Business: Clicquot Club Train

At Millis, Mass., where Clicquot Club ginger ale is made, the famed Clicquot Club “Eskimos” sang, down by the railroad tracks, of their bubbling, tangy product. It was the 42nd anniversary of their company’s founding. But more significant than that, the 40-car freight train that stood on the tracks where they sang was loaded with 400,000 bottles of Clicquot Club ginger ale.

If all the bottles were placed butt on cap “they would make a pencil of glass 63 miles high.” They contained sufficient drink “to supply every man, woman and child in Oregon with a glassful.” The glassful would be cold, for the freight cars were refrigerated. They made up “the first solid train of trademarked merchandise ever to pull out of New England.”

Governor Alvan Tufts Fuller of Massachusetts considered the situation sufficiently significant to mark a case of Clicquot Club ginger ale for delivery to William Hale Thompson, Mayor of Chicago.