City in Sound; Cracker Jack Company

This is Jack Angel with city and sound, stories out of Chicago, city of the greatest movement on earth, city of all things, one among them, the Cracker Jack. You've got some Cracker Jacks? How about those? You like them? This is the first time you've been here? Yes. Would you do? Come out to see what you've been eating all the time? How about you? You having fun? What's your name? Joanne? Linda? Elizabeth. Elizabeth. That's a beautiful name. What's your name? Patty. Patty? How do you like these Cracker Jacks? I like them. Do you like them better now that you've seen them made? Yeah. Uh -huh. They'd be spinach, then. How about you? If I talk to you, what's your name? Betty Jean. Betty Jean. Oh, that's a swell name. What's the package you got there? They gave you sample. Uh -huh. Now, but you like those, don't you? I love them. Eat them with the ball game. Do you

have fun here? Uh -huh. Well, that's very nice to see you. Thank you. In a land where a peanut can become a giant, it follows that a thing like a Cracker Jack can be a mountain. So much a mountain, in fact, that to pop it and package it, several hundred men and women work two shifts a day and sometimes the clock around in a modern block square plant in the southwest side clearing district. Its manufacture is a site for wide eyes, the widest of which surmount the great smiles and appetites of thousands of grammar school tourists who are happily escorted through the plant each year. Tonight, us with them. The Cracker Jack is an American institution and a Chicago institution, in fact, as well as symbol. For here it is made and here is how. We're here with Mr. Harold Wagner, who's Secretary of the Cracker Jack Company and whose father before him was Secretary. He's a second generation man here and perhaps knows as much about the Cracker Jack

Company as anybody. Mr. Wagner, first of all, how old is the company? We're in our 86th year Cracker Jack Company was originated in 1872 and each year you grow a little bit. Yes, we do. We've outgoing a number of plants over the years. Well, I'm sure you remember back in your father's day and in the summer, what, 30 or 40 years you've been here? How long have you been here, sir? I've been with the company since 1930, 28 years. In that time, between yourself and your father, I imagine there's been a number of mark changes. Are there not? Yes, there have been many changes in manufacturing and ways of doing things. We've changed machinery, kept up with the times. Automation today has reached our plant also. Now about the famous product, the name Cracker Jack. How did that come into play? Way

back in the early years, Mr. Ruckheim, the founder of the company, and some of his salesmen were standing around watching a batch of the candy coated popcorn being turned out. And one of the salesmen said to Mr. Ruckheim, that's a Cracker Jack of a product. So he said, we'll call it Cracker Jack. That's a good name. How about the symbol of trademark? I understand that that sailor jack up there and the dog is, what's the dog's name? Dog's name is Bingo. Well, that's information that we're mighty glad to have. That, sir, is quite a famous trademark, isn't it? Yes, it's known the world over, you might say. For most of the years that the package has been produced, the sailor boy and his dog have been one large panels side of the package. It now is on a narrow side of the package. Well, Mr. Wagner is something

of a Cracker Jack consumer over the years. I noticed that a while back, you changed that famous package. You did keep the boy and the dog, which you reduced him. You kind of demoted him, maybe, and you put him on the side of the package and changed it. Why did you do this to us? Well, for one thing, we wanted to get the product shown, which shows partly on one side. It's reproduced on the wrapper. This package was greatly improved by now wrapping it in aluminum foil. Which keeps the product much longer. But how many packages a day do you figure you turn out? These boxes here, full of Cracker Jack's prizes, a few peanuts. What is your production on that? Well, daily approximately a million and a half packages. You go all through the year or year after year with a million and a half a day? Well, that's quite some production. Yes,

when you figure the products on the market called Cracker Jack since 1896, that's 62 years. That's a good many millions of packages of Cracker Jack. You do make marshmallows, you mention? Do you make a lot of them? Yes, we do. We have had the Angeles brand of marshmallows, which was trademarked in 1977. And also the recipe brand was ours. Until 1930, when we acquired the Campfire Corporation. And now the Campfire name has become one of the predominant names in the industry. Mr. Wagner, I can look up on one of those display racks and see the more you eat, the more you want. So let's get out and see some with a plan. All right, sir, you're Mr. Bill Holtz and what do you do here? I'm the chief chemist in charge of research and quality

control. You have a very impressive laboratory here and I think it's the first time that I've ever seen a chemical laboratory with test tubes and bunts and burners and whatnot with all popcorn stacked high. How does this relate? Actually, the Cracker Jack Company was one of the first confectionery companies to have a laboratory. I don't know, just when I was first established, but I would guess about 1911, maybe it goes back farther than that. But what's the primary purpose of the lab? The primary purpose is to control the quality of all the products we manufacture. We test all of the incoming raw materials as well as the finished products. Raw materials would be popcorn, corn syrup, sugar, gelatin, everything. Even our source of water in the condition of our brain solutions. Even the sprinkler system in the laboratory takes care of. It's really produced scientifically. That's correct, sir. You get it when it comes in

and... While it's being made in as it leaves the building. Well, this must be kind of a complicated process at that involving a couple of early simple products. That's right. They are a couple of apparently simple products. But marshmallows are one of the most difficult confections to manufacture, satisfactory day in and day out. How many chemists do you have here or trained laboratory personnel? I have an assistant and we have three laboratory technicians on the day shift and two laboratory technicians on the night shift. The technicians have primarily been trained here in the laboratory to do the testing the way we want it done by the techniques we have developed over a period of many years. What are some of this raw material come from, Mr. Holt? The raw material such as our corn syrup, of course, is one commonly used by all manufacturers. But our popcorn is the ingredient in which we maintain our most rigid control. The seed is selected by us. It is used by the farmer and planted under our control.

