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Cambridge).
But maybe parades are the wrong place to sell! Maybe I should try selling Nonpareil at Base Ball games! After all, Base Ball maybe the national Pass Time, but it is infernally slow. A game can take hours, most of it spent waiting. Fielders must stand idle for long spells, waitingfor a hit. Spectators must sit staring for hours. It may be that player and spectator alike would benefit from a hearty “chaw” to relieve the tedium.
In addition, Fillmore tried one last marketing strategy to attract customers. With his rent money, he bought a rubber stamp and a cheap deck of baseball playing cards. The back of each card depicted a ballplayer from some popular team, such as the New York Nine, the Knickerbockers, or the Cincinnati Red Stockings. On the card face, Fillmore stamped “Nonpareil Base Ball Cards – Collect them! Trade them!” Then he slipped a card inside the wrapper of every packet of Nonpareil Chewing Tobacco.
As we now know, the gamble paid off handsomely. Fillmore sold out his first deck of cards within two innings. He was obliged to leave the game and buy more decks. Nonpareil became wildly popular, as everyone scrambled to get one of the new “base ball cards.” Within a month, Fillmore Badcock was able to pay his rent, expand his business, and hire other men to hawk Nonpareil at ball games. He was able to print his own baseball trading cards.
Within a year, he was truly national, shipping consignments of Nonpareil to every one of the 38 states. He later boosted his baseball game sales even further by altering the words of apopular new song:
Take me out the ball game
Take me out with the crowd
Buy me some Nonpareil chewing tobac’
I don’t care if I never get back
This must be counted as the first, and the most successful sports-tobacco campaign in history. Chewing tobacco became forever linked with baseball in the public imagination. Indeed, it’s hard to think of baseball history without it. Ballplayers everywhere took up the “chaw.” The image of a batter with a “quid” in his cheek has persisted for over a century –many players in all leagues still chew.
The Tobacco Gin
By 1877, the General Snuff and Tobacco Company was so famous that the opening of its new factory in Richmond was national news. No less a personage than the President of the United States agreed to officiate at the opening ceremony – a ceremony which would have tragic consequences.
The new factory was like nothing ever built before. At its heart was an amazing new processing machine, the “tobacco gin.” Just as the cotton gin eliminated the backbreaking labor of making cotton fiber, so the tobacco gin would automate the process of making chewing tobacco.
The huge machine occupied the entire space inside a large building. Above it stretched a wooden scaffolding, hastily thrown up for the opening ceremony. Thence visitors crowded at the rail, gawking down while Fillmore pointed out the features of the awesome machine: tobacco leaves were sucked into one end of the building, while continuous Nonpareil cut plug chewing tobacco spewed forth from the other end. The structure above looked shaky, but it held.
As the moment of opening approached, the Richmond Zouaves Silver Band began to play aselection of popular tunes. More dignitaries arrived to join the packed crowd upon the high platform. Some said later that they felt the timbers trembling even then, even before the President’s appearance. Yet the structure held.
Finally President Cleveland’s entourage arrived. As the band struck up “Hail to the Chief,” Fillmore rushed to greet him at the factory door.
Cigar Label Depicting President Grover Cleveland
(before his accident)
“Sir, I wasn’t expecting so many people in your party. The scaffolding isn’t quite -”
“Yes, yes, a capital machine. Shall we get on with this?”
Fillmore meekly led the way into the factory to the scaffolding stairs. The President, who weighed over
But maybe parades are the wrong place to sell! Maybe I should try selling Nonpareil at Base Ball games! After all, Base Ball maybe the national Pass Time, but it is infernally slow. A game can take hours, most of it spent waiting. Fielders must stand idle for long spells, waitingfor a hit. Spectators must sit staring for hours. It may be that player and spectator alike would benefit from a hearty “chaw” to relieve the tedium.
In addition, Fillmore tried one last marketing strategy to attract customers. With his rent money, he bought a rubber stamp and a cheap deck of baseball playing cards. The back of each card depicted a ballplayer from some popular team, such as the New York Nine, the Knickerbockers, or the Cincinnati Red Stockings. On the card face, Fillmore stamped “Nonpareil Base Ball Cards – Collect them! Trade them!” Then he slipped a card inside the wrapper of every packet of Nonpareil Chewing Tobacco.
As we now know, the gamble paid off handsomely. Fillmore sold out his first deck of cards within two innings. He was obliged to leave the game and buy more decks. Nonpareil became wildly popular, as everyone scrambled to get one of the new “base ball cards.” Within a month, Fillmore Badcock was able to pay his rent, expand his business, and hire other men to hawk Nonpareil at ball games. He was able to print his own baseball trading cards.
Within a year, he was truly national, shipping consignments of Nonpareil to every one of the 38 states. He later boosted his baseball game sales even further by altering the words of apopular new song:
Take me out the ball game
Take me out with the crowd
Buy me some Nonpareil chewing tobac’
I don’t care if I never get back
This must be counted as the first, and the most successful sports-tobacco campaign in history. Chewing tobacco became forever linked with baseball in the public imagination. Indeed, it’s hard to think of baseball history without it. Ballplayers everywhere took up the “chaw.” The image of a batter with a “quid” in his cheek has persisted for over a century –many players in all leagues still chew.
The Tobacco Gin
By 1877, the General Snuff and Tobacco Company was so famous that the opening of its new factory in Richmond was national news. No less a personage than the President of the United States agreed to officiate at the opening ceremony – a ceremony which would have tragic consequences.
The new factory was like nothing ever built before. At its heart was an amazing new processing machine, the “tobacco gin.” Just as the cotton gin eliminated the backbreaking labor of making cotton fiber, so the tobacco gin would automate the process of making chewing tobacco.
The huge machine occupied the entire space inside a large building. Above it stretched a wooden scaffolding, hastily thrown up for the opening ceremony. Thence visitors crowded at the rail, gawking down while Fillmore pointed out the features of the awesome machine: tobacco leaves were sucked into one end of the building, while continuous Nonpareil cut plug chewing tobacco spewed forth from the other end. The structure above looked shaky, but it held.
As the moment of opening approached, the Richmond Zouaves Silver Band began to play aselection of popular tunes. More dignitaries arrived to join the packed crowd upon the high platform. Some said later that they felt the timbers trembling even then, even before the President’s appearance. Yet the structure held.
Finally President Cleveland’s entourage arrived. As the band struck up “Hail to the Chief,” Fillmore rushed to greet him at the factory door.
Cigar Label Depicting President Grover Cleveland
(before his accident)
“Sir, I wasn’t expecting so many people in your party. The scaffolding isn’t quite -”
“Yes, yes, a capital machine. Shall we get on with this?”
Fillmore meekly led the way into the factory to the scaffolding stairs. The President, who weighed over
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