Minnesota Experience

(calming piano music) -

Narrator

People have been milling wheat in roughly the same way for a millennium. But in the late 19th century, this crucial food making process was about to change dramatically at the falls of Saint Anthony on the Mississippi River. The specific type of flour created in Minneapolis is really the first industrial carbohydrate in world history. -

Narrator

A convergence of ideas, enterprising individuals, innovation, and natural resources, changed milling and forged a new global food industry. -

Commercial Speaker

Good nourishing wheat is the most popular cereal grain in all America, and full of food energy. -

Narrator

This industry changed how we eat... (explosion booms) It altered the economic and literal landscape of the upper Midwest. It would spur a spectrum of businesses, it would make household names out of its founding families. And that made our area the breadbasket of the world. -

Narrator

As these meals turned, they drove change and growth that would ripple across the region, the nation, and the globe. And this is how it begins. Hello, I'm Toussaint Morrison, and welcome to the premiere of Minnesota Experience. Today, the Falls of Saint Anthony are covered in a manmade apron to prevent erosion, so the falls have lost their dramatic presence. But without the Falls of Saint Anthony, there wouldn't have been a Minneapolis Milling District. Without a Milling District, the great Pillsbury versus General Mills rivalry wouldn't have existed. Without Pillsbury and General Mills, America wouldn't have had Betty Crocker, or Cheerios, or Wheaties. All made possible by the only natural waterfall along the great Mississippi River. (calming instrumental music) The story of milling begins largely in small, local mills, as you have white settlers moving in to the eastern and southeastern portions of Minnesota. Milling is part of everyday life, whether you're talking about lumber mills, or flour mills, and small, localized mill production is a signature feature of white settler colonialism. (dramatic instrumental music) One thing that had a problem with was finding cash crops. You needed food for your own sustenance, but you also wanted to find something you could sell, and wheat was the obvious answer. (intense violin music) The wheat that was first planted here is called Turkey Red. It's a beautiful wheat, it grows really tall, it's a burnished red, it's what inspired the phrase "Amber waves of grain." Bread making was hugely important to 19th century, early and mid 19th century kitchens. Bread is the only food that's eaten three meals a day, seven days a week. The southeast quadrant of Minnesota began what became known as the King Wheat era, that really flourished from 1860, and through the 1870s and 80s. -

Narrator

A vivid account from a visitor to Hastings, Minnesota in the late 1850s, described the key crop of the new state. -

Visitor

There was wheat everywhere. Wheat on the levee, wagon loads of wheat pouring down to the levee. Wheat in the streets, wheat in the sidewalks! Warehouses of wheat, men talking of wheat. Wheat was the one idea of Hastings the afternoon we arrived there. (lighthearted instrumental music) Minnesota was called by one observer in 1874, as "one huge wheat field". If you were a shopkeeper, a milliner, whatever you did, if you wanted to make some extra money, you learned how to grade and buy grain from the farmers, and that turned a man like Theodore Sheldon, who a lot of people know the Sheldon Memorial Auditorium in Red Wing. He was just a mercantile, regular businessman, and he started investing in grain, which led to the necessity for banking, and this has happened in the other river cities too. -

Narrator

A name that would be familiar the world over is Cargill. William Wallace Cargill started a grain warehouse business that took advantage of the growth of trade in southeastern Minnesota. Cargill and Peavey were very big line operators. And went all the way west with grain, and of course the railroads themselves were quite the moneymaker along the way, but it was mainly shipping, storing, and then selling the grain that where the real money was, and that's where those families, those companies, did very well. I call it a "grain rush". It's not quite as dramatic or interesting, I guess, as a gold rush, but in many ways that grain turned to gold. -

Narrator

Millstones spun this gold, grinding wheat into flour. In centuries past, mills were turned by people, livestock, and wind. In Minnesota, waterways provided a picturesque engine. -

Frederick

Wherever they was a flowing water, you can dam it up, build a small mill, and you'd be in business. Goodhue County, in 1873, was called the banner wheat county of America. It also had a milling industry that was second to none. They were all around, I believe there were 27 flour mills and grist mills in Goodhue County. And Winona, Hastings, and Red Wing, those three communities in particular, were becoming wheat ports. There were no railroads until the early 1870s, so farmers had to bring their product to market, and it was to the river cities where it could be shipped. Those cities really grew on wheat money. It is true that wheat built the river cities of the Mississippi River Valley. The south of St. Paul was more milling certainly, in that area before Minneapolis was even formulated. -

Narrator

The small village of Minneapolis may have been playing catch up to the river towns to the south. But the would be city, and the more established Saint Anthony across the river, had what in business terms would be called, an unfair advantage. Minneapolis has a monopoly, if you will, a monopoly on power. The amount of energy produced by the falling water in Saint Anthony is immense, it's immense. As early as the 1830s and 40s, you see a number of New Englanders arrive, and they see the potential water power at the falls of Saint Anthony, and they envision a great city, a great industrial city on the banks of the Mississippi River, at the falls. And where some see nothing but natural beauty, or the kind of awe and spectacle of nature, they see dollar signs, they see that that is power to be harnessed into milling. And at first it's mostly timber, that will slowly be shifting in the late 1860s and early 1870s as small flour mills become larger, and larger. -

