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Advertising in The Mill City
Advertising in The Mill City
It is a peaceful, timeless
scene. The man in the foreground
steadies a flat-bottomed boat loaded
with grain sacks while another, bent
forward under his load, carries a sack
toward a humble windmill (fig. 1).
Superimposed on this nostalgic
vignette is a thoroughly modern
message: Advertising did not make
Gold Medal Flour the Leading
Brand in this country. But Quality
didand constant advertising
hasnt hurt it any.
The easy merger of past and
present in this 1906 advertisement
mirrored the flour-milling industry
itself, where state-of-the-art techniques were revolutionizing the
ancient practice of grinding grain
into flour. Nationwide, the advertising industry came into its own in
roughly the same period that Minneapolis reigned as the worlds
flour-milling capital: 18801930.1
From headquarters on opposite
shores of the Mississippi River,
Washburn-Crosby Company and its
chief rival, Pillsbury Company, became industry leaders through
timely equipment upgrades, highly
308
Fig. 2 Poster created by the St. Paul Dispatch, 1889, showing wheat from the fields of Dakota to the markets of the world
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309
Fig. 3 Ad from the export edition of the Northwestern Miller, October 15, 1882,
stressing Pillsburys place in the global economy
310
Minnesota History
Milling in Minneapolis
1856
1861
1866
1869
1870
1873
1874
1879
C. A. Pillsbury and Company contracts with architect LeRoy S. Buffington to build the new Pillsbury
A Mill on the east side of the Mississippi River.
1889
1908
1909
1928
1935
1989
1997
2001
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311
Fig. 4 Trade card, about 1904. Many shoppers collected these brightly colored
advertisements, often saving them in albums.
Minnesota History
Fig. 5 Pamphlet cover, 1897, an early instance of women and children appearing in advertising
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313
Fig. 6 Advertising on a grocers envelope, 1899, one of several places these merry maids appeared
Product diversification
was just one of many changes facing
American women, who by the 1920s
were making the majority of foodbuying decisions for their households. These women were spending
more time outside their homes, in
paying jobs or volunteer activities.
As domestic help became less afford-
314
Minnesota History
Fig. 7 Bags replaced barrels of flour, but Gold Medal brand was still the maids choice; Northwestern Miller, November 18, 1908.
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Fig. 8 The first Eventually ad, Northwestern Miller, September 11, 1907
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Minnesota History
Fig. 9 Pillsburys rebuttal, first published in the Northwestern Miller, September 22, 1915
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Fig. 10 Ad showcasing a variety of Pillsbury products, Ladies Home Journal, October 1919
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Minnesota History
Fig. 11 Betty Crocker takes center stage in this ad from the Farmers Wife, July 1925.
Notes
1. James D. Norris, Advertising and
the Transformation of American Society,
18651920 (New York: Greenwood Press,
1990). By the turn of the century, Norris
writes (p. 39), advertising in popular
magazines often exceeded a hundred
pages an issue.
2. Washburn-Crosby and Pillsbury were
by far the largest flour millers in Minneapolis, controlling 87 percent of the citys
mills in 1890; see Lucile M. Kane, The Falls
of St. Anthony: The Waterfall that Built
Minneapolis (1966; rev. ed., St. Paul:
Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987).
3. Juliann Sivulka, Soap, Sex, and
Cigarettes: A Cultural History of American
Advertising (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth
Publishing Co., 1998), 48.
4. Symbolizing modernization in the
industry, roller mills processed wheat
through a succession of rollers. This allowed
millers to make high-quality flour at
unprecedented rates. The first complete
automatic roller process in the U.S. was
installed in the Washburn A Mill in 1879.
See Robert M. Frame III, Millers to the
World: Minnesotas Nineteenth-Century
319
www.mnhs.org/mnhistory