Colgate-Palmolive-Peet

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.

Colgatiana. Not the strongest, Colgate and Co. is the oldest soap company in the U. S. In 1795, Robert Colgate, staunch British Whig, fled from menacing Tories, arrived in America with his 12-year-old son William. An unfortunate dispute over land titles, from which Robert Colgate emerged penniless, has led the House of Colgate to muse, semi-officially:

"The wind whined a requiem, a crimson ring circled the descending sun and in the offing the buzzards circled low. Robert Colgate was at bay. He had tossed the world a nosegay and it had tossed him back a burr."

Son William spurned nosegays, burrs, turned instead to soap and candles. Apprenticed to soap makers and tallow chandlers, he prepared for the year 1806, when he resolved to strike out for himself. He was almost immediately successful. By 1845, he felt justified in building a boiling pan holding 45,000 Ibs. of soap, a marvel which drew curious visitors to Manhattan. Two years later, he moved to Jersey City (N. J.), where the present Colgate plant is built on seven city squares. He died in 1857.

All his sons were able. Son James organized a banking house, helped build up Colgate university (named for William). Son Robert pioneered in white lead. It was through Son Samuel that the Colgate soap dynasty continued. Sons and grandsons filled all executive offices with such unvaried regularity that the business world was astonished, last winter, when W. E. McCaw, no Colgate, became vice president in charge of sales and advertising. But Colgates still filled eight of the nine major executive posts.

Sidney M. Colgate, vice president and treasurer of Colgate and Co., is slated for the chairmanship of the board of Col-gate-Palmolive-Peet. Charles S. Pearce, president and general manager of Palmolive-Peet, will fill the same position for the merged companies. A. W. Peet, chairman of Palmolive-Peet, is to be chairman of the new executive committee.

The U. S., wedded to superlatives, likes to think of its magnates as the world's RICHEST, its industries as the world's BIGGEST. But last week, in England, William Hulme Lever, second Viscount Leverhulme, reflected that Lever Brothers, Ltd., together with hundred-odd associated companies, make more soap (Rinso, Life Buoy, Lux, Pears) than Colgate-Palmolive-Peet, more even than the mighty Procter & Gamble.

*Founder Woodbury chopped off his own neck. It was in the early days of display advertising when a young Albany (N. Y.) salesman approached him to urge him to insert an engraving of himself in the local newspaper. Flattered, Founder Woodbury consented, approved the draught of the advertisement. But the price shocked him. He took a shears from his desk, massacred his likeness inch by inch, while the agonized salesman quoted prices. At length the neck (with collar and cravat) disappeared. With a cry, the salesman snatched his copy, rushed from the room with Founder Woodbury's neckless head.