Stocks and News
Home | Week in Review Process | Terms of Use | About UsContact Us
   Articles Go Fund Me All-Species List Hot Spots Go Fund Me
Week in Review   |  Bar Chat    |  Hot Spots    |   Dr. Bortrum    |   Wall St. History
Stock and News: Hot Spots
  Search Our Archives: 
 

 

Wall Street History

https://www.gofundme.com/s3h2w8

AddThis Feed Button

   

07/14/2006

Mr. Graham Cracker

So I’ve been meaning to do a little piece on the 100th anniversary
of Kellogg’s, but realized you can’t discuss the cereal maker
without delving into the history of Sylvester Graham, the founder
of the Graham cracker and one of America’s first nutritionists,
even if it was largely by accident.

Graham was also one of this nation’s true wackos. Born in West
Suffield, Ct., on July 4, 1794, Sylvester’s father was 72 when the
little guy came into this world. In fact his father sired 16 other
children before Sylvester, with two wives, though he lived just
another two years.

What Sylvester inherited from his father, so to speak, was his
ministerial abilities, the latter having taken to the pulpit for 50
years. Sadly, Sylvester appeared to pick up something from his
mother, as a few years after his father’s death she was ruled to be
“in a deranged state of mind.” Graham himself later wrote that
“my mother’s health sank under her complicated trials, the
family was broken up, and I fell into the hands of strangers.”

Young Sylvester was a mess, shunned by the community. He
began to suffer nervous breakdowns.

But in 1823, at almost thirty years of age, he enrolled in a
secondary school attached to what would become Amherst
College. Sylvester, though, wasn’t popular among his fellow
students and after just one semester he was expelled on what
historian John Steele Gordon said was a “trumped-up charge.”
At least one professor did recognize that Sylvester had a talent
for public speaking and in 1826 Graham was ordained.

His big break came in 1830 through an association with the
Pennsylvania Society for Discouraging the Use of Ardent Spirits,
one of the bigger temperance organizations of its time. But
while most of these institutions simply wanted Americans to
slow down when it came to the drink (we imbibed prodigious
amounts in those days), Graham advocated total abstinence.

Then he began to develop theories that championed a natural diet
of grains, veggies, and fruits, as well as abstinence from alcohol,
tea and tobacco.

More specifically, Graham’s church believed in returning to the
state of Adam and Eve and eating foods that would restore
balance to the body. [This is obviously long before Kevin
Trudeau, sports fans.] Graham wrote, “The simpler, plainer, and
more natural the food the more healthy, vigorous, and long-
lived will be the body.”

Rev. Graham was also fixated on sexuality and controlling
sexual urges through diet. As Amanda Spake wrote in a story for
U.S. News & World Report, Sylvester “maintained that some
foods could ‘overstimulate’ the organs, leading to indigestion
and sexual arousal.” Hillel Schwartz, a cultural historian adds,
“Graham believed you had to avoid foods that stayed in the body
because he believed they fermented, essentially turned to
alcohol,” which then led to eroticism. Well I’ll be!

Graham took his initial theories and expanded on them.
Anything “stimulating” was automatically “debilitating,” in the
words of John Steele Gordon. In Graham’s case, this included
everything from meats to warm baths to sweets. Graham became
a crusader for a way of life that required proper habits of dress,
hygiene (he recommended three baths a week!), and mind.

But Gordon writes in “The Business of America” that “It was the
cholera epidemic that put Graham on the map.”

“The disease had been spreading from its base in India since
1826 and had hit Europe by the early 1830s. There was no doubt
that the New World would be next. Virtually nothing was then
known about the disease except its deadly nature. Its causative
microorganism would not be determined until the 1880s, and
even the fact that it was spread by contaminated water supplies
was not understood till the 1850s. People flocked to hear anyone
who could tell them about the disease, and Graham, with his
histrionic talents, was soon in great demand. The fact that he
ascribed cholera to both chicken pie and ‘excessive lewdness’
did not dissuade them in the least.”

Graham took his theories on diet and invented Graham bread, or
Graham crackers the name that then stuck. He actually
stumbled on a basic of nutrition, though he didn’t understand it
fully at the time; his bread, made of coarsely ground whole
wheat flour, preserved the vitamins.

