Stockholders of two large soap companies were summoned, last week, to consider a merger. Officers of Colgate and Co. and of the Palmolive-Peet Co. had agreed on terms. As the most pessimistic of stockholders could see nothing but manufacturing and distributing economies in the consolidation, the birth of Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Corp. was hailed in advance as another milestone in the soap industry.
Soap. Thoroughgoing in most White House economies, Mrs. Calvin Coolidge failed to perform one of the oldest and simplest housewifely tasks. Had she liked, she might have gone into the kitchen, selected a few goodly-sized pans, mixed animal fats (ox, hog) with oils (cottonseed, coconut) and lye—then put the mixture to boil. When it had reached a proper consistency, she would have run it off into frames, allowed it to cool and harden. Without much difficulty, she would have made enough soap to stock the White House bathrooms and kitchens for many a month.
But she could not have pointed with pride to the texture, the shape, the odor of her product. It would have been coarse, ill-shapen, irritating to the skin, offensive to the nose. Guests would have shunned the White House bathrooms. Servants would have departed in disgust and fury rather than wash dishes with thrifty, housewifely soap. Wisely, Mrs. Coolidge chose to purchase soap made of the finest oils, boiled in steam-heated, 1,000,000-lb. urns, purified of complexion-destroying acids, perfumed with flowered scents, shaped to beguile both hand and eye.
Softsoap. It was not difficult to persuade Mrs. Coolidge that she should not make her own soap. But 120 years ago, such persuasion was the chief problem of soap salesmanship. Soap making was a routine occupation of every household. The eighteenth century housewife thought of buying soap as the twentieth century housekeeper would think of buying fried eggs for breakfast. The first soap manufacturers had to be clever psychologists. They had to make it smart to buy soap.
The sales problem of today is not how to convince housewives to buy soap, but how to make them addicts of a particular brand. Manufacturers have appealed, variously, to vanity, comfort, whimsy. To the Palmolive-Peet Company, vanity appears the chief factor in the public's soap-buying. Women are urged to "keep that schoolgirl complexion." A faint odor of promiscuity hangs over the seductive call of Woodbury's Facial Soap—"A Skin You Love to Touch." But the forthrightness of the Woodbury laboratories (N. Y.), is reestablished by the picture of Founder John H. Woodbury, minus neck,* appearing on each package.
Sternly pure (99 44/100%) is Procter and Gamble's Ivory Soap, famed for floating. The Gold Dust Corp., makers of Fairy Soap, appeals to an elf-loving public with the query: "Have You a Little Fairy in Your Home?" Solid qualities of comfort, scents of the Orient (Cashmere Bouquet), are stressed by Colgate and Co.
Sales. By merging, the Colgate and Palmolive-Peet companies pool sales officially estimated in 1927 at $100,000,000. But they have not yet threatened the supremacy of Procter and Gamble. This Cincinnati house did a business last year of $191,776,978, remains the largest soap producer in the U. S., a triumph for 99 44/100% purity.