Narrator

Among those who got into the business of saw mills and water power, was a Civil War general named Cadwallader C. Washburn. Cadwallader Washburn. He was the middle son of 10 children, grew up in Livermore, Maine. He was a store clerk, he was a school teacher, he became a surveyor. He then became a land speculator, he's a congressman from Wisconsin, a dedicated abolitionist. By the end of the Civil War, he holds the rank of Major General. He is a lumberman in Wisconsin, he has a lumber mill in La Crosse, he takes a riverboat up the river, and he rides over to see Saint Anthony Falls, which he had heard about. And it is said when he first saw the falls, he gasped. Because he saw not just a waterfall, he saw a source of energy. -

Narrator

Mill powers, the term used to describe the control over waterpower, were in the hands of the Minneapolis Mill Company. Washburn, now joined by his brother William, worked his way into control of the business, and control of the awesome power of the falls and the river. In 1866, at the end of the Civil War, he builds not just a flour mill, he builds the largest in the region, and it's so large that it's called "Washburn's Folly", because it is thought that no one could ever sell as much flour as Washburn's new mill will make. So suddenly, Washburn's Folly, which it was thought may be a failure, is actually very successful, and he's operating at a capacity within a year. -

Narrator

While Washburn was consolidating his power on the west bank of the Mississippi, another New Englander arrived to begin what would be a decade's long competition. In 1872, Charles Pillsbury joined his family and business on the east bank of the river. Charles Pillsbury is a railroad clerk, he has had a business in a produce distribution company. Charles Pillsbury decides to buy in to the milling business, and he buys a failing flour mill. Within a year, he's turned it around and is now generating a profit. From those origins becomes, eventually, the Pillsbury Company. The Pillsbury Family quickly starts to kind of elbow out various competitors, and that elbowing out is not just through kind of shrewd business work, or very sharp business minds, it's actually because of the access to investors. Washburn-Crosby Enterprise, like Pillsbury, they are expanding into both national, and then international markets. The two actually compete against each other for the next 120 years, and these two companies were number one, and number two flour companies in America. -

Narrator

Washburn was always looking for an edge and embraced innovators. John Crosby joins Washburn along the way, and he was a very good miller. Crosby actually ran the business, and probably should be given more credit for its success. -

Narrator

Another of Washburn's effective executives was millwright, George Christian. Who hired French millers to bring experimental European techniques to the mills. -

Tom

As you mill wheat, it has very hard bran, it cracks, and some of that bran would get into the flour. It had a lot of middlings in it, which is a byproduct of milling. They're hard kernels, and there would've been maybe some chaff in there, it would've been inconsistent. Minneapolis millers need the latest and greatest technology to fully separate the germ and the bran from the endosperm in the kernel. That is really at the core of what they're trying to do, if you can do that in an efficient way, on a large scale, in these factories that are going up on the banks of the Mississippi, you are gonna beat your competitors. (intense violin music) -

Narrator

Working in secret, they adapted a European system into what would be known as the "Middling Purifier". This system sifted out the heavier parts of the wheat, allowing for a more pure, white flour. With the advent of this industrial mill that Cadwallader Washburn built, he began sifting out the middlings, and creating a whiter, lighter flour. White flour had the bran and the germ almost completely removed. That was very difficult to do until the 1870s or 1880s. -

Beth

Turkey Red wheat has a really nice gluten level, and gluten is the muscle in bread. So it's very easy to work with, it makes a great bread. I mean, it was really pure white flour, that's what people wanted. There's a real discourse around purity in the 1880s and 1890s in the United States. We can talk about racial purity and social, and cultural relationships, we can talk about purity in the food supply. The purity of their products seem self evident simply because it is so white. The ways in which the bran and the germ were removed from it, were actually crucial if you're gonna allow flour to be shipped to all these different parts of the world. In other words, to create a shelf stable flour product you had to remove the bran and the germ, because those were the things that made flour go bad, and that's why so much flour making had been localized for centuries. Now, there was some dispute at that time, Sylvester Graham, who is the father of the graham cracker, said you're putting asunder what God put together, and you're damaging wheat, we need that whole grain to have a healthy product. So there was some debate about whether or not that kind of sifting made for better flour. It made for whiter flour, we know that, and it made for flour that was much easier for housewives to use. -

Narrator

With more and more updates, and innovations to his mills, Washburn's profits went from 50 cents a barrel in 1871, to four dollars and 50 cents in 1874. The milling industry spawned associated businesses including barrel making, advertising, and even makers of artificial limbs. A blunt reminder of the perils of working in these plants. -

