Reflections: Santa Anna + Wrigley = A match made in heaven

Back in 1995, the William Wrigley Jr. Company opened a chewing gum factory on property they had owned in Yorkville for several years. And I don’t know if you saw the news or not a couple years ago when the company announced they were expanding their Yorkville operation.

For years, Wrigley manufactured several chewing gum brands in Yorkville. But then in 2014, the company announced the exciting news that they were going to start making Skittles right here in Kendall County. Exciting, that is, if you like Skittles, which I can take or leave, although mostly leave. Juicy Fruit and Double Mint gum are both OK, but have never really been a fan of fruit-flavored candy.

But back to chewing gum, which has been popular – almost an obsession – in the U.S. since the late 1860s. And the story of that obsession here in the U.S. begins with one of the arch-villains of yesteryear, Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the guy that rubbed out Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett at the Alamo back in 1836.

The former Mexican dictator and below-average, though over-achieving, general had been deposed for years before he decided to vacation on New York's Staten Island in 1868. Being a haven for the world’s bad guys is sort of U.S. tradition. Ferdinand Marcos (the kleptomaniac who ran the Philippines), and the Shah of Iran both went there after their own people kicked them out. Even so, Santa Anna ambling around Staten Island still seems seriously odd to me.

But anyway, as he strolled along the beach, Mexico’s former maximum leader was spied breaking off pieces of chicle and chewing it.

Chicle is derived from the bark of the sapodilla tree, an evergreen native to Central America and Mexico. The Mayas and the Aztecs were the first to use the stuff as chewing gum, but it failed to pique anyone’s interest here in the U.S. until Santa Anna took his stroll along the beach just after the Civil War.

Young Thomas Adams, who was working as the secretary for Mexico's former Napoleon wanna-be, frequently saw the former dictator walking and chewing chicle at the same time, and decided chicle might be a money-maker. Adams ordered 5,000 pounds of the stuff and invented a machine that produced chicle in long, thin strips, notched every few inches so that store owners could break off lengths for sale. Adams marketed his product under the Adams New York Gum label.

John Colgan, a druggist in Louisville, Kentucky, found Adams' gum interesting but tasteless, so he added tolu balsam – a pleasant flavoring obtained from yet another Central American tree – to chicle, selling the product under his own Taffy-Tolu label.

Enter William Wrigley Jr.

Wrigley, born in 1861, was expelled from school in Philadelphia at the age of 12, and ran away from home to sell newspapers on the streets of New York. He later earned $1.50 a week working in his father's soap factory, moving up to become a traveling soap salesman. He soon established himself as one of the premier "drummers" in the nation.

At age 31, after sampling Colgan's Taffy-Tolu, the super soap salesman decided this new take on Adams’ chewing gum was the wave of the future, and figured a fortune could be made with the product.

The first gum manufacturer Wrigley visited had the nerve to keep him waiting more than 10 minutes. A stickler for promptness, Wrigley stomped over to the office of a more prompt businessman with whom he deigned to work.

The former soap sales genius quickly transferred his know-how to selling gum. When he began making his own chewing gum, he named his first product "Lotta," as in "Lotta value for your money" (he was apparently less a stickler for grammar than promptness).

Within 40 years, Wrigley's firm produced and sold more than 113 billion sticks of gum, and earned more than $185 million for his firm's stockholders.

Wrigley was never a shy fellow, and his growing fortune allowed him to enjoy life as he saw it. He always bought bright red autos, claiming, with some justification, they were easier to find. He bragged he could sell anything to anyone (which he probably could), boasting to the press he could sell pianos to armless men in Borneo if need be.

His was an ego definitely Donald Trump-sized. In 1902, to inspire his legions of gum salesmen throughout the U.S., Wrigley sent each of them – all 12,000 – hand-autographed photos of himself.

And the thing is, he was a sales genius. He shipped free packets of his gum to every person listed in phone books in the U.S. Twice. He even had the Mother Goose tales rewritten so the stories included chewing gum. Then he had 14 million copies printed and distributed them all over the country.

Best of all from his perspective, it all worked. Per capita consumption of chewing gum increased from 39 sticks per person in 1914 to 130 by 1947.

In 1925, William turned management of his gum empire over to his son, P.K. Wrigley, who, with his son, continued his father's promotional tactics to the great benefit of the company.

For instance, when World War II broke out, the Wrigley company had a huge stockpile of aluminum used to make gum wrappers. But P.K., with an appropriate public relations blitz, turned all of the strategically important metal over to the government, and in return Uncle Sam made sure Wrigley got a lucrative contract to package military rations. Of course, a pack of gum went with virtually every ration package, helping Wrigley reach a relatively captive audience.

All of which goes to show that everything – even chewing gum – has a history. And it also goes to show that people usually make history, and not the other way around.

If Charles Adams hadn't spied Gen. Santa Anna pensively chewing chicle on that Staten Island beach back in 1868, the world would have had neither Wrigley Spearmint Gum, nor Adams' Chiclets to chew on.

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