble Brothers were the owners, the Heinz family was now the major debtor. The family meeting was a sober event and all realized bankruptcy would come shortly. Heinz had been there moving inventory at the request of customers and in hope of generating sales.

Pittsburgh was a smaller town then, and news traveled fast. Bankers and creditors wasted no time in taking action. Creditors moved quickly to protect their interests, since Heinz commonly warehoused goods that were owned by the customers. Several creditors claimed Heinz was moving inventory in an effort to defraud them. Heinz was arrested that 1.

Bright Skies, Dark Days 13 afternoon on charges of fraud. The next morning, Heinz telegraphed St. The failure and arrest were now frontpage news in Pittsburgh. Heinz would never again partner with anyone except family members. Clearly, H. Heinz had to shoulder a large part of the failure. His plan for national expansion went beyond his business experience in farm production.

With the later moves into pickles and sauerkraut, the Allegheny farmland was too little. The crop yield that year was huge, and Heinz needed money to meet contract requirements. He had underestimated the yield, and was paying out more than he could borrow in these times. Probably in more normal times, Heinz could have readily borrowed to meet demand.

In addition to the crop purchases, cucumbers piling up at the factory increased his processing payroll. Two thousand bushels of cucumbers were also beyond his salting station capacity at the Pittsburgh plant, causing a product backup. It was a weekly issue to make payroll and purchases. And as sales slowed inventory, shelf-life became a problem as well.

At least bankruptcy would end months of unbelievable stress in managing a hopeless situation. His real problems, however, were just beginning. The lawsuit continued to make the paper through January of the next year. The bankruptcy court took everything, but he did win the lawsuit. This was a family of enormous pride and achievement, and failure cut deep in their psyches.

Christmas of seemed to be the lowest point mentally; Heinz had no money for Christmas gifts. The H. Heinz family now consisted of his wife, a six-year-old daughter, Irene Edwilda, and a four-year-old son, Clarence Noble Heinz. He attributed his mental turn- 14 H. Heinz around to an old German prayer of hope given to him that Christmas by his mother.

But January brought even more trials: Heinz ran out of money to even buy food. He was forced to buy groceries on credit. The Nobles and most of his friends had walked away from him. The setback tested H. While he met these basic commitments, Heinz was bedbound through the Christmas season. Things had certainly hit bottom for the Heinz family, but a family meeting would change the future.

Heinz formed his non-family food business with neighbor and brick business partner, L. The company was to be Heinz and Noble Company. Bottled horseradish was not a new product, but Heinz would revolutionize this small niche. Horseradish was a common vegetable root in western Pennsylvania gardens. It was a pungent and bitter appetizer that was popular with many nationalities.

Horseradish or Cochlearia armoracia was spread and cultivated by the Saxons from its native home around Bavaria. The English loved it grated with beef. Local residents used it for medical purposes as well. The root grew well in the soils of Western Pennsylvania and could be stored in root cellars or buried in the ground. Horseradish could be produced and bottled at the Sharpsburg homestead readily.

As a young boy, H. Heinz started a business of selling horseradish. The business took off in a matter of months and Heinz hired two women to help. These women, Mrs. Bingham and Mrs. Schultheis, were experienced in the preparation of sauces and canning. Boys were paid 50 cents a day to harvest. Heinz did most of the selling and marketing personally.

This common and easily grown root had a drawback in its preparation. Heinz was selling a product that reduced time in the kitchen. Housewives hated to prepare grated horseradish. Grating was a tedious task that bruised knuckles. Bright Skies, Dark Days 15 addition, its pungent oil stung the eyes. Still, at the start he faced considerable competition, and he needed to brand his product.

He knew the biggest concern about grated horseradish was quality and purity. Heinz addressed both issues and won over housewives, using clear glass bottles to prove his point. Many housewives suspected the colored glass was used to hide the impurities. Clear glass cost a little more because it required manganese to be added by the glassmaker.