Tom

When they built the new A mill, it's actually three times the size of the first mill, which is Washburn's Folly. Pretty much the largest flour mill in the world at the time. -

Narrator

The expanding milling industry was rapidly changing Minneapolis. Just a few years after statehood, the village had a population of just under 6,000. By the 1880s, the city had grown over 20 times that number. But a great price was about to be paid for all the productivity in Minneapolis's Mill District. One of the problems of milling, which is still a problem today, is that as you mill, flour dust could get into the air. And flour dust can be quite explosive. Now millers knew of this problem, but people hadn't built mills the size of Washburn's mill. More flour, more flour dust. -

Narrator

On May 2nd, 1878, the evening shift was underway at the Washburn-Crosby Company, but danger was literally in the air in the A mill. Somehow, a spark sets off flour dust... (explosion booms) In a absolutely catastrophic explosion. It's so big, that not only is Washburn's mill destroyed, but five other mills nearby, levels essentially several city blocks. Windows rattled as far away as Stillwater. 18 men lost their lives. There is a memorial to the workers at Lakewood Cemetery. (somber instrumental music) -

Narrator

In the midst of the ruins of the Mill District was a recently arrived Viennese engineer. William de la Barre would later describe a sight of the explosion. -

William

A memorable sad sight. The ruins were smoldering and a crew of firemen were still on duty. Relic hunters were busy climbing over the debris. Visitors from near and far were daily arriving to obtain a view of the disaster. William de la Barre, who was this engineer from Vienna, who's hired by the Minneapolis millers to improve the physical infrastructure of the Falls area, but also as an engineer, trying to think about how do we make better machinery. De la Barre had heard of the potential to pull flour out of the air using large exhaust fans, and he creates this system, it pulls flour dust out of the air into large socks that can be emptied and cleaned, and it creates a safer industry, and a similar mill explosion never happened. The first mill it's actually installed in, in commercial enterprise, is Washburn's new mill when he rebuilt in 1881. -

Narrator

Washburn had another assignment for the engineer. Washburn was really fascinated by what was going in Budapest, because Hungarian wheat was the prime flour at that time. -

Narrator

Europeans were experimenting with steel rollers instead of the traditional millstones. These rollers allowed for a more efficient, fine grind, and unlike stones, didn't need frequent cumbersome replacement. -

Beth

He sent William de la Barre over to Budapest. -

Michael

And he engages in full blown industrial espionage. -

Tom

So he poses as a miller, gets a job... -

Beth

And every night he would come back and sketch this roller mill. Comes back, and installs something like that, modifying it for Washburn's mill, and it's installed in his new mill in 1881. Washburn has these two innovations. One of which makes the industry safer, one of which makes it more efficient. He gathers his competitors at the Minneapolis Club, at the millers table, and shares this technology with all of them. -

Narrator

This state of the art structure on the Mississippi River, effectively brought to an end 2,000 years of the millstone, and, combined with the endless fields of wheat in western Minnesota, and the awesome power of the Saint Anthony Falls, made Minneapolis the milling capital of the world. -

Tom

The creation of flour that you could actually just buy at the grocery store, this was the original convenience food. We have to understand that producing bread flour at the scale the Minneapolis millers were producing at, made it the first industrially produced and widespread carbohydrate in world history, and their creation of both a national, and then an international market for that carbohydrate had profound effects on the ways in which people ate, not just in the region, not just in the city, but across the country, and eventually in other parts of the world. (dramatic instrumental music) (somber piano music) Minneapolis not only becomes a center of milling, but the central kind of grain market for wheat in the United States, taking that over from Chicago in the late 1880s and early 1890s. So then it becomes a marketing question, and who's going to out market each other? In 1880, the Washburn-Crosby company goes to the first International Millers Exposition in Cincinnati, Ohio, and they win the first ever gold medal. So they come back, and they decide rather than continuing to sell superlative flour, which is what they called it at the time, perhaps we should rename it Gold Medal flour. (lighthearted music) -