It is harvested under our control. It is stored under our control. Mr. Holt, how about these heat control experiments? What's the purpose of that? Well, primarily there to determine the shelf life of crackerjack, of course, of which we are vitally concerned with. And we have an accelerated shelf life test that we use by submitting the packages to 100 degrees Fahrenheit and 95 percent relative humidity in a special cabinet that was designed for our use. From the number of days the package will stand up under those conditions, we can predict the shelf life of a package out in the open market. Difference from climate to climate, does it? That's correct. Crackerjack is very susceptible to moisture vapor. So that is what we are performing in our special moisture vapor test cabinet. That a merchant in New England can keep a stock longer than a merchant in Alabama or in Louisiana. That is correct, sir. But you hope that they don't have to keep him very long anyway. That's right. We want him turned over as rapidly as

possible. All right, sir. Well, we are standing here to the biggest battery of the biggest corn popper that I have ever seen. Each resembles a rather good sized concrete mixture and rotates in a similar fashion. And I have an idea exactly what happens here, but Mr. Walder Gardner, who is a plant engineer, does and he is standing right alongside me. Mr. Gardner, how many poppers do you have here? Well, Jack, there's 24 and we continuously feed these poppers. In other words, we are continuously feeding raw corn in here and constantly on the discharge end, we are discharging popcorn. Do these things go day and night? Yes, or 16 hours a day. You get the corn from one of the big corn bins outside, I understand. And how do you get them in the room here and the poppers? Well, we have six silos outside and we have six corn silos. And out of these corn silos, we take it from the bottom and elevate it and put it in the screw conveyors.

And from there it is cleaned three times. And we put it reserved in and we pull from the reserved bin to feed these poppers. And the popcorn is blown through here and big pipes goes into the poppers and then I see that it goes down to some kind of a duck. What does it go from here after it's popped? Well, we do after it wraps out of the popper, we put it into an air stream and elevate it about 10 feet and lay it up on belts. During this elevation period, we separate the small kernels or the kernels that are on pop. This corn we sell to the local farmers here as cattle feed. Well, that's the corn over in those big boxes there. Yes, that's correct. So in other words, your operation separates the good corn from the bad. Yes, we only want the large kernels in our box of cracker there. All right, the popcorn goes out of here from these tremendous poppers and then where does it go from there? Well, in the next room, Jack, we have storage bins. And

we store this corn until it's used and it's put near a constant operation. That's only a surge storage. And we put it into batch tubs where we apply the coating. All right, let's go down the line and look at it, sir. Okay, Mr. Gardner, we're here with... This is a number of tremendous batch of popcorn and they're about to be made into cracker jacks. What happens now? Well, these tubs go down the conveyor line, Jack. And they're placed under a cooking kettle. And the syrup that we coat the cracker jack with is cooked to about 330 degrees. We also add some peanuts to it. And in that way, we roast our peanuts right with our cracker jack syrup. The syrup is then dumped on the corn and it becomes one large glob in the batch tub. So we then move over to what we call our mixers. And that is a vertical screw that enters into the top

of the batch tub. And we turn that screw while we're turning the tub in the opposite direction. I can see that dries the corn as it gets on it and becomes caramel corn. That's correct. That completes the coating of all corn in the bottom of the tub. From there, we have to move it into what we call the reels. They look like huge concrete mixers in the back there. We also blow a heated air, which helps to dry out the coating. Otherwise, we would end up with popcorn fall. So I say, you know, I have cracker jacks. That is correct. From the back end of the reels, it is sifted out and down through a screw conveyor into the packing room. All right. Let's see what happens next. Thank you. Well, now we're here in the prize room designated not because it won some kind of a prize for architecture, though it is a nice neat and clean room. But because it's the room where the prizes are stuffed in cracker jack boxes. Here with me is

the four lady of the prize room, Lily and Lamont. How long have you been here, man? 25 and a half years. You've seen a lot of prizes come in golden. That's right. I understand that you, like and see, I should say that you've gone quite a bit to plastic. Is that for convenience saker? Well, children enjoy the plastic a lot better than paper. Well, how do you do this? I see that they're wrapped in packets even before they're put into the package. Well, by our machines, we wrap 125 a minute on each machine and we have four machines running. How many? And some of the larger objects that we can't run on the machine, we hand wrap. How many girls do you have here that do this work? Well, 15 right now, four on the night shift. We'll do nothing but wrap and pack it up. The prizes. This is before, of course, we might explain the prizes going to the packages.