This idea of building a niche on high quality was a strategy Heinz repeated often, but it is a bit of a legend that Heinz as a youth or even Noble and Heinz had all clear glass bottles; the myth is not supported by bottle collectors. Light aqua was the typical color of many Heinz bottles prior to These light aqua bottles did allow inspection of the contents.

Later, as volume increased, Heinz could assure clear bottles. Heinz continued to expand his boyhood business into his early twenties. In , he partnered with the sons of the old Noble banking family of Sharpsburg to open his own brickyard. Young Heinz was a natural salesman and soon brought Noble into his passion. Clarence Noble had become a partner and close friend and soon the two added E.

Noble and moved into the food business. The business revolved around homemade products, such as horseradish, fruit preserves, homemade catsup, mustard, and pickles. In Heinz and Noble launched their new company. The late s was a time of great economic growth following the Civil War. Money was freely available and the protectionist policies of the Republican Party had created vast domestic industrial growth.

Pittsburgh had added several new banks and the Pittsburgh Stock Exchange opened as Pittsburgh boomed. Just as important was the growth 16 H. Heinz of a well-paid middle class of craftsmen and storeowners. Pittsburgh was growing, and the prospects for Heinz and Noble seemed unlimited. The next unique approach of Heinz and Noble on this simple product was marketing and distribution.

Heinz had started as a boy using a handcart to peddle garden surplus and horseradish. Hotel and saloon owners would buy high quality from the grocers. Heinz wanted to go to all three directly as well as establish a very high quality line for hotels, bars, and saloons. Heinz realized meat markets were another sales outlet for his product and added them to his wagon routes.

His product used high quality white vinegar or malt vinegar as a preservative in which to bottle the grated horseradish. His marketing plan not only included selling to grocers, but warehousing the product until the grocer needed it. This helped reduce the liability and shelf-life problems for the grocer and hotels. High quality, storage, and volume gave him an edge over local hucksters.

He branded the product, calling it the line Anchor Brand later adding a higher quality line of Keystone. Heinz realized that high quality production lines allowed for a lower quality product to be generated and sold as well. This product segmentation was a natural for food processing, and Heinz used it to his advantage. Volume would not only give him economies of scale but also reduced his glass bottle and vinegar purchasing costs.

Warehousing gave him an advantage with grocers, whose stores lacked air circulation, resulting in reduced shelf-life. The vinegar and horseradish mixture had a shelf-life of six to eight months, which meshed well with the annual planting cycle. Heinz took another revolutionary approach of paying grocers to take any spoiled product off the shelf.

His factory had a state of the art stable for his horses, which included steam heating. His wagons were cleaned daily to assure the image of his product. His horses were always well fed and groomed. This integrated approach to food processing had never been seen before. Quality, marketing, innovative packaging, distribution, and warehousing allowed the company to take over a crafts market of family vegetable gardens.

Bright Skies, Dark Days 17 Growth and success had also brought a downside of dependency on banks. Within a year, Heinz was selling to the oil-producing boom area north of Pittsburgh. Heinz was early to realize how the railroad changed business and markets. He made a trip to Philadelphia east and Ohio west each week. He was a voluminous note taker, and his journals represented informal marketing studies.

Grocers, restaurants, and hotels with their product usage and volumes were noted. Product line was expanded by market analysis. Heinz also collected recipes as he traveled. Early on, he realized the potential to use the railroad as a distribution network, something that would not have been possible prior to the s. He even had some small orders in bigger cities, such as Philadelphia, Atlantic City, and Washington.

All these points were accessible several times a day by train. Heinz, Noble, and Company had become a regional leader in processing and distribution by making innovations in packaging, rail transportation, and market analysis. Horseradish offered an easy product for warehousing and transportation because the vinegar was a natural preservative.

With a regional distribution and processing network, Heinz wanted to expand his product line. Heinz had always added a small line of jellies and home preserves, but he looked to bigger national markets. In , Heinz and Noble added celery sauce and pickled cucumbers. Pickles required the company to expand acreage on the Allegheny farm and add a shed for processing in Sharpsburg.