This came about while he railed on the topic of white bread, the
process for which removed the good stuff (wheat germ, bran and
fiber) and instead used “stretchers” such as lime to cut costs. In
1837 he wrote “A Treatise on Bread and Bread-making,”
outlining the theory that fiber was good for one’s health. Yes,
his famous cracker was the first health food.

Graham’s fame spread far and wide. “No man,” he boasted, “can
travel by stage or steamboat or go into any part of our country
and begin to advocate a vegetable diet without being
immediately asked What! Are you a Grahamite?” [John Steele
Gordon]

Sylvester Graham expanded into hotels and health clubs. He
advocated daily exercise, open bedroom windows in winter and a
cheerful disposition at mealtime. Muckraker Horace Greeley
lived on a Graham-inspired diet of beans, potatoes, boiled rice,
milk, and Graham crackers.

Well you can imagine that not everyone was a fan of the
reverend. Being an adherent of vegetarianism (the first
American Vegetarian Society was founded in 1850), butchers,
bakers, and candlestick makers (well, maybe not the last one)
were none too pleased their occupations were being called into
question.

John Steele Gordon:

“In Boston, they struck back. The butchers and bakers
intimidated the owner of the lecture hall where Graham was
scheduled to talk, and he canceled the booking. Graham went to
the owners of the not-yet-finished Marlborough Hotel, the
nation’s first temperance hotel. The owners courageously
allowed him to use it, even though Boston’s mayor said he could
not guarantee the peace.

“The Grahamites boarded up the windows on the first floor and
stationed men on the roof with bags of slaked lime. When the
butchers and bakers attacked the hotel, they were showered with
it. In the words of Harper’s Weekly, ‘The eyes had it, and the
rabble incontinently adjourned.’”

Graham died in 1851, wealthy, but only 56, despite his ‘clean
living.’

Next week, the Kellogg Brothers take Graham’s cause to the next
level.

Sources:

John Steele Gordon, “The Business of America”
Amanda Spake / U.S. News & World Report
George Brown Tindall and David E. Shi, “America: A Narrative
History”
“The Oxford Companion to United States History,” edited by
Paul Boyer
“The Encyclopedia of American Facts and Dates,” edited by
Gorton Carruth

Brian Trumbore



AddThis Feed Button

 

-07/14/2006-      
Web Epoch NJ Web Design  |  (c) Copyright 2016 StocksandNews.com, LLC.

Wall Street History

07/14/2006

Mr. Graham Cracker

So I’ve been meaning to do a little piece on the 100th anniversary
of Kellogg’s, but realized you can’t discuss the cereal maker
without delving into the history of Sylvester Graham, the founder
of the Graham cracker and one of America’s first nutritionists,
even if it was largely by accident.

Graham was also one of this nation’s true wackos. Born in West
Suffield, Ct., on July 4, 1794, Sylvester’s father was 72 when the
little guy came into this world. In fact his father sired 16 other
children before Sylvester, with two wives, though he lived just
another two years.

What Sylvester inherited from his father, so to speak, was his
ministerial abilities, the latter having taken to the pulpit for 50
years. Sadly, Sylvester appeared to pick up something from his
mother, as a few years after his father’s death she was ruled to be
“in a deranged state of mind.” Graham himself later wrote that
“my mother’s health sank under her complicated trials, the
family was broken up, and I fell into the hands of strangers.”

Young Sylvester was a mess, shunned by the community. He
began to suffer nervous breakdowns.

But in 1823, at almost thirty years of age, he enrolled in a
secondary school attached to what would become Amherst
College. Sylvester, though, wasn’t popular among his fellow
students and after just one semester he was expelled on what
historian John Steele Gordon said was a “trumped-up charge.”
At least one professor did recognize that Sylvester had a talent
for public speaking and in 1826 Graham was ordained.

His big break came in 1830 through an association with the
Pennsylvania Society for Discouraging the Use of Ardent Spirits,
one of the bigger temperance organizations of its time. But
while most of these institutions simply wanted Americans to
slow down when it came to the drink (we imbibed prodigious
amounts in those days), Graham advocated total abstinence.

Then he began to develop theories that championed a natural diet
of grains, veggies, and fruits, as well as abstinence from alcohol,
tea and tobacco.

