The name of C. W. Post is identified with an industry that has only
come into existence within the past few years, but which, nevertheless,
has assumed tremendous proportions, and is remarkable in many ways,
not the least of which is that it puts cereals to uses which were
absolutely unknown a generation ago. Postum cereal coffee, for example,
has only been before the public since 1895. Yet recently Mr. Post and
his associates declined an offer of ten millions of dollars for the
factories which made the coffee and its associated products of the
wheat field. Mr. Post’s life story is that of a boy with a light purse,
boundless ambition and a determination to reach the goal of large
successes. He was born October 26, 1854, in Springfield, Illinois.
After a common school education he entered the University of Illinois
when thirteen years of age, took a military course, and remained there
until he was fifteen, when the spirit of independence which has been
a characteristic of his career throughout asserted itself. To use his
own words, “I became weary of depending on my father’s money.” Leaving
the university, he obtained a position with a manufacturer of farm
machinery, which he sold and put in operation for the purchasers.
After a couple of years of this work, he began business for himself
in conjunction with a partner in the appropriately named town of
Independence, Kansas. The firm dealt in hardware and farm machinery.
But too little capital hampered his efforts, so he sold out and again
took up drumming. Later he became manager of a wholesale machinery
house in Kansas City. Returning to Illinois, he organized a company
for the manufacturing of plows and cultivators, was quite successful,
but his health breaking down, chaos resulted, and he lost all his
savings. After dabbling in real estate in California, he ranched in
Texas, fell ill again, recovered, and then bought twenty-seven acres
of ground at Battle Creek, Michigan. Here it was that he began to make
the famous coffee, to which allusion has been made. Here, too, he
experimented with prepared, and finally placed upon the market those
cooked and semi-cooked cereal foods with which we are familiar at the
breakfast-table. The first year that the Post products were before the
public, there was a profit of $175,000, the second year showed a loss
of over $40,000—this being due to profits being sunk in advertising—and
the third year there was a clear gain of $384,000. From that time on
the business has been most profitable. It is stated that the concern
is now preparing to spend one million dollars a year for advertising.
Two years ago Mr. Post retired from the active conduct of the concern.
He now divides his time between the offices in this country and
abroad, and the chain of factories in the west. He is president of the
association of American advertisers, and maintains at his own expense
the Post check currency bureau at Washington.