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Philip K. he named a gum, "P. K's.," to share
the fame of other Wrigley products, "Spearmint,"
"Doublemint," "Juicy Fruit." He still keeps in
close touch with his business and when in Chicago eats lunch in the
restaurant on the main floor of the white Wrigley Building which
towers like a huge birthday cake beside an oily curve of the Chicago
river. Snobbish Chicagoans who see him eating there are impressed with
what they call the democracy of this great millionaire who was once a
soap crutcher. In modern times soap is crutched or mixed by a machine
but in the soap factory of William Wrigley Sr., opposite Wayne
Junction, Philadelphia, the soap crutcher stood beside a vat of boiling
soap and stirred it with a paddle. When Wrigley Jr.—young Wrigley
then—tired of developing his muscles in this way he persuaded his
father to let him sell scouring soap on the road and before long was
driving through the high-grass towns of Pennsylvania, New York, and New
England in a four horse team with bells on the harness. He was a good
salesman. When other manufacturers cut under his father's prices he
raised Wrigley scouring soap to retail at 10¢ instead of 3¢ and gave
dealers an umbrella with every box they bought. He added baking powder
to his line, and threw in a cook book or a box of chewing gum with
every can. Finding that the gum went better than the baking powder he
concentrated on that and gave away with it cash-registers,
cheese-cutters, scales and desks. Often his premiums wiped out his
profits and he never made much money until he started to advertise,
first in small town papers and store windows, then on billboards and in
city papers. When he had $100,000 he spent it all on an advertising
campaign in Manhattan, got no returns. He saved up $100,000 more, spent
that the same way, then $250,000 that brought back his losses and put
him way ahead. "I'm strong for honest ballyhoo, but you can't
treat them all alike. Don't let them lose you and don't let them rile
you. I know—I was a full-fledged long-pants travelling salesman when
I was thirteen." A few years ago he bought a summer house to spend
the winter in at Pasadena but got bored there, heard Santa Catalina
Island was for sale and bought the whole place for $3,000,000.
* Because other countries (except Japan) play baseball hardly
at all and world competition is conspicuously absent.