Debbie

Sheet music was also something that was used to promote flour. -

Narrator

Electronic mass media was decades away, but the Minneapolis millers and their ad agencies found creative ways to promote their products. The milling companies started publishing cookbooks in the 19th century, and the idea there was to sell more flour. So, if they could give you more recipes to bake a cake or bake bread a different way, they could sell you more flour. They do say in using recipes given in this book requiring flour, ask your grocer for, and insist upon having that best of all flours, the celebrated Gold Medal. Insist. So, Benjamin Bull was the president. He was given a number of advertising ideas by the company. And each of them began with "eventually". Well, Bull began to get a little impatient. It's like, eventually, eventually? He writes on a piece of paper, "Eventually, why not now?" He crumples it up, and throws it in the wastebasket. James Ford Bell, then a young executive with the company, pulls that crumpled piece of paper out of the wastebasket, and urges Benjamin Bull to consider this slogan. So, what it aspired to be was, eventually you'll have the best flour, eventually you'll be able to give your family the very best, why not now? It goes on to become one of the greatest ad slogans ever. Perhaps the best one ever with a question mark. Pillsbury, they come up with what I think is a great competing slogan. They put it on a sign, beaming across the river, at General Mills, where they have the sign "Eventually, Why Not Now?" Pillsbury puts up the sign, "Because Pillsbury's Best". Answering General Mills' question. The competition between the Minneapolis millers is a really important part of the story, but Minneapolis, even though it's growing, even though it hosts large political conventions, it's seen as kind of a center of settlement, in what at the time is called the northwest, it's got emergent culture, it's attracting migrants from all of the world. Even though Minneapolis is all those things, it's actually a pretty small place. And all the major milling families knew each other closely. In the board rooms, and in the mills during the day, they're competing with each other. They might look at each other askance when they're talking about pricing flour, or trying to compete in markets. But then at night, they're at the same social gatherings, they're at the Minneapolis Club together, they're helping create institutions like the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. They see themselves literally as the fathers of Minneapolis. Even though they are many in the city that would disagree with their intent, and their orientation. They were thinking about their New England ideals relative to aesthetic theory, but also thinking about their social ideals. So let's build a beautiful park system to help make the city what it is today, and let's support the cultural institutions. They brought these values related to nature to Minnesota, but they also brought their values about capitalism, and opportunity, and how you can make money off of nature to Minnesota too. We moved from being in a more humble relationship to the river, where the river was bigger than we were, and we had to show it some respect, but we also didn't think we could herd it. So in a sense, what happened at the Falls was we outgrew the river, and we changed our relationship from one of having to be respectful, to thinking of the river as just another thing we own and had to manage to make some money with. It became a useful industrial commodity for us. What they brought to this place was a sense of building a city on a hill, and even brought these transcendental ideas about human relationships to nature, and then they just destroyed the natural prairie and cut down the whole white pine forest, and they were doing some really bad things to the environment, they're having a really bad impact on a lot of Native people, they're not shy about flooding burial grounds, about displacing people. We always wrap that activity in it's just this sort of necessary evil to make way for progress. That's the core irony of all of this, that while we were coming with great high ideals to build Minneapolis, they're coming with greedy intentions, and it's all combined together, you can't tease apart these elements of the story, they're all part of the same story. -

Narrator

Tensions across place and class are central to this story. Agriculture gets industrialized as the Industrial Revolution is evolving in the United States. That all of these things are connected together. And so in economic enterprises, you have competition. And who is gonna make the money? What then is left for the farmer? That is an open question, and that is a pressing question in the 1880s, and 1890s, and early 1900s. And we see the rural, urban rivalry emerges. And you see farmers organizing in the 1880s and 1890s in Minnesota, and in the Dakotas. So the Grange, also known as the Patrons of Husbandry, was born in Minnesota. At the Oliver Kelley farm in the years immediately after the Civil War, and there, farmers were exploring ideas of collective organizing. -

Narrator

Along with Kelley and other farmers, the Grange founders also included Minnesota's enigmatic, progressive leader, Ignatius Donnelly, who dramatically characterized the emerging tensions of the times. -

Ignatius

The people are demoralized, the newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled. Public opinions silenced, homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, the fruits of the toil of millions are badly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind. From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice, we breed two great classes. Tramps and millionaires. Well, the Grange was the first formal organization of farmers. Kind of an unusual organization in that it was a society, a culture. It's not quite what we think of a labor union, or even a modern farmer organization. The Grange worked hard to reduce railroad rates. -

Michael

The shipping costs for farmers as they shipped their wheat to places like Minneapolis are actually reduced, so that farmers are able to keep more in their own pockets. They tried to pressure the mill owners, the grain graters, the railroads, and made some progress, they made political progress, particularly by the 1890s. Would've done even better I believe, but 1893, the panic of that year, the financial panic set everyone back. The farmers start creating local elevators, they build those into a network, they start building community around this notion of cooperation. And there's a strong sense of cooperative movements, a strong understand of cooperation in many different parts of the upper Midwest and northern plains, and the creation of the Society of Equity in the early 1900s, and then the Equity Cooperative Exchange in the 1910s, really starts to bring those farmers together, so that a farmer in western Minnesota might see a farmer in North Dakota or South Dakota, and understand that they have something in common. And that if they work together, economically they can protect grain prices and ensure that more of it lands in their pocket. And that idea of farmers organizing spread from Minnesota to North Dakota, and in North Dakota, it began in the late 19th century to take on a more political caste. As farmers began to organize, they thought let's make a pro farmer league, and they called that the Nonpartisan League. We don't care if you're a Republican or Democrat, or Socialist, we only care if you're for the farmer. They care of whether or not you support their platform. And that very quickly catapults them into power in North Dakota. They were very radical for their period, they were intent on sort of toppling the economic establishment which was, of course, the business interest of Minneapolis. -

