To get goodwill, loud robust William Wrigley Jr. thought nothing of distributing 29 carloads of Gem razors and 1,000,000 electric clocks along with his gum. Early in Depression he pleased the South by announcing he would convert up to $12,000,000 from his southern gum sales into cotton (TIME, April 13, 1931). He had already boosted Wrigley sales in Canada and attracted wide publicity by buying quantities of Canadian wheat in a depressed market. By the time he died in 1932 the U. S. consumption of gum had risen in 18 years from 39...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