These are just the plain raw material. Children who come up here for tours, do they ever say anything to you about the prizes? Oh, those ones they enter the door. All prizes. That's it. They're all excited. And they like to see the different varieties of what we've got. Well, boy, they're pretty impressive. And there are a lot of them. No matter if fact, we're looking out on to, I'd say, on 25 or 30 bins that are filled. They're filled with prizes. A lot of prizes. A lot of cracker jacks. That's right. Well, this is truly the heart of the matter. We're in the packaging room now, the packaging department of cracker jacks. This is the crucible. This is the best American vertor of the mill, if you want to put it that way. This is where it happens. The prizes are tucked in the boxes and the cracker jacks and the peanuts along side and they're packaged and sent out into the world. And here to tell us a little bit about it is Fessie Heinko, who is the forlady of the packaging department. Could you describe to us now just exactly

what goes on here? Well, we start off our package with a flat tablet, what we call a tablet. It opens up and then our girl puts in our prize in each package. And then it runs down to our filling department or filler. And it's filled there and then run down to our wrapper where a girl operates the machine. Then it runs down to our wax and it's dipped in wax, reserved the package. And then to an outer wrapper where a girl watches the machine and it's a finished package. It goes out in the packaging, packaging into cases. And then into our sealer which completes the packaging of one case. Well, actually this is all done in a line that's just a few feet long isn't it? Well, within a few feet. I can see the lady who puts the prize in and then the

machine that puts the cracker jacks in actually looks like some kind of a vending machine that's best I can describe. But it's an overhead device that stops the package which then blows down. The corn comes from up there into a large hopper and then leads into what we call our filler, which operates from one side to the other and fills our package with a certain amount. In about 30 feet down the line it comes out a completely filled and wrapped and sealed box. Yeah, that's right. Well, I suppose when you get home from each day you don't exactly feel like eating popcorn or anything. No, I don't think so. I like the peanuts the best. Ernest Rabko is merchandise manager of the cracker jack company whose job it is roughly to dispose of a million and a half boxes of cracker jacks a day. Is this difficult? Not too hard. Cracker jack is a part of Americana. We have almost complete distribution and all types of retail outlets throughout the United States.

So the job isn't too difficult although it does keep most of us on our toes. Well, of course we know that the ultimate destination of the cracker jack is in somebody's tummy. But where does it go when it leaves the plant? Where do most of them go, Ernest? Well, they go to the big supermarket chains throughout the country to their warehouses to be distributed to their stores. They go to wholesale grocers to be distributed to their customers. They go to candy and tobacco wholesalers to be distributed to the stores that they call on. Cracker jack is a must at the circus. The circus buys considerable quantities. Baseball parts, concessions, beach concessions throughout the country. Cracker jack is even used in fundraising by organizations such as the Lions. Well, how about let's take the circus, for example. Well, how many

boxes or cartons or pounds of cracker jacks with a circus like, say, Mold Barnum and Bailey wringling brothers? Well, when they're in Madison Square Garden just this morning we had an order to commend for a thousand cases of cracker jack. There's a hundred packages packed to the case so that you can see that the circus sells a tremendous quantity at Madison Square Garden and other points where they are now showing. Well, I suppose that consumption and turnover are never a problem. Actually, do you find the demand for cracker jacks growing the people's appetite for cracker jacks? Cracker jack is steadily increasing in sales. You don't have any competition in cracker jacks, do you, Ernie? No, we've had through the years a number of different concerns that have come up with the product similar to ours but they didn't seem to last too long. Could you put into a few words or have you ever thought about kind of a cracker

jack digest of the success of this product? What's the answer? What has it got that has done this to it? Well, I think the cracker jack slogan more than anything else will tell a story on that. The cracker jack slogan says the more you eat the more you want and evidently it's true because the sales as I mentioned before are steadily increasing. This tastes good. It just tastes good. What's your name? Paul? We're a big boy. How old are you? Six. You're pretty big for six, aren't you? I'm gonna be seven. Oh, well, you're big enough to eat those cracker jacks, aren't you? What are you got in the box, sir? Prices and cracker jacks. Yeah, you eat those cracker jacks? Yeah, you ever eat the prize? No. Well, just a cracker jack, sir. What's your name? Becky? Boy, are you cute? You're one of them. Oh, what a blonde. How do you like it here? I

like it. How old are you? Six. Six, how come you're not in school today? I...because we went to the cracker jacks. And that's more important, isn't it? You get a nice big package there, haven't you? My mother was yesterday. Oh, yes. You gonna take some home to the teacher? And my mother got already two packages of it. And now I get one. That makes three. Boy, I'm for you. Oh, that's great. This then is the cracker jack. Caramel corn and a colored plastic prize. Boxed in a wax liner and bright foil. The sailor boy and bingo the dog on a million copyrighted cartons. Product of laboratory science and test tube quality control. Off a production line on the machines of modern industry. The Russians would never understand this. Would more than likely convert the line to make shell casings or precut shoe leather. But here, it stands as a symbol of the great American capacity

to enjoy life as well as defend it. There is no point in being profound. As the man said, the more you eat, the more you want. This is Jack Angel with George Wilson, an engineer, whose recordings here have imprinted city in sound.