Peter

They win the election, and they immediately create the state bank in North Dakota to create a new institution that can support farmers. The Nonpartisan League are a major political player across the region, and of course, they're a deep seeded threat to the Minneapolis millers who try to counter these organized farmers in a whole host of ways, just as they had been trying to counter organized labor in the mills themselves. -

Narrator

In 1903, despite the stern opposition of leaders of Pillsbury and Washburn-Crosby, virtually all the mill laborers walked out to demand reasonable wages and work days. Despite the unions early success, the millers overwhelmed the strikers with a variety of tactics and their own organizing, into what became a union against unions, called the Citizens' Alliance. Those employers began to band together to essentially create solidarity among employers. And they called it the Citizens' Alliance, to as we would say, put lipstick on the pig. Milling owners were very much in line with the Citizen's Alliance. It really did whatever it could to thwart the union organizing, so a great economy, a booming industry, but a very difficult labor management relations. -

Peter

So, the Citizens' Alliance really got them a good deal of power locally, and it enabled them to be fighting in the court of public opinion, and that continued until the 1934 Minneapolis teamster strike, who would really break that power. -

Michael

That kind of concentrated economic power is starting to pay off with the concentrated political power. -

Narrator

In 1903, as the millers were solidifying this power, a brilliant botanist and scientist from southeastern Minnesota was experimenting with a different kind of power that he would debut in the following year at the 1904 World's Fair. Alexander P. Anderson is a fascinating human being from a farmer, and he was a reluctant farmer, to a scholar, he was the man who invented cold cereal, and a founder of the modern American breakfast. (calming acoustic music) Well, my grandfather was a first generation American of Swedish ancestry, and he was born in a dugout in virtual poverty, and they lived in the dugout for a few winters, and then built a second home. Anderson always was interested in books and reading, and he was an excellent student. He was educated in a one room school, he passed the teacher exam. So besides farming, when he was like 18 to 19, he taught in one room schools for a number of years. But circumstances kept him on the farm, mainly he was the one child who seemed to be the one who would have to run the family farm for dad and mom, and keep them alive. At the age of 28, he went on to the University of Minnesota, and from there went to the University of Munich in Germany. Up until the age of 28, the farthest he had ever gone from the homestead was to Red Wing, which was about six to seven miles away, and was virtually an all day trip by buggy. So his world was very, very small. And all of a sudden, within just a few years, his world widened out considerably. -

Frederick

This breakthrough came because of his studies in Munich, and the idea that such things as wheat and rice at their fundamental level have a microscopic bit of water, free water inside them. Anderson was fascinated by that idea, and what would happen if you could free that water, if it indeed existed. -

Narrator

Anderson moved about to different academic settings, including a stint at the prestigious New York Botanical Gardens. And that's where he made his critical discoveries, they revolution discoveries of A.P. Anderson. He put some rice grains into a test tube, and then turned that test tube into a vacuum. Heated the test tube to a particular degree, and then cracked the glass, and the small bit of moisture that's in the rice grain turned to steam. And that led to an explosion. There was rice all over. It blew up in the air and around him, and came down like snow. And it expanded the rice grain considerably. And he said it came out very puffy, and what he calls "silky". And the first thing that occurred to him is this can be the new bread. The modern bread. And even feeding the rice to his infant son, to see what he thought about it, he said he ate all the puffed rice we could give him. There are test tubes that still exist with A.P. Anderson's handwriting, labeling them. A.P. Anderson is a cousin to John Lind, who happens to be the governor of Minnesota. You know, he just left office. Lind says I will set up a meeting with Minneapolis industrialists, money people, and you can demonstrate it. -

Narrator

Minneapolis business leaders supported Anderson's research financially, but didn't seem to know what to do with it other than control it. They were bought out by the Quaker Company who also moved slowly on utilizing the puffing process. They can't figure out what to do with it, but they don't want anyone else to have it. So, he forces their hand. Alex says I'm gonna go to the 1904 World's Fair at St. Louis, meet me in St. Louis World's Fair, and I'm going to put on a display. And there is where he comes out with his artillery, the first time you see the cannons referred to. So, he invites people to come and watch the miracle of the exploding rice. They had this big, two story net that would catch the rice as it came blasting out. (explosion booms) Showered in the air, people cheered, laughed, and then they would sell the puffed product to people for a nickel a bag. They exploded 20,000 pounds of rice, and it was very enlightening, shall we say, to the Quaker people who saw we've got something here. They thought it might be a confection, something we add sugar to and sell it as a candy. Then it occurred to Anderson that perhaps a cereal product would be better. Quaker sees a bigger market, some ad man came up with the idea of food shot from guns, which is still used today. -

TV Presenter

Out of the Professor's cannon came a glorious discovery. Quaker Puffed Rice and Puffed Wheat. The cereals shot from guns. Today, in the Quaker gun room we still use the Professor's discovery. To release all the flavor of whole grain rice, we blow it up 16 times by shooting it from guns. (explosion booms) Out comes-- -