The year represented a milestone year, as a third partner, E. Noble, was taken on, and the company name became Heinz, Noble, and Company. The plan now was to expand to the Midwest. The company leased a factory and warehouse in downtown Pittsburgh on Second Avenue. Farmland was added in Sharpsburg. In , they went national with a warehouse in Chicago and St.

In addition, sauerkraut and vinegar were added to the product line. All grocers needed vinegar barrels on a weekly basis. Vinegar was a natural expansion since it was an ingredient for other products. Vinegar production was also added to the St. Louis operation. The management was divided: the Noble brothers handled Chicago and St.

Louis, and Heinz managed the Pittsburgh operation. The horses and wagons were a large part of the overall costs, which required running the wagons at capacity to keep costs down. His 18 H. Heinz expanded product line, now with vinegar, celery sauce, pickles, and sauerkraut, could be sold directly to housewives and grocers. Variety was important to a good huckster operation; it helped sales and fully utilized the wagon.

Vinegar was a natural because Heinz needed it in his own operation, and it was a staple at any grocery. His need was for white vinegar because brown apple vinegar would discolor his product and add unwanted favor. In , there were eight vinegar manufacturers in Pittsburgh, but all produced cider vinegar. While the main use of vinegar was in his own operations, Heinz bottled it in ceramic jugs to sell as table and pickling vinegar.

His bottling of table vinegar was a marketing innovation for the time. Vinegar was usually sold to the grocer in barrels and then re-sold in pails. The same was true for pickles and sauerkraut. This moving from barrels to bottles was another key product strategy, which allowed direct sales to grocers, and Heinz promoted this strategy throughout his career.

Pickles were a common staple of the s. Pickles are fermented cucumbers, preserved using salt and vinegar. Pickles were processed in various steps, the key one being the pickle-salt stations, where fermentation took place. Heinz, however, credits his brother, John Heinz, with the mass pickle production process. His brother John helped in the design and building of these stations.

He pioneered food purity and cleanness in his operations as well. In , there were many picklers in the business. Most were local operations that packaged pickles in barrels and sold them through wholesalers to grocers. Heinz again focused on the household with glass jars and ceramic pots. While he was less of a product innovator, in pickles he did add new products and recipes.

Heinz, like his fellow Duquesne Club member Andrew Carnegie, believed 1. Bright Skies, Dark Days 19 in vertical integration soil to customer of manufacturing. Heinz wanted to control, and where possible, own the supply and manufacturing chain from cucumbers to glass bottles. In , Heinz, Noble, and Company had a capacity of 50, barrels of vinegar per year, 15, barrels of pickles, and barrels of sauerkraut.

While Heinz sold in barrels, he pioneered the bottling of many of these products. Celery sauce represented an opportunity similar to grated horseradish in that it was a time consuming effort. Celery sauce was a sour, pickled mix of cut vegetables that was popular at the time. It was really a type of relish that was time-consuming to make at home.

It was a common condiment at hotels and restaurants as well. The real challenge was in its shorter shelf life if not carefully prepared. Ketchups were extremely popular sauces at the time, and cookbooks had many different recipes for their use and preparation. Again, it was a product that reduced time consuming preparation by housewives.

The largest American producer in the s was Williams and Walter in Detroit. Williams and Walter had evolved from a meat market and pickle packer to a true ketchup company which accounted for 70 percent of their business in the s. Heinz looked to sell to the high quality end and use the power of his distribution. Wholesalers had been selling British ketchups since the late s, and retailers had the product in the late s.

Britain imported a full line of ketchups, including tomato, mushroom, and walnut. Heinz, with homegrown tomatoes and labor, could beat the price on limited volume. This allowed him to beat out the competition and move into the packaged household market. While ketchup called catsup at the time was a very small product offering for Heinz, Noble, and Company, the company developed a lot of the necessary manufacturing practices.

Aimed at the higher quality market, his recipe called for more tomato pulp as well as more sugar and vinegar about one percent. Heinz, Noble, and Company used salicylic acid as a preservative because ketchup would ferment in storage. They struggled with the recipe, taste, and storage. In general, bottled ketchup had a bad reputation in the s because of spoilage.