More specifically, Graham’s church believed in returning to the
state of Adam and Eve and eating foods that would restore
balance to the body. [This is obviously long before Kevin
Trudeau, sports fans.] Graham wrote, “The simpler, plainer, and
more natural the food the more healthy, vigorous, and long-
lived will be the body.”

Rev. Graham was also fixated on sexuality and controlling
sexual urges through diet. As Amanda Spake wrote in a story for
U.S. News & World Report, Sylvester “maintained that some
foods could ‘overstimulate’ the organs, leading to indigestion
and sexual arousal.” Hillel Schwartz, a cultural historian adds,
“Graham believed you had to avoid foods that stayed in the body
because he believed they fermented, essentially turned to
alcohol,” which then led to eroticism. Well I’ll be!

Graham took his initial theories and expanded on them.
Anything “stimulating” was automatically “debilitating,” in the
words of John Steele Gordon. In Graham’s case, this included
everything from meats to warm baths to sweets. Graham became
a crusader for a way of life that required proper habits of dress,
hygiene (he recommended three baths a week!), and mind.

But Gordon writes in “The Business of America” that “It was the
cholera epidemic that put Graham on the map.”

“The disease had been spreading from its base in India since
1826 and had hit Europe by the early 1830s. There was no doubt
that the New World would be next. Virtually nothing was then
known about the disease except its deadly nature. Its causative
microorganism would not be determined until the 1880s, and
even the fact that it was spread by contaminated water supplies
was not understood till the 1850s. People flocked to hear anyone
who could tell them about the disease, and Graham, with his
histrionic talents, was soon in great demand. The fact that he
ascribed cholera to both chicken pie and ‘excessive lewdness’
did not dissuade them in the least.”

Graham took his theories on diet and invented Graham bread, or
Graham crackers the name that then stuck. He actually
stumbled on a basic of nutrition, though he didn’t understand it
fully at the time; his bread, made of coarsely ground whole
wheat flour, preserved the vitamins.

This came about while he railed on the topic of white bread, the
process for which removed the good stuff (wheat germ, bran and
fiber) and instead used “stretchers” such as lime to cut costs. In
1837 he wrote “A Treatise on Bread and Bread-making,”
outlining the theory that fiber was good for one’s health. Yes,
his famous cracker was the first health food.

Graham’s fame spread far and wide. “No man,” he boasted, “can
travel by stage or steamboat or go into any part of our country
and begin to advocate a vegetable diet without being
immediately asked What! Are you a Grahamite?” [John Steele
Gordon]

Sylvester Graham expanded into hotels and health clubs. He
advocated daily exercise, open bedroom windows in winter and a
cheerful disposition at mealtime. Muckraker Horace Greeley
lived on a Graham-inspired diet of beans, potatoes, boiled rice,
milk, and Graham crackers.

Well you can imagine that not everyone was a fan of the
reverend. Being an adherent of vegetarianism (the first
American Vegetarian Society was founded in 1850), butchers,
bakers, and candlestick makers (well, maybe not the last one)
were none too pleased their occupations were being called into
question.

John Steele Gordon:

“In Boston, they struck back. The butchers and bakers
intimidated the owner of the lecture hall where Graham was
scheduled to talk, and he canceled the booking. Graham went to
the owners of the not-yet-finished Marlborough Hotel, the
nation’s first temperance hotel. The owners courageously
allowed him to use it, even though Boston’s mayor said he could
not guarantee the peace.

“The Grahamites boarded up the windows on the first floor and
stationed men on the roof with bags of slaked lime. When the
butchers and bakers attacked the hotel, they were showered with
it. In the words of Harper’s Weekly, ‘The eyes had it, and the
rabble incontinently adjourned.’”

Graham died in 1851, wealthy, but only 56, despite his ‘clean
living.’

Next week, the Kellogg Brothers take Graham’s cause to the next
level.

Sources:

John Steele Gordon, “The Business of America”
Amanda Spake / U.S. News & World Report
George Brown Tindall and David E. Shi, “America: A Narrative
History”
“The Oxford Companion to United States History,” edited by
Paul Boyer
“The Encyclopedia of American Facts and Dates,” edited by
Gorton Carruth

Brian Trumbore