Frederick

So, food shot from guns has now developed into a national phenomenon. (grand instrumental music) And becomes the first really modern cold cereal. He's a professor, he's a doctor. He's gonna tell you this is good for you. -

TV Presenter

Thanks, Professor. -

Frederick

His picture is there, he's a very stately, good looking gentleman, so he's a good spokesperson. (explosion booms) The acceptance of the puffed cereals nationwide was a new phenomenon in America. -

Robert

It was looked upon as a very healthy cereal. And I do think that it was America's first fast food. -

Narrator

Now a success, A.P. Anderson and his family returned to their home near Red Wing. Anderson constructed a state of the art farm and lab he called Tower View, reclaiming the homestead of his immigrant parents. After he left the farm, the farm was lost, the mortgage was called, and he made it his business to get the farm redeemed, and then expand around the farm. (lighthearted instrumental music) He and his family put scholarships in place wherever he had worked, in Clemson, and in New York, and the university. And he continued his work. And it is truly a quintessentially American story. A person born in a dugout and 35 years later, he has reshaped the way the entire country eats breakfast. It's a truly remarkable, improbable story. (lighthearted instrumental music) -

Narrator

Professor Anderson reset America's breakfast table with his cold cereal innovation. Hot cereal from the north was another change to how we ate. In 1893, North Dakota millers packaged unground farina as a healthy breakfast porridge called Cream of Wheat. The company relocated to Minneapolis to join the food business establishment in the Twin Cities. Cream of Wheat is an early example of a transition away from simple flour, and into new products. The importance of diversifying and new business strategies, was a growing concern, and would determine who would ultimately win the generational race between Pillsbury and Washburn-Crosby. -

Michael

Flour prices are down, flour consumption is down. To think they've built an empire around an economic empire, is starting to decline. -

Tom

What's important to note is that none of the great flour milling companies are really left. It was very important to develop new products to get closer to the consumer. And who's gonna have the better business strategies? And understanding the changing economic landscape becomes really important. What's interesting is that Washburn-Crosby's leadership sees that, where it's not clear that Pilsbury's leadership sees that. And that's another thing that will kind of emerge as a difference as both companies move ahead in the years to come. But the biggest issue, the biggest issue that's faced by the Minneapolis millers is the loss of their power monopoly. That had always been the foundation of their financial power, their economic power, their social power, their political power, even their cultural power in shaping Minneapolis and Minnesota more broadly. Was the actual power of falling water, and harnessing that. By the late 1910s, you don't need mechanic energy in that same way, cause you can produce it through coal or other fossil fuels. Which means you can have flour mills anywhere. So, in the face of these intersecting crises, the Minneapolis millers are trying to figure out what to do. -

Narrator

The challenges of the new century was to be faced by new leadership, as both Cadwallader Washburn, and Charles Pillsbury had passed away. The next generation of executives from these families were taking the helm, but the changes in the milling and food industry would be met by a different kind of leader. James Ford Bell graduates in the early 1900s from the University of Minnesota with a degree in chemistry. Now, he's going to go on to be one of the state's most important business leaders ever. He's a chemistry major, and that means he has a certain commitment to knowledge making, to research and development. James Ford Bell is a person who develops from the ground up, living in the industry, great insights into milling flour. -

Michael

He's being groomed to take over Washburn-Crosby, and he moves from the ranks of junior executive into senior executive. -

Narrator

Bill's vision and innovation would be needed to meet yet another challenge facing the milling industry. The very product it was built on. White bread flour is starting to be seen as the enemy. There's kind of an outbreak of digestive trouble in America in the late teens and early 1920s. There have been a group of health reformers who have been calling for more fiber in diets. Cold cereal craze takes off in the early 1900s, because it's seen as a way to introduce fiber into the American diet. And the flour millers are making flour, they're making bread flour. They're seen now as part of the problem. So the question for them is how can they reinvent themselves in order to cater to these changing consumer tastes, and James Ford Bell keeps saying we've gotta do business differently. He's able to convince the Washburn-Crosby leadership that in fact, they need to start investing in other products. And one of the first products that Washburn-Crosby goes to work on is a cold breakfast cereal. And after a couple years of work, engineers come up with a product that will eventually become known as Wheaties. It's the first non-flour product that's created by Washburn-Crosby. Wheaties is born, but originally it's Washburn-Crosby's Wheat Flakes, and it's not selling very well. It's actually a failing product, and there is a point at which the board decides, and James Ford Bell, then the CEO of the company, that we should kill this product because it's not going to succeed. And Sam Gale, then the head of marketing, stands up at that moment and he goes... But it is succeeding in the markets where we're using the radio to advertise. Washburn-Crosby, in an effort to understand itself as a merchandising company as much as a food manufacturer, buys a radio station in Minneapolis. -

Tom

The first radio station in the region. -

Michael

They rebrand that radio station as Washburn-Crosby Company, WCCO. And they start using it to advertise. -