And never did he leave the least spirit of resentment or embarrassment in the minds of those he was instructing. He was interested in art and collected many treasures in his extensive travels. His chief hobbies in this line were old watches, ivory-carvings, pottery, and tapestries. For a long time he stored these in his home, but finally their number had increased to such an extent that he did not have adequate room for them all.

Consequently he filled several rooms in the Carnegie Institute with the curios he had collected. Some of these were loaned while others were given outright. Among his gifts to the museum was a collection of several hundred watches, the oldest dating back to , and including the timepieces owned at one time by notables throughout the entire globe.

Another collection is that of ebony canes with carved ivory handles. These were at one time carried by the students at Heidelberg, and the carving indicates to what corps a student belonged. The house of the pickle king was in Pittsburgh, a large and spacious mansion that was rich with costly and unique furnishings. The story is often told of the artist who painted for Mr.

Heinz a frieze of the library he was decorating. My tastes and my money are all American-made and I have every reason to be proud of my country. It would please me much better. Heinz through his efforts and wonderful personality built up. Those outside the plant who are privileged to attend some of the gatherings of the workers, are astounded at the spontaneity and the genuine sincerity with which the speakers pay tribute to their leader.

He was dearly loved by many of the employes. Once, after he had been abroad, he was welcomed when he returned by a carefully planned reception that the factory girls had initiated. A burst of hundreds of American flags were waved from the windows as his automobile drove up to the plant. The employes took pride and pleasure in celebrating his birthday.

They always gave him a token of some kind, and the happiness he always showed on such occasions gave to them the thrill that is found only in genuine appreciation. An employe who went to his office or home to work or get instructions, rarely left without receiving a gift of some kind from Mr. Heinz as a memento of the visit. Sometimes he would give them a book, sometimes a painting or antique; and the greatest gift of all was his generous and thoughtful spirit.

The plant to him not an endless tangle of machine like humans, it was a great big happy family. Another of the big business principles he put into practice and found very successful was that the organization must always be self-perpetuating. Everyone must have an understudy, and at the same time be understudying someone other than himself or herself.

Through such a system, which provided amply for expansion, material for high salaried positions was always available without going afield to pick a man for the job. Heinz wanted his employes to know that they had a future before them, he wanted them to stay with his concern and grow with it. His teaching and philanthropic work was remarkable in itself, yet the outstanding fact is that it was all so well received.

Industrial leaders throughout the country are fearful of the attitude which their business philanthropies so frequently develop. The resentment of patronage, and the simultaneous demand for more favors and privileges, is not at all uncommon in plants where welfare work has begun. Personally he was a generously built man with a most remarkable benevolent looking face, kindly eyes, a flowing mustache and side whiskers.

He was active in business for over forty years and succumbed to pneumonia in His philanthropies not only were distributed in this country but in Japan, China, and Korea. Heinz eventually bought out his partners and established the H. Heinz Co. That company was incorporated in with Heinz serving as the first president, a position he held throughout his life as he built more than 20 processing plants throughout the country.

During the Great Depression in the s, Heinz became a top seller in ready-to-eat meals and baby food under the leadership of Howard Heinz, Henry Heinz's son. During World War II, Heinz provided food aid to the United Kingdom and then expanded its international presence with new plants in several countries in the post-war years. Two years later, the investors pursued the massive merger with Kraft Foods Group.

As of August , Kraft is the third-largest food and beverage company in North America. It is the fifth-largest food and beverage company in the world. Kraft, who started a wholesale door-to-door cheese business in Chicago with his brothers. They incorporated it in By , J. Kraft and Bros. Company was selling 31 varieties of cheese, and in it patented a pasteurized processed cheese that gave cheese a longer shelf life.

Meanwhile, a company called National Dairy Products Corporation was aggressively acquiring dozens of small dairy products companies throughout the U. National Dairy changed its name to Kraftco Corp. Philip Morris then acquired Nabisco Holdings in and integrated the companies into Kraft General Foods, which it began to sell off in