Chapter in Soap

Last week in Manhattan many a prominent citizen, many an obscure citizen, and every soap dealer received an invitation reading in part: "The National Soap Sculpture Committee requests the honor of your presence at the sixth annual exhibition of small sculptures in white soap for the Procter & Gamble prizes. . . ." Well-informed citizens immediately recognized the contest as a clever advertising scheme proposed some years ago and put into execution by smart Publicist Edward L. Bernays. The idea was suggested by the quantity of soap sculptures which annually were sent to Procter & Gamble, makers of Ivory Soap, by unknown but aspiring sculptors. The exhibition last week contained nearly 5,000 pieces, was international in scope.

First prize of $500 went to one Peter P. Ott of Manhattan for his soap torso done in a Greek manner. That the contest had left the realm of advertising and ventured into the realm of pure art seemed indicated by the jury of award which listed among others Sculptors Gutzon Borglum, Lorado Taft, Artist Charles Dana Gibson, Architect Harvey Wiley Corbett. Many of the competing sculptors were obviously serious in their work. The work of some was creditable. To most, however (including Colyumist Robert Littell of the New York World who suggested that the advantage of soap statuary was that it would float in case of flood whereas the marbles of Praxiteles would sink), the contest seemed amusing.

But Ivory's President, Col. William Cooper Procter, had other things to think about last week.

He acquired (for a rumored eight or ten million dollars) James S. Kirk & Co., manufacturers of Jap Rose soap, oldtime Procter & Gamble rival in the Chicago area, an ancient & honored Chicago industry which (until last week) was still controlled by the descendants of the original James S. Kirk who founded it in Utica, N. Y., in 1839, took it to Chicago two decades later.

And also last week Col. Procter, No. 1 Tycoon of Cincinnati, was planning to go to Baltimore.

Alert Baltimoreans, anxious to establish their city's claims to industrial importance, point not to the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, their old and most famed company, but focus attention on new industries lately settled in Baltimore. Outstanding among these are Glenn L. Martin (aviation) Co., now building a 1,O42-acre factory and airport near the harbor, Western Electric Co., building a $24,000,000 generating plant. Others are Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Co., whose Baltimore factory was only recently completed, Bethlehem Steel, which maintains there the world's largest tidewater steel plant, General Electric, and of aviation companies Berliner-Joyce, Curtiss-Caproni, Doyle Aero. Industries such as these, Baltimoreans hope, will transform their City of Monuments into a city of tycoons, will swell Baltimore's population from 850,000 to the more satisfactory 1,000,000. Such transformation and swelling seemed to move a step nearer last week when a new $5,000,000 Procter & Gamble factory was nearing completion. Gratefully, therefore, a group of Baltimoreans planned to give in the Chesapeake Club on the top floor of the new skyscraping Baltimore Trust Co., a dinner in honor of Col. Procter.

The Man. Married, childless, tall, gaunt, white-haired but young-faced, Col. William Cooper Procter is the man who guides the destinies of Ivory Soap, his company's most famed product. His military title was won in the Ohio National Guard. Later at the Citizens' Military Training Camp at Plattsburg, he became the firm friend of General Leonard Wood, whom he supported for the Presidential nomination. Princeton graduated him in 1883, thanks him for Procter Hall, dining hall of the graduate college. Deeply religious and serious, Col. Procter is no reformer. He drives fearlessly and fast in open cars, goes quail-shooting twice a year in Tennessee, gave $2,500,000 to the Cincinnati Children's Hospital for pediatric research, generously supports the Community Chest of Cincinnati where he makes his home. His favorite indulgence is Maillard's caramels with which his pockets are always and everywhere supplied, also his desks, hall tables, offices. He last year shocked a formal Procter & Gamble convention dinner by appearing with an old grey sweater under his coat in place of a waistcoat.

The Soap. Indicative of civilization is use of soap, which ranks among the first of mass-distributed products. But although it is known that early civilizations were soap users, their soap tycoons are lost to memory. In present times the great and only soap tycoon was the late Lord Leverhulme (William Hesketh Lever, 1851-1925) who while he was developing Lever Bros. (Sunlight, Lux, Lifebuoy) also developed the Belgian Congo. Art lover, collector, philanthropist, Lord Leverhulme to the day of his death maintained that his was the largest soap company in the world. Today Procter & Gamble dispute the claim, which has never satisfactorily been settled. Earnings of Lever Bros. last year were approximately $26,000,000; earnings of P. & G., $19,148,943 (Colgate- Palmolive-Peet last year earned $8,901,631).*

P. & G. is one of the land's largest producers of cotton seed oil in the U. S., buys or produces 50% of the total U. S. edible fat production, uses 90% of all whale oil imported into the U. S. Most famed throughout the U. S. is Procter & Gamble's Ivory Soap which is "99 44/100 pure" and "Floats." But P. & G. Naphtha is said to be the largest selling soap in the world. Famed also are P. & G.'s Camay (toilet soap) and Crisco (shortening).

Procter & Gamble today operates seven factories: Ivorydale, Ohio; Dallas, Tex.; Macon, Ga.; Port Ivory, Staten Island, X. Y.; St. Louis, Mo.; Hamilton, Ontario; Kansas City, Kan. Largest factory is in Ivorydale, near Cincinnati; the new Baltimore plant, whose three-storied boilers can boil 9,000,000 Ib. of soap (300 carloads) at one time, is intended to guide ventures in the East and Southeast. Similar to this factory is a now-being-planned $5.000,000 plant at Long Beach, Calif.

Not first but among the first to offer stock to employes was Procter & Gamble. P. & G. officials point with pride to certain of their $30-a-week employes whose salaries have never been raised but who have saved by stock buying more than $75,000. Latest employment policy of the company was to guarantee (seven years ago) to each of its employes 48 weeks of work out of the year. Striking is P. & G. correlation between production and sales (favorite saying among P. & G. officials is that their distribution and production graph is as flat as a bar of soap).

*But Lever Bros, owns vast plantations in Belgian Congo, its own whaling and a steamship fishing fleet, controls the West Coast (Africa) palm oil trade.

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