Tom

And they create a jingle for this barbershop quartet to sing promoting Wheaties. On Christmas Eve, 1926. Have you tried Wheaties And that's actually the first commercial radio jingle in world history. For wheat is the best food of man They're crispy and crunchy the whole year through It had never been done before. The kiddies never tire of them And neither will you So just Buy Wheaties The best breakfast food in the land And sales in the listening area go up almost immediately. So within a year or two, the Washburn-Crosby executives figure out that this radio advertising for this new, cold breakfast cereal is the way to take over a bigger portion of that cold cereal market. Expand that radio advertising and the use of this jingle nationally. The difficulty is, if you're going to have the jingle, you have to actually bring in the four singers to actually sing the song. And they brought in the singers in various places, Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, et cetera. Wheaties takes off, it becomes a success. They're whole wheat with all of the bran It's whole wheat with all of the bran, is what the jingle says. And whole wheat with all of the bran is the exact opposite of the product that they had been marketing and selling for decades, but it's the product that America is most interested in. And that allows James Ford Bell to further make his case that in fact, this is the future for his company, Washburn-Crosby. -

Narrator

Bell's maneuvering and mergers continued. -

Michael

James Ford Bell says let's consolidate, but let's consolidate strategically by essentially bringing in our competitors. Let's turn our enemies into our friends. -

Narrator

This growing national standing was reflected in a new name. And they create this new company called General Mills, and suddenly General Mills has a national footprint. Radio across the United States has taken off by the early 1930s as the primary mass media, and by the early 1930s, General Mills is sponsoring full blown radio, scripted radio programs. Like Jack Armstrong, which is very popular with kids. -

Tom

We create the first ever soap opera for radio, that was sponsored by Bisquick, and it was called Betty and Bob. -

Radio Presenter

Betty and Bob, brought to you by General Mills. And it ran for years. If we had stuck with it, instead of being soap operas, perhaps we'd be calling them baking mix operas today, cause we did do the very first. (crowd claps) The advertising that General Mills engages in in the 1930s that becomes more and more sophisticated, actually is the source of modern sports broadcasting, and they start using Wheaties to sponsor Major League Baseball broadcasts. -

Announcer

Into the stands for a home run! That's what I mean, the spark of a champion. Wheaties man, Ralph Kiner in action. Someone came up with a sketch on a piece of paper, box of Wheaties, Wheaties, the Breakfast of Champions. That becomes the sign we put up where the Minneapolis Millers played. Broadcasting these games for you, I get to watch lots of champs. And you know what sparks a champion, sparks you. And champions choose Wheaties. -

Michael

So it's the domination of the airwaves, and in particular, sports broadcasting. That's the way that they ensure a healthy future, and grow into that future. -

Announcer

Breakfast of Champions! General Mills in the 1930s will be one of the very few large corporations in America that has a quarterly profit consistently through the very difficult years of the Great Depression. Cold breakfast cereal is not a high end product, it's a product that more and more people are turning to as a way to get a nutritious, energy filled, as the advertising copy often said, breakfast. -

Tom

So Wheaties are our first cereal in 1924... -

Michael

Kix cereal, that's 1938, and another cold breakfast cereal called Cheerioats, and that name is quickly changed to Cheerios in the early 1940s. -

Presenter

Why, our Cheerios breakfast gives you the power protein that grownups need to help stay in trim. -

Other Presenter

Full of whole wheat energy in every flake, today's Wheaties, Breakfast of-- -

Narrator

Just as the millers changed how we ate, their marketing changed popular culture. -

Presenter

11 different Lone Ranger mystery adventures on the backs of General Mills cereal. -

Tom

We owned the Lone Ranger, created the shows. -

Cowboy

Cowboy champion Bob Maynard. Do you still eat Wheaties? You bet your boots I do. -

Presenter

Folks all over the country are eating their Wheaties and doing okay! Whether it's baseball, football Basketball, or crew What sparks a champion Sparks you For the power O's Cheerios -

Presenter

One of the big G cereals from General Mills! -

Other Presenter

There's a whole kernel of wheat in every Wheaties flake. And I'll give you some new Frosty O's. -

Narrator

Among all these beloved mascots, celebrities, and animated pitch people, was a fictitious food maven who was also made up, but made a lasting impact. Hello, I'm Betty Crocker. I guess every family has its own kind of problems. So, Betty Crocker is a customer service story at the very beginning. It was genius stroke to decide that it should be signed by a woman, and her named became Betty Crocker. Crocker named after one of our favorite directors at the time, Betty because it sounded friendly. The women in the consumer services group all submitted a signature, one of those signatures was chosen, and it's still the logo for Betty Crocker today. You don't have to be an expert when you use my cake mix. And within 21 years, she's the second best known woman in America, second only to Eleanor Roosevelt. She got 5,000 letters a day, and multiple proposals of marriage. -

Presenter

Betty Crocker and her staff have already given years of service to homemakers, and the idea was born that cakes could be made easier and better. -

Narrator

Many have worked to create the presence of Betty Crocker, including a food pioneer who had long imagined herself in this role. When I was 14, I got my first Betty Crocker's cookbook, and I saw the pictures of the women, the home economists working in the kitchens, the test kitchens, and I said that's what I want to do, I want to be Betty Crocker. That's my dream job. (laughs) I've always wanted to be Betty Crocker! I went through my training, and learned the Betty Crocker way, and I worked on many products during my tenure at General Mills. I think my first assignment was on Hamburger Helper, and they were just starting to develop it. New Hamburger Helper from Betty Crocker. By the time we get to a product like Hamburger Helper, she's helping you make a quick meal for your family, one pan, one skillet, one meal. And that's the role Betty plays, not just in cookbooks, not just in advice, but also in the creation of products, particularly convenient foods. But now I know about Hamburger Helper-- When they did the new portrait of Betty Crocker on the 75th anniversary, they called me to be on the panel of judges, they took essays from women across the country, and they took these letters saying why they thought they personified Betty Crocker. And we looked at all these letters, we didn't know who the people were, we just read their letters, and we decided which ones were the best. Well, it turned out they had a mixed group of women that were the winners, they were all of ages, of all ethic groups, and married and single, and they were wonderful. So, they took these women that were the winners, and they took photographs of them, and then they digitally merged all those photographs into one person, and then had somebody paint the portrait. That is the current portrait of Betty, the one we're still using, and that Betty looks a bit more like all of America, and a little less like she might've been only from Minnesota. I think the Betty Crocker persona is of a person who A, knows what she's doing, B, loves to cook, C, is kind of maternal and friendly, and you know, will listen to your problems. And I wanted to be that kind of a person. And so, I thought, I'm Betty Crocker. (laughs) -

Narrator

Betty Crocker was joined by another fictional kitchen confidant, named Ann Pillsbury. She never caught on like her rival across the river, but the Pillsbury Bake-Off did transcend its marketing origins to become an American tradition. -

Presenter

Kitchen experimenters of all ages and backgrounds. Even a handful of men. (clapping) -

Narrator

Through the second half of the 20th century, the two major millers had evolved into global corporate entities, whose holdings included a wide range of food products. Baco's from Betty Crocker kitchens. -

Narrator

And much more. The companies become holding companies with many companies underneath, launching things like Play-Doh, Clue, the Nerf ball, we also had fashion companies like Talbots, and Eddie Bauer. Pillsbury will develop products like cake mix, eventually refrigerated dough, which brings us the Doughboy. Burger King created and launched by Pillsbury. Pilsbury buys the Minnesota Valley Canning Company, that actually dates to 1907 in Le Sueur, Minnesota. They create the Green Giant, they buy Totino's Pizza. They're the number one selling pizza by volume in America. And that's based on Rose Totino, and her restaurant right here in north Minneapolis. All of these things get connected through the roll up of companies like Pillsbury, or General Mills. They competed aggressive across the river from each other for a hundred years, now they're together under one umbrella, underneath of General Mills. -

Presenter

The city is still one of the world's flour capitals, and home for big name milling companies. The cultural desires of these people have built fine museums, and good libraries. -

Narrator

Just as their profits were growing, the millers giving continued to grow, and shaped Minnesota throughout the 20th century. Minnesota's a philanthropic powerhouse. I think for each of those families, they've been a part of the philanthropic infrastructure of the state for a number of years, but also an even more critical part of the civic infrastructure. Philanthropy is important here. It is an expectation that you give both your time and personal and organizational resources. I think those milling families were an important part of that strategy. -

Tom

These things are connected. The mills created Minneapolis. -

Presenter

Here is the world's largest cache grain market, and all the enterprises of institutions necessary for the business of the region. -

Narrator

This dominion over food and industry also raises a number of questions. So, if we think about the flour milling industry in Minneapolis as the first place where industrial carbohydrates were created, as a place where they were sustained, and then of course they were modified in the 20s, and 30s, and 40s. According to some reformers and health professionals, carbohydrates are the bane of the American diet. Carbohydrates are the source of obesity, and diabetes, and a host of health problems that cost the United States billions of dollars in healthcare issues every year. So the stakes are really high when we're talking about industrial carbohydrates, and yet we don't think about the intricate relationships and networks that have been built over time that shape the ways we imagine food, the ways we consume food, as well as the actual food products themselves. (dramatic piano music) History is about asking questions about the world, and trying to figure out how things came to be. And there's nothing more human than looking out into the world, and asking the question why? Why is that there? Why did that turn out the way it did? In China. People all over the world knew about Minneapolis because the flour in their kitchens came in a bag that said Minneapolis right on it. Three, two... (loud yells) What happened here to build Minneapolis into the city that it became. (dramatic piano music) It's a complicated story. What it meant to the owners, and the workers, and the farmers, but it's also illuminating to the whole nature of Minnesota, and really tells us a lot about who we are today. (lighthearted instrumental music) -

Presenter

This program is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. (pleasant